Tuesday's meeting will be the first with new Council Rules--it's a light agenda, but there's a potentially controversial item on deck.

you simply do not have to preface your statements about this with “but Maduro sucks” whether or not Maduro sucks is entirely beside the point - we invaded another country and grabbed their leader with no justification other than “we wanted to” don’t give them cover on it

The President spoke from his resort.

A New Year's gift from the Oakland Observer, Defendant Sheng Thao's Motion to Suppress oakland-observer.gho...

Another chicken coming to roost for a council, which shares odd 7-score unanimity for anything that benefits Oakland's police. Arrogant disrespect for resident volunteer's empowered with charter duties returning for public comeuppance. An OO exclusive

Police Commission Selection Panel met last week for the 1st time since Council's unprecedented rejection of their appointment slate & voted to submit same slate again. Panelists did not hold back about Council actions/treatment. It's an OO exclusive report

Amid furor over Flock and the national laughingstock Houston Made of Oakland, Council Passed Significant Legislation That Could Affect Revenues, Public Participation and Campaign Finance Practices

Contrary to Council attitudes about public participation, institutionally, the public are viewed as participants in the legislative process, not bothersome nobodies and weird freaks that have to be interpolated as unrepresentative of general views

None of the Brown or Wang/Unger amendments to Flock address the biggest problem-that in state agencies don't have to be honest about what they are looking for, and OPD lacks a process to know. OPD has stated it can't even do comprehensive periodic audits, but only samples.

Not going to spend much time going over video Ken Houston made council goers watch the other day, but there's definitely problems with it that go beyond the lack of credibility of the producer. This interviewee obviously did not understand what they were being asked.

Singer, Grisham and Chan could soon be under Federal investigation. Recall that Singer is also the OPOA's spokesperson and Grisham is a principal in the organization that made the video shown by Ken Houston at Council Tuesday. www.ktvu.com/news/fo...

Council took unprecedented step of rejecting 2 police commission reappointments sent to them by Selection Panel, in an error-riddled process--yday, SP met, members complained about disrespectful treatment, criticized ulterior motives, sent same appointments back to Council/CAO.

Re SFist article on Houston's antics: I did not shoot vid, I don't know who did. Clip was sent to me anon, & I don't think person who sent it to me was person who filmed. I also do not ID as a blogger, was doing the job corporate reporters should be doing

Selection Panel meets tonight to discuss troubled process in re-appts of Commissioners Farmer & Acosta. Irregularities begin w/President Jenkins contra-charter move to stop reapts to please a small constituency. But City fumbled process, occluded by Council's bizarre actions

The Oakland People's Arms Embargo is rallying at Port Commission HQ today on Water St at JLS, demanding Port use its on paper powers to stop arms shipments to Israel. Organizers say the Port gave itself the power to do this during era of measures against South African apartheid

Gallo was absent because he left the chambers in the company of Mario Juarez, as several witnesses can attest. It's wild to me that this stuff is never in the mainstream record.

My request for date of background check completion for reappointment of Farmer & Acosta was returned w/"does not exist"; City didn't do this mandatory routine act used by charter as trigger for 60 day timeline to accept/reject appts. So, council action on appts is apparently void

Here is the clip of Wang at an ACT Board meeting 1 week ago directing a request she attributes to OPD of allowing OPD to access BRT median station surveillance footage, which captures daily life on the streets of East Oakland, without a warrant, i.e, whenever OPD wants

Unger was one of few CMs that in the security guard issue supported Allied

An hour after supporting OPD's non-credible claim that foregoing an RFP [request for bid] for ALPR is not a big deal, Unger laments pitfalls of not using RFP process in another contract discussion. Here he describes foregoing RFP as council member "vibes" that produce corruption

Here's Houston telling people to "shut up". His claim "if they can come deep, we can come deep too" belied by fact that his group did not come deep to the meeting, there were 36 supporters, an actual verifiable public record of people with strong views, not a promotional video

One of the speakers from the recalls-linked media maker that Houston used for his 8 minute presentation. The videographer coaches him at the end to thank the City Council and he does so.

Flock was passed with 7 of 8 cms, amendments were added at the last minute, impossible to gauge. Legislation requires OPD open new bid process, but Fife failed to hold contract to less than 3 years, sole nay

Flock returns today at a 1pm meeting specially scheduled last Tuesday. A special meeting 1pm means that the Flock contract could get passed by the time most working people start their commute home, 5pm consent restrictions don't apply

New: Coalition for Police Accountability sent a letter to City, notifying Council's decision on Police Commissioners Farmer & Acosta was improperly conducted: lacked required processes, must go straight to council, not CAO, for 60 day deadline. & overall should thus be nullified

Despite having many controversial items on both non and consent for Tuesday, City Council has added Flock, which took 3 hours to adjudicate in committee. Leaving no time for issues like a tax break for big corporations costing $1.5-3 MM to be discussed

Council putting the cluster back in clusterF$%#, with a last minute addition of Flock to an agenda so chockful of controversial items that some won't even be discussed--like a tax break for the biggest corps seeking to establish in Oakland, among others

A response to my query finally did come shortly after I published this tweet. OPD Media says the MOUs between Flock, CHP and OPD "ended at the end of March"--but that doesn't seem accurate either. The CHP one ends in 2027, and the Flock MOU has no end date

Got the CHP Flock contract, no thanks to OPD. CHP's contract was 1 yr, with two 1 yr extensions. 1 year ended in March '25, so it's obviously been on 1 year extension. The contract allows for another year, to 3/27. OPD misled Rules, which granted urgency under false pretenses.

