Calif. Chief Encouraged to Turn Down Mutual Aid Requests
The Richmond Police Department may be more reluctant in the future to respond to mutual aid requests like the ones that went out during the Occupy Oakland raid.
The City Council on Tuesday passed new guidelines urging the chief of police to "carefully evaluate" all mutual aid requests that involve "civil unrest situations."
Two-way mutual aid agreements allow other police departments to call on Richmond police for help during demonstrations, natural disasters and other big events and for Richmond to do the same when it needs help.
The new guidelines ask the chief to consider whether police will be asked to deal with protesters or to use force before agreeing the help.
The discussion has been postponed several times. Mayor Gayle McLaughlin initially brought the resolution forward after Richmond police were called to help break up an Occupy Oakland camp in October.
"We want to make sure that whenever mutual aid requests occur, they're studied very closely and it's not just like automatically, 'We're there'," she said.
The resolution does not technically give the police chief any new authority.
Councilmen Nat Bates and Corky Booze voted against the new guidelines, saying that the council should let the police chief do his job without "browbeating."
Councilman Jeff Ritterman agreed that the chief already has the power to turn down mutual aid requests, but said that was all the more reason to pass the resolution.
"If police are doing it anyway, what would be the reason for defeating it other than to turn it into a political football?" he asked.
ln November, the Berkeley City Council refused a mutual aid agreement with UC Berkeley police citing excessive force and free speech violations by the campus force during Occupy protests in Oakland and at UC Berkeley.
Contact Hannah Dreier at 510-262-2787. Follow her at Twitter.com/hannahdreier .
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