BUZZ
University says it needs more money, Newsom administration says that wasn’t the deal
The University of California Berkeley’s “police misconduct” database may soon be handcuffed by a lack of state funding.
The Police Records Access Project started off with a bang in 2023, compiling police misconduct records from across the state stretching as far back as 1965.
But since then, it has limped along, with no further updates since September 2024. The slow progress likely won’t be helped by an update an executive branch leader gave The Center Square.
“It is our understanding that assistance was needed initially to create the system, but that ongoing costs estimated at about $1.5 million annually would be covered without state funds,” Erika Li, with the Department of Finance, told the news outlet.
The director of the UC Berkeley project says she needs funding from the legislature. Lisa Pickoff-White has also said she has faced delays adding new records because local police departments have stonewalled her requests.
“Whether we receive more funding is up to the Legislature and other funders,” Pickoff-White told Center Square. “Further funding would allow us to release more records, and to continue to gather the records, and to continue to make improvements and release more information.”
Others questioned why the attorney general’s office did not just host the database itself.
The Center Square reported:
“Why have Berkeley be the middle person?” asked Chris Burbank, a former police chief who now consults for law enforcement agencies across the country. “I’m a little dumbfounded. I can’t figure out why they’d want to do it this way… There just seems to be a better way to do it.”
Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, referred to the police transparency portal as a good idea that should have been run through the government itself. He criticized Newsom for funding UC Berkeley instead of setting up the transparency portal through the California Attorney General’s Office.
DeMaio told the Center Square the portal is “good idea” with “bad implementation.”
“Newsom and (California Attorney General Rob Bonta) have all the time in the world and all the lawyers in the world to go after local government on certain topics, but not on this one,” DeMaio asked. “This is politics. It’s not about transparency.”
Pickoff-White, the police database director, has previously lamented the lack of transparency by police departments.
Center Square says the university has also not been forthright with public records.
“According to Andrea Lampros, a spokesperson for the school, the only person authorized to answer those questions was busy with finals and is now unavailable because he is going on sabbatical,” the news outlet reported. “Last week, the school said it would not be able to release public records related to state funding for approximately 10 weeks.”
