Parents at far-left Cal-Berkeley – where students pushed ‘defund the police’ and the city cut $9.2million from cop budget – are forced to spend $40K to hire private security to protect students near campus
Parents of Cal-Berkeley students have raised $40,000 to pay for the cost of private security near the liberal university, following an effort to dismantle police on campus and across the city.
Safe Bears, a nonprofit organization made up primarily of concerned parents, raised money for a two-and-a-half-week pilot program in which guards in fluorescent jackets walked around campus.
The unarmed officers conducted surveillance of several blocks around the university from March 6 through March 23, independently of Cal-Berkeley campus police.
The program comes amid a recent spike in crime in the far-left city, which has seen a huge push to reduce police presence during the Black Lives Matter movement.
Speaking to NBC Bay Area, Sagar Jethani, president of Safe Bears and father of two students, said the program had received “positive feedback.” He and other members of the organization hope that more private security guards will be hired in the future.
“It went very well, we deployed a total of six safety ambassadors, some on foot, some on bicycles,” Jethani explains.
Parents of Cal-Berkeley students raised $40,000 to fund a two-week private security pilot program after a spike in crime near the Liberal campus
The unarmed guards patrolled a series of blocks around the university between March 6 and 23
The decision came after years of push by the student body to defund campus and city police
“They provided escorts for students who needed them, security escorts, they provided directions, they were also just a very visible deterrent to crime.”
Cal-Berkeley saw a spike in crime between 2021 and 2022. In particular, the number of serious assaults increased from 54 to 63.
Parents claimed that university police were understaffed and overwhelmed by the increasing violence.
Their concerns came to a head in 2022, when a student was shot dead after an altercation just steps from campus.
Police say the shooting stemmed from an earlier fight. Three men aged 22, 24 and 28 were injured, while 29-year-old Isamaeli Mataafam died.
Mataafam was a doctoral candidate at the Pacific School of Religion at the time of his death.
According to Jethani, the Safe Bears program was modeled after the private security Cal-Berkeley hired after the shooting. Private security provider Streetplus was chosen for this position due to their existing relationship with the city.
Another shooting erupted on campus last month when Virgil Hampton, 59, allegedly fired his gun after a “physical altercation” with a student, according to University of California police.
The man ordered the students to open their backpacks and give him a charger. When a fight broke out, he grabbed a gun and started shooting into the air.
Although the blast only shattered a window, the community was shocked.
Sagar Jethani, the president of Safe Bears, a nonprofit organization made up primarily of parents, said the pilot program has received “positive feedback.”
Student organizations, including the Black Student Union, have argued that Cal-Berkeley “plays an active role in this system of abuse” by working with city police and funding campus police.
Parents, meanwhile, have insisted that campus police are overwhelmed by rising rates of violent crime
The increased security presence also follows a years-long effort to defund police.
Cal-Berkeley has been a bastion of liberal thought in the Bay Area for decades, with the Princeton Review characterizing its student population as generally “politically liberal, nonreligious and quite independent.” 2018.
Calls to cut funding for university police stemmed from two separate incidents in 2019, which began when campus police responded to a report of two people on campus, one of whom was carrying a stun gun.
According to an advisory from the school’s Black Student Union, two Cal-Berkeley freshmen were walking with a University of San Francisco student when officers approached and asked if they had a weapon.
The University of San Francisco student admitted to carrying one in self-defense before one of the Cal students was “thrown to the ground, arrested and taken to UCPD for questioning.”
The University of San Francisco student was also arrested. Both students were cited and released, but neither student was advised of their rights during their arrests, the union alleged.
In a subsequent incident in June 2019, campus police were arrested two black boys -children of Cal-Berkeley students – aAfter they called the police to report that a stranger was taking pictures of them.
In a demand letter sent to the institution, a coalition of student groups alleged that police also used “excessive force against the boys” when they put them in the back of a police car.
Janet Gilmore, a spokeswoman for the school, later admitted that “no further police action was necessary” at the time, despite an 11-year-old boy being handcuffed.
“By continuing to partner with Berkeley PD and fund UCPD, UC Berkeley is playing an active role in this system of abuse,” the letter said.
A protester near Berkeley flees as police officers try to disperse a crowd made up largely of student demonstrators during a protest against police brutality in the US.
The charge to defund campus police echoed similar calls in the city of Berkeley, with the City Council voting in 2020 to cut $9.2 million from the police department’s budget.
In May 2022, the City Council opted to “defund the police,” allocating $5.3 million to public safety programs and reinstating 30 positions within the department.
The push to disband the police came against the backdrop of similar calls in the city as a whole.
In 2020, during the height of the BLM movement and the response to the George Floyd case, the Berkeley City Council voted to cut the police budget by $9.2 million, representing 12 percent of the city’s annual operating budget the Department. Thirty police positions were frozen.
At the time, city departments had to take cost-cutting measures due to pandemic shortages.
Mayor Jesse Arreguín said the department would have commandeered 50 percent of the city’s discretionary fund over the next five years if such action had not been taken.
In May 2022, the City Council opted to “defund the police” after reaching a compromise that allocated $5.3 million to public safety programs.
Several council members also urged the restoration of the thirty frozen positions.
Arreguín, who had previously been a strong supporter of austerity, saw the vote as an “important milestone.”
The decision came against a backdrop of skyrocketing crime rates.
At a meeting in March 2023, interim Police Chief Jen Louis shared that the total number of violent and property crimes in 2022 was “the highest in the past decade.”
“Berkeley continues to have one of the highest property crime rates in our region,” she said at the time.
The number of assaults and injuries was up 1 percent over the past year, with 148 reports reported so far. Reports of stolen vehicles saw the biggest jump: they increased by 12 percent with 293 reports. Meanwhile, the number of thefts, assaults and burglaries fell.
City leaders have claimed that most of the department’s time is consumed by low-level calls, reducing their focus on violent crimes. One suggestion is to shift traffic enforcement away from police, which could also reduce racial disparities in policing.