07 Jul Richmond Says Grand Jury Report on Police Staffing ‘Lacks Critical Context’

A Civil Grand Jury report criticizing Richmond’s handling of police staffing “lacks critical context about recent Richmond history, overlooks key data, and fails to consider the structural issues that have shaped public safety policy,” said council member Claudia Jimenez. (Screenshot captured by Samantha Kennedy / The CC Pulse)

By Samantha Kennedy

A years-old decision still hangs over the heads of Richmond City Council members. Police Chief Bisa French said it left officers in 2021 wondering “if they were going to have a job.” And, in 2023 and 2024, two separate reports called for more police staffing. Now, a Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury report says the city failed to properly address just that, but some council members say it lacks important context.

Council members at the July 1 meeting approved its response to the April report in a 6-1 vote, with some members having problems with what answers were provided. The response, which is legally required under state law, has separate responses from French and the council. Only council member Sue Wilson voted against the response.

The report says that the Police Department has experienced problems with retention and attracting new officers since council members in 2021 voted to move $3 million from RPD to alternative non-police services.

Mayor Eduardo Martinez and council member Claudia Jimenez, who helped carry that reallocation in 2021 as council members, pushed back against that claim by the Civil Grand Jury.

“This decision didn’t decrease the amount of bodies in the Police Department. It took 12 to 14 long vacant positions that the department had not filled for years due to the same thing we are doing here: (discussing) ongoing recruitment and retention challenges,” Jimenez said. “The report lacks critical context about recent Richmond history, overlooks key data, and fails to consider the structural issues that have shaped public safety policy.”

Jimenez and Martinez, alongside former council members Gayle McLaughlin and Melvin Willis, faced some criticism for their push as a then-Richmond Progressive Alliance council majority to make the reallocation. Much of it, the group has said, was from then-Mayor Tom Butt and the Richmond Police Officers Association, their union.

Martinez said it seemed that the report also “might be part of RPOA’s tactics.”

“Already you hear the police union using this as leverage in their negotiations,” he continued.

The reallocation, which was initially a $10.3 million recommendation the RPA-majority backed, was “defunding, absolutely,” Benjamin Therriault, RPOA president, said. French also referred to the reallocation as defunding earlier this year, though proponents of the reallocation disagree with that framing.

“This was not about defunding the police. It was about investing in the right tools for the right situations,” said Jimenez.

Council members Jamelia Brown and Soheila Bana also pushed back against some of the responses by the city, saying they wanted their own perspective on the issue to be represented.

“I’ve been hearing so many different sides to the story,” said Brown. “It does seem that the reallocation of $3 million was a decision that triggered a lot.”

In addition to the written responses from the council and French, the council also voted to send a link to the meeting to ensure all perspectives were represented.

French said that, after the reallocation, the traffic enforcement and gang units, alongside others, had been eliminated.

“Units were eliminated. Burnout. I even heard you all had sleep trailers now since that time,” Brown said, referring to department operations after the 2021 reallocation.

Council hoping to expedite $1 million in immigrant legal services

After receiving only one proposal to oversee the $1 million budgeted for immigrant legal support, council members are hoping to expedite the process by having the city manager negotiate a deal over the recess.

Council members unanimously approved giving City Manager Shasa Curl or a designee to contract with a partner that will distribute the funds to a nonprofit yet-to-be-named who will provide legal services to the community. Council is on recess until August and won’t be holding any meetings.

The $1 million was allocated at the beginning of March in an effort to give immigrant residents, especially those who are undocumented, the resources to protect themselves from President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

“I want to affirm that we need to have proactive legal services and not simply deportation defense services,” said Marisol Cantu. “We should not be waiting for our immigrants to be in the most crisis to seek a pathway to citizenship and being legal in this country.”

The allocation came only a couple of months before immigration raids in California conducted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement prompted protests in Los Angeles. Raids in the Bay Area, including those at immigration courts in San Francisco and Concord, brought similar protests to the region.

Trump responded to protests in L.A., which were largely peaceful, according to reports, by deploying the California National Guard to the area, resulting in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s authority to do so.

But while council members and several in the community have noted the urgency of providing services to immigrants since the beginning of Trump’s second term, only one firm responded to the city’s request for help.

The firm, which was out-of-state and lacked local ties and experience, did not meet the city’s criteria to be a fiscal sponsor, Curl said in a report.

The city first sent out a two-week long request at the end of March with no responses. Staff reworked the request, according to Curl, and reissued the request in May, which garnered the response from that firm.

Since then, Curl said there has been staff-initiated outreach to a regional immigrant service provider to explore potential partnership opportunities.