Current Campaigns and Policy Initiatives
Current Campaigns and Policy Initiatives
Current #1 Issue: Raise Awareness of the LBPD's use of military equipment and improve the LBPD policy on such equipment that must be approved by the city council in 2022 to comply with Assembly Bill 481. This Beachcomber article we assisted in has already forced the LBPD to redraft their original policy before it can be submitted to the city council for approval.
The LBPD has created a webpage where the public can review the draft policy and make comments.
Ban (Or Atleast Regulate) the LBPD’s Use of Facial Recognition Technology
UPDATE: The Long Beach Equity Commission has recommended a ban on police use of facial recognition and is working on final language to send to the city council.
In our report on the LBPD’s Facial Recognition Technology, we discussed the many reasons for banning this flawed and racially-biased police technology. The technology has been shown to make false-positive matches at higher rates for women and racial minorities in research by federal laboratories, the FBI, M.I.T, Stanford, and Georgetown Law School. The two false arrests based on facial recognition uncovered in 2020 were both of Black men.
Even if facial recognition worked perfectly, the technology replicates past over-policing of communities of color by relying on historic mugshot pools to make a disproportionate amount of new arrests. When misused or used without properly documenting its use, this technology can create violations of the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments—as well as creating issues related to required Brady disclosures to defense counsel in criminal cases. The technology is also changing privacy as we know it, ending the ability to exist anonymously in public, and repeating past patterns of racially-biased policing, only with a technological veneer of neutrality.
The LBPD’s secretive, decades-long use of this technology (including unsupervised use of two problematic private databases) shows the LBPD cannot be trusted to self-regulate. After CheckLBPD questioned the LBPD about these programs, the LBPD issued a Watch Report limiting the use of the facial recognition private databases, but more needs to be done.
A recording of a training session conducted by Vigilant Solutions (that took place after we began our investigation and addressed issues related to our records requests) contained a statement that the company was working with the department on a potential LBPD Special Order on facial recognition. CheckLBPD finds this as inappropriate as oil companies drafting clean air regulations or Monsanto drafting regulations on pesticide use.
The City Council should take up this issue—as elected representatives have done in cities across California and the nation. The LBPD has shown it can not be trusted to self-regulate, and Long Beach certainly should not be leaving the regulation of facial recognition technology in the hands of the companies that make the technology.
Reform the LBPD's Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) Policy
UPDATE: After receiving a demand letter threatening a lawsuit from the ACLU based on CheckLBPD's research, the City agreed to stop all out-of-state ALPR data sharing. Additionally, the Long Beach Equity Commission has recommended a ban on police use of ALPR.
Reform the LBPD's ALPR policy and find a new ALPR vendor for the city—one who does not also service ICE under a $6.1 million dollar contract. The LBPD's ALPR policy and training are in serious need of improvement. That was first shown this summer by the department wrongly-flagging two innocent protestors' cars as wanted in connection with felony burglary in a shared ALPR database leading to them being traumatically detained at gunpoint as their cars were impounded. The department never apologized, though they did compensate the victims for their impound fees.
It was in a sidebar to that Aug. 8, 2020 Beachcomber article that the LBPD was first warned about data sharing with ICE being a California Values Act Violation, though at the time the most recent LBPD data sharing was from January 2020. That report showed ICE-related agencies and known-ICE-backchannels for ALPR information were receiving LBPD information, but not ICE itself would not start receiving data until February 2020. A data-sharing report requested for that article as a public record was received later in the year and revealed the ICE data sharing.
You can read about the LBPD-ICE data sharing in the FORTHE, the LA Times, and the LB Post. The LBPD's current excuse is that a contractor, in error, accidentally added ICE while adding hundreds of data-sharing partners to the LBPD's Vigilant Solutions' LEARN database. There are at least two major problems with the excuse. A LEARN manager's report produced by the LBPD as a PRA response shows only two people have managerial/administrative access to LEARN and they both appear to be LBPD officers. Also, the LBPD's LEARN data sharing list actually shrunk in the 10-month period ICE was added. There were not hundreds of additions happening as the LBPD claims. Unless the LBPD was horribly neglecting this system which they use daily, it seems most likely that ICE was accepted individually and by an LBPD officer.
The LBPD's repeated misuse of their ALPR systems shows the LBPD is not currently capable of managing its own technology use. The department is still sharing data with known ICE-cooperators and their ALPR policy does not meet the requirements of Senate Bill 34. If the city is going to continue to allow the police to use high-tech surveillance technology, it needs to put in safeguards to make sure the police misuse of ALPR technology is finally stopped. Lives were put at risk and families have likely been broken up because of the LBPD's irresponsible use of ALPR technology.
