This page is the fine print: what the resolution actually authorizes, the history that wrote the ban, where deployment decisions really get made, what the department and its union have said, and the six things I'd ask for before the vote — as a candidate at public comment now, and from the D1 seat if you send me there.
This gets argued as police against protesters. That framing is wrong, and it's why the argument has run since 1969. Nobody at the September 15 meeting will be in favor of gassing demonstrators, and nobody will be in favor of officers dying in a barricade incident. The record itself names three real tradeoffs — and attaches a number to none of them.
The resolution's stated rationale is that tear gas creates distance and can reduce recourse to lethal force in a barricade or hostage incident. The 2020 record contains the same tradeoff stated badly: asked what tools would remain without tear gas, the then-chief answered "we can shoot people" — and retracted it within the meeting. The trade is real: in a genuine critical incident, the alternative can be worse. How often that incident actually occurs in Berkeley — the number that prices the trade — has never been published. (Ask 01.)
The same canister is lawful or banned depending on whether the scene is classified a "critical incident" or a "crowd" — a call made in seconds and reviewed in months. The record holds both poles: the item's hostage-and-barricade examples on one side; on the other, a 2014 deployment that began as a protest and ended in a $125,000 constitutional settlement, and the accountability board chair's warning that ambiguous standards would "effectively authorize the use of tear gas in crowd control contexts." The threshold language is the entire question — which is why it belongs in the operative text, not in a policy summary. (Ask 02.)
Reports cost officer hours in a department whose own union president says staffing is at a ten-year low and overtime is mandatory. Posted summaries cost fewer hours than per-use Council review — the trade the wider package makes, per February press coverage. But a report is also the only way anyone outside the department learns a deployment happened at all. What that visibility is worth is a real choice, and the current text attaches no consequence to skipping it. (Asks 03 and 06.)
If the choice is police versus protesters, one side is the villain and the argument runs another fifty-seven years. If the choice is distance versus firearms in a defined incident, a threshold written down before the seconds start, and reporting priced against staffing, it is an engineering problem with an answer — one that can be measured, published, and checked afterward. The record names all three tradeoffs. The resolution quantifies none of them. That is what the asks below fix.
The July version of this resolution is better drafted than the January version: it defines its terms, attaches its policies, and schedules its reports — much of what the Public Safety Committee conditioned its approval on. What remains is the difference between limits that read well and limits that bind. Every ask below is a number, a definition, or a report — nothing more — and each can be added before September 15 without reopening 2020.
Publish the count: how many Special Response Team incidents since June 2020 would have met this resolution's own critical-incident standard? The written record offers three examples in about 25 years, two of them in crowd settings the new text bars. If the count is substantial, publishing it makes the case better than any speech. If it is near zero, Council should know that before authorizing, and voters should know it before November.
Tear gas for crowd control is barred absolutely; smoke and OC return to crowds where there is "active violence." The threshold for that phrase should live in the resolution itself, alongside the Police Accountability Board's own words — First Amendment–protected activity excluded "without exception" — so the seam between a critical incident and a crowd can't be walked through in the moment.
The text promises a written report per use, quarterly reports to the PAB, annual reports to Council, and the state-required public summary. Add one sentence: if a deployment's report isn't published on schedule, the authorization is suspended until it is. I ask the same of the surveillance contracts — failure to publish should be automatic expiration, not a footnote.
Authorization sunsets after two years unless Council renews it with the full usage record published — every deployment, every report, on time. If the tool is used as narrowly as promised, renewal is a consent-calendar formality. If it isn't, the sunset is the safeguard working.
The only deployment since 2014 in the resolution's record happened in Oakland, as mutual aid. And in 2014, assisting agencies stood on Telegraph alongside BPD. Write both directions into the mutual-aid policy: BPD operating elsewhere carries Berkeley's limits; outside agencies operating in Berkeley follow them; both get reported through the same scheme.
The reporting scheme names the Police Accountability Board as its reviewer — in a year when two of the board's most experienced members resigned and the Director of Police Accountability was dismissed. Fill the seats and the director's office before the first quarterly report comes due. A safeguard that reports to an empty room isn't one.
The resolution's ban on tear gas for crowd control is absolute, and this page says so plainly. Special Response Team officers face real life-threatening incidents, and the critical-incident definition describes real ones. This is not a relitigation of 2020. It is a request that limits drafted well be made enforceable — thresholds in the operative text, reporting with consequences, a sunset with data, mutual aid covered. If the September 15 text includes them, the vote proceeds on its merits. If I have a date or a clause wrong, tell me and the page changes.
A use-of-force authorization is decided twice: once in the Council chamber, in text, and again at a scene, in seconds. The distance between those two decisions is where every historical failure on this page happened. Here are the five points where this one will actually be decided, and the test for each.
Under the attached policies, use must be objectively reasonable, necessary, and proportional; state law adds required de-escalation attempts, audible warnings, and a ban on targeting the head, neck, or vital organs. The test: does the after-action report have to name who authorized the deployment and what alternative was rejected — or only that a deployment occurred?
