Hearing on improving bicycle/police relations in Berkeley Nov. 8: Bikes and the Police Hearing Wednesday, November 8, 7 PM, North Berkeley Senior Center (Hearst and MLK) It's very important that police treat bicyclists well. Unfortunately there are problems in police departments which can be found all across the country. Berkeley is no exception. Police often do not know the rights of bicyclists and pedestrians and tend to fault us wrongly. Some police are actively biased against us. When a person is hit by a car, this is very serious as a police report that faults the bicyclist can mean not only are you injured or killed, but also that you can't get a settlement from the driver to help pay for your hospital, suffering, etc. In everyday life, this means that we are getting a lot of tickets that we shouldn't be getting, and police are refusing to enforce laws against violent, careless and aggressive drivers. When it comes to demonstrations such as Critical Mass, a whole second layer of poor treatment by police comes into play. In an effort to address these problems a few bike activists began meeting with the Police Department and were very frustrated to get nowhere. The police stated that motor vehicles are "not a public safety problem". They refused to take steps to educate their officers, saying that "our officers already ride bicycles, there's nothing more they need to know". When we tried to get statistics to show patterns of certain officers targeting only bicyclists for violations (e.g., rolling through stop signs) selectively -- for example, never even giving motorists a ticket for the same thing, which is much more dangerous when done with a car -- they refused again and again. Seems like everyone has their own horror stories or at least knows a friend who does. It's time to make a strategy for how we can get the police on our side -- and protect the public from death and injury by motorcar -- rather than persecuting us for being more vulnerable and "different". There are several strategies for this. One is to document the problem. Another is to bring attention to the problem. And yet another is to attempt to enact policy changes that the police would hopefully have to abide by. Right now the most promising development is that the Police Review Commission (a third-party commission of citizens who are charged with watchdogging police behavior) is willing to hear our complaints and our suggestions for how the police can improve. WE NEED YOU TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN. Please call me if you can help. Show up at the hearing if you would like to speak about particular problems or ideas, although it would be most helpful to know your issues and what you plan to present in advance. My voicemail is (510) 273-9288, or "510-Crew-cut", and my pager is (510) 720-2818, which is the best way to reach me directly. On the web, you might enjoy things we (the Bicycle Civil Liberties Union) have put out at http://www.bclu.org/ Note that this flyer is not meant to indicate that all police are anti-bicyclist, but we believe that all police need improvement at this point as they are generally not trained enough and existing policies and accountability are not strong enough.
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