To the UC Berkeley Community;
In the Fall of 2019, UCPD Berkeley entered into an agreement with the UC Department of Justice (DOJ), Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to assist UCPD Berkeley by auditing and assessing our community engagement programs. The COPS office offered the help of their Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center program (CRI-TAC) which provides critical and tailored technical assistance resources to state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies on a wide variety of topics CRI-TAC delivering individualized technical assistance using leading experts in a range of public safety, crime reduction, and community policing topics. CRI-TAC is a public service provided by the DOJ and offered at no-cost to any agency engaging in their services.
CRI-TAC assigned Noel March to work with UCPD and the campus community on our request. Noel is a member of the Justice Studies faculty at the University of Maine and serves as Director of the Maine Community Policing Institute at the University of Maine at Augusta. The UCPD Berkeley team had their kick-off meeting with meet with Noel in March 2020. Over the course of two years, Noel met with members of UCPD Berkeley, campus leaders, members of the Independent Advisory Board (IAB) and other campus entities as he gathered information for the CRI-TAC review. UCPD Berkeley provided Noel access to all requested policies, training records and other identified documents.
At the conclusion of the CRI-TAC engagement, the final CRI-TAC review and subsequent recommendations were provided to UCPD Berkeley and Vice Chancellor, Administration, Marc Fisher. The report can be found here. There is work to be done and UCPD Berkeley has since engaged with Noel to begin implementation of next steps.
UCPD Berkeley appreciates the dedication of the CRI-TAC program, the input given from a variety of campus members and the resulting report.
Regards,
Chief Margo Bennett