A barricaded suspect draws a crowd; a crowd contains a violent actor. Whether a scene is a "critical incident" or a "First Amendment assembly" decides which rulebook applies — classified in seconds, reviewed months later. The 2014 deployment began as a protest and ended in a $125,000 settlement. The test: does the text say who classifies the scene, and does review check the classification, not just the deployment?
Berkeley's limits do not automatically bind outside agencies operating here, and BPD's one post-2014 deployment on record happened in Oakland under another agency's operation. The companion item Council passed 5–4 on July 14 eased borrowing outside canine units and helicopters — resource-sharing is the live direction of travel. The test: when uniforms mix, whose policy governs, and who reports?
Quarterly to the PAB, annually to Council, a state-required public summary — and, per February press coverage, the wider package retires a 1997-era rule that sent every pepper-spray use to Council for review, in favor of posted summaries. The test: if a report simply never appears, does anything happen? Today the answer is no. Ask 03 is the fix.
The scheme leans on the Police Accountability Board — which lost two of its most experienced members to resignation on January 30 and saw the Director of Police Accountability dismissed on February 9, and whose January memo questioned "whether reinstatement meaningfully enhances public safety." The test: is the reviewing body staffed before the first report lands? Ask 06.
During the People's Park crisis — "Bloody Thursday" and the days after — law enforcement and the National Guard use tear gas repeatedly in Berkeley. On May 20, 1969, a National Guard helicopter sprays CS gas over Sproul Plaza to disperse demonstrators. The event remains the reference point for every Berkeley chemical-agent debate since.
During a Telegraph Avenue protest against the Michael Brown and Eric Garner killings, BPD and assisting agencies fire CS tear gas after dispersal orders. Days later the Police Review Commission asks Council to suspend tear gas, baton over-the-shoulder strikes, and projectiles. The city later pays $125,000 to seven demonstrators for First and Fourth Amendment violations.
Two weeks after George Floyd's murder, Council bans tear gas permanently — "no end-date, no sunset" — and places smoke and pepper spray for crowd control under a pandemic-era moratorium (BPD Special Order 2020-0007). In May, BPD had deployed tear gas as mutual aid defending Oakland Police headquarters — the last deployment cited in the resolution's own record.
The state sets a floor everywhere: the Legislature enacts AB 48 (Penal Code § 13652), restricting kinetic projectiles and chemical agents at assemblies statewide — objectively reasonable defense against threat to life or serious bodily injury, de-escalation first, audible warnings, no targeting the head, neck, or vital organs.
With protests running at UC's People's Park construction site, a special Council meeting is noticed to consider suspending the chemical-agents ban. The meeting is canceled; no vote occurs. The ban holds.
Councilmember Kesarwani introduces the reinstatement resolution, calling tear gas "a vital option" for high-risk incidents. BPD declines comment, citing policy on pending legislation. The Police Accountability Board's January 26 memo questions "whether reinstatement meaningfully enhances public safety, or whether it reintroduces a tool associated with significant community concern." On January 30, two veteran PAB members resign; on February 9, the Director of Police Accountability is dismissed.
The Public Safety Committee (Kesarwani, O'Keefe, Blackaby) votes 3–0 to send the item to Council with a qualified positive recommendation and three conditions: define the permissible uses in the text, attach the governing policies, and build an after-action reporting framework. More than half of a 50-plus-person audience opposes. At committee, Kesarwani says she could envision smoke use in "high-risk situations such as an active shooting or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge."
The revised item — 24a, now with the critical-incident definition, attached policies, and reporting scheme — reaches Council. After extended public comment, the tear gas vote is postponed to September 15. The same night, Council passes the companion loosening of outside canine and helicopter requests 5–4 (Ishii, Bartlett, Lunaparra, Tregub opposed). Mayor Ishii's stated position on the main item: "I support keeping the tear gas ban in place … I believe they can keep our community safe using other less-lethal methods."
The scheduled Council vote — seven weeks before the November 3 election. The six asks above are what I'd put on the record at public comment before it.
The department: BPD declined to comment on the pending item. At committee, command staff spoke to operations — Deputy Chief Jen Tate called ending the smoke and pepper-spray moratorium "operationally sound." The department's institutional view sits in the record at three moments: in 2014, Chief Michael Meehan defended the Telegraph deployment ("I cannot let my officers get injured") and Sgt. Chris Stines, who dislocated a shoulder that night, argued the crowd's violence forced the decision. In 2020, Chief Andrew Greenwood, asked what tools would remain without tear gas, answered "we can shoot people" — and retracted it within the meeting. The retracted candor points at the serious version of the argument: in a genuine critical incident, the alternative to a chemical agent can be a firearm. That case deserves to be made in exactly those terms — with the incident count from Ask 01 attached to it.
The union: the Berkeley Police Association has taken no public position on this item that we could find published. What its president, Neil Egbert, has said publicly this year is about capacity: staffing at its lowest point in a decade (authorized sworn positions cut from 181 to 164), officers "working approximately 90–100 mandatory overtime shifts per month," and members citing "lack of modern tools," "mixed political support," and deteriorating work-life balance. Whether the union reads this resolution as a tool restored or a distraction from staffing, it has not said — his June op-ed is linked below so you can read it yourself.
Everything on this page is sourced to a public document or a named press account. If you think I've read one of them wrong, tell me and I'll correct the page.