Looks like the substitute judge granted the dismissal--after the presiding judge had already opined he thought the case should go before a jury. What a low point for ALCO. You have corporate media to thank for Jones Dickson's relative comfort in doing this.

Tuesday Council was converted into a special mtg to accommodate a) a non-bid renewal of ABC security contract, that's 3 years of no-bid renewals b) rules of procedure to would curtail public access c) massive police surveillance expansion w/Flock. And 35 items on consent

The Jenkins/Ramachandran's changes to campaign finance, which the Public Ethics Committee largely found to be open to abuse and contrary to idea of diminishing power of wealthy donors, are also on Consent Tuesday. The over-stuffed agenda perversely rewards them

You literally can't make up how irresponsibly Rules Committee have acted on the last council mtg. In addition to expanded surveillance, there's also this ballot measure for a tax break for big biz that will cost the city at least $1.6 MM, & up to $3 MM, per year, on non-consent!

ALCO DA Jones Dickson's extremely political attempts to drop case on the police killer of Stephen Taylor were corrupt and self-serving, but they didn't reach level of repugnant and contemptible until she sent this press release full of distortions & omissions a few minutes ago

An obvious question here. If Flock is so important to reducing crime, there must have been a crime increase during the shut off period, no? But instead the attitude when these get shut off is always "welp" not, "oh no, our biggest crime fighting tool"

These are three versions of the same presentation and its up to the public to guess ahead of the one meeting where there will be a final decision to make sense of them. There's absolutely no reason to schedule this directly to Council, it's so clearly not ready even after OPD had a year to prepare

In keeping with their on-record disdain for residents who care enough about Oakland to attend a council meeting and contempt for their own committee oversight function, Ramachandran, Jenkins & Brown introduced an item w/14 attachments the public now has 1.5 business days to vet

DA Jones Dickson may have patched together a presser today at the last minute, because over 1400 residents of ALCO sent letters to the DA's office and the court objecting to her corrupt practices on the Fletcher trial.

I asked OPD yesterday for meaning & evidence behind Beckman's on the record claim the "Flock contract has expired". OPD has an MOU with CHP and with Flock, which executed the contract with Flock. But the MOUs are open-ended. It's unclear to me when end date for CHP contract is

One thing I will never get over is how clearly batshit, baity and nonsensical Juarez's texts are IN THE AFFIDAVIT. It only took a year for journalists to get there, and only with the shield of the Duong/Thao motion. oaklandside.org/2025/12/11/t...

One theory about why Brown voted against Flock during PSC deliberation given that she quite clearly supports it, is that Houston gave away the game that night by implying they'd already discussed the outcome. If so, he's a serial blabbermouth, and did it again today.

CM Houston accidentally thanked CM Kevin Jenkins this morning for his work in returning the Flock camera item too the last minute meeting after it was voted down at Committee, embarrassing Jenkins who tried to assure the public he had no role in it.

Family of Stephen Taylor filed amicus brief opposing ALCO DA's bizarre attempts to dismiss charges against cop who killed Taylor. Attorney Lee Merritt points out probable cause already established; decision not entirely up to DA; must be factually based oakland-observer.gho...

Today at Rules, the OPD brought back Flock with no changes to reflect criticism at Public Safety. Only Fife objected to both process and vendor; Brown, who voted against forwarding at PSC, was silent except for yay vote to schedule.

This was to the point that the ACT board members present had to remind the CMs that is is in fact good when nobody dies crossing the street

Letter from Addie Kitchen to court opposing dismissal of Taylor case. Kitchen asserts grounds for dismissal have been disproven & she as victim's rep got no meaningful chance to weigh in. Jones Dickson waited for judge who said it should go to trial to go on vacay to bring motion

Great timing by OPD, as Richmond Police turn off their Flock camera because it was sharing data without their knowledge with other agencies due to an "error". richmondstandard.com/community/20...

The family of Stephen Taylor, led by Addie Kitchen, his grandmother, have filed a letter with the ALCO Superior Court urging action in the interests of justice in the case as the DA moves to dismiss the case.

The OPD has asked for a new Flock contract item to be scheduled directly to Council on 12/16, on tomorrow's scheduling agenda at Rules. At Rules, it needs a vote of 3 to schedule it to 12/16. Brown, Fife, who voted against sending it to full council, are on Rules, so we'll see

For the record, I was the only one who publicly expressed concern that the cams, which would be one of the largest surveillance nets in California over ten miles of median stations, would one day be in the hands of OPD. Looks like Wang is making it a priority to get that.