Ban or Regulate the LBPD’s Use of Thermal Cameras
Currently, the LBPD owns two aircraft and one truck equipped with Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) cameras capable of picking up heat signatures through walls. Other departments that use FLIR cameras have policies in place to ensure their use does not violate the 4th Amendment. Long Beach should either get rid of its cameras or adopt a policy to ensure that police use of the technology is in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. The Oakland City Council recently passed an ordinance that could serve as a model.
Enact a Surveillance Equipment Transparency Ordinance
UPDATE: The Long Beach Equity Commission has recommended a Surveillance Equipment Transparency Ordinance, although it was the only one of their recommendations to get push back due to fear of it legitimizing police surveillance technology.
The entire state of California almost got a Surveillance Equipment Transparency Ordinance under Senate Bill 21, which stalled in 2017. Had it passed, it would have required a public approval process for all local surveillance purchases and biennial transparency reports covering the cost, use, and effectiveness of the technology.
There is no reason to wait for the state to pass a version—more than ten cities have recently passed their own local Surveillance Equipment Transparency Ordinances, including San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Davis, and Palo Alto, along with Bay Area Rapid Transit and the entire county of Santa Clara.
One danger of Surveillance Transparency Ordinances, pointed out by Hamid Kahn of Stop LAPD Spying, is that they can serve to legitimize and lock-in police use of surveillance equipment. Kahn is pushing for the destruction of state surveillance, not its regulation.
That is a noble effort, and his concerns are legitimate. However, as the LBPD has been using such a variety of advanced surveillance technologies for over the last decade—without transparency or oversight, CheckLBPD feels the risk of regulation is outweighed by the reward. We also have to acknowledge that it is unlikely that the City Council would ever vote for a comprehensive ban on police surveillance—transparency might be the most the people of Long Beach can hope to achieve.
Transparency is desperately needed in Long Beach, and a Surveillance Equipment Transparency Ordinance might be our best shot at achieving it. Any ordinance that is passed should be designed to protect the people—not serve as window dressing for the continued unchecked expansion of LBPD surveillance. The vendors of such technology should not have a role in drafting the policy, as it appears the LBPD may have allowed to happen with its facial recognition policy.
Worthy Templates: ACLU Model Ordinance, City of Oakland Ordinance, Palo Alto Ordinance, San Francisco Ordinance, Berkeley Ordinance
Re-Open the TigerText Investigation
CheckLBPD's preliminary findings indicate there was improper use of the TigerText disappearing messaging system and that the independent review by Best, Best, and Krieger was incomplete. Our investigation certainly raises some questions that were not asked by BB&K, let alone answered by the LBPD. You can read more about what we found in a preliminary report in the investigations section of this site or examine the data yourself on our TigerText metadata dashboard.
Reform LBPD Vehicular Chase Policy and Training
There have been way too many deaths and injuries of humans and canines caused by out-of-control LBPD police chases through city streets. In this day and age, where the city has a network of cameras and automated license plate readers blanketing the city, there is no reason the pursuit of non-violent criminals should cause so many innocent deaths in Long Beach.
Police had arrested Javier Olivarez Jr. 20 times in the past; there was no reason for Jessica Bingaman and the five dogs she was caring for to die during his 21st arrest in 2019. And yet she did, no policy or training changes were made, and it happened again the next May, complete with both human and canine fatality.
Jyvante West was one of six suspected burglars of a cannabis business. With his five compatriots in custody at the scene, for some reason, the LBPD pursued West at high speeds through city streets, causing the death of Jose Hernandez and the dog he was walking.
Innocent lives should not be lost during high-speed chases of petty criminals who can easily be found the next day with 20 minutes of detective work. It certainly should not be a yearly occurrence.
These two recent cases are not isolated incidents—according to CHP data, 37% of LBPD pursuits from 2016 to 2018 have ended in a crash. 37%!!!
Bring Long Beach into Compliance with Senate Bill 272
UPDATE: After CheckLBPD sent the City a letter about their non-compliance with SB 272 the City began including police systems and databases on their Enterprise Systems List.
Senate Bill 272 requires public agencies to disclose all enterprise systems in use, with some limited exceptions. The bill defines an enterprise system as “a software application or computer system that collects, stores, exchanges, and analyzes information that the agency uses that is both of the following: (A) A multi-departmental system or a system that contains information collected about the public. (B) A system of record. (2) “System of record” means a system that serves as an original source of data within an agency.”
The law furthers the purpose of Section 3 of Article I of the California Constitution by assisting the citizens in exercising their right of public access to the meetings of local public bodies and the writings of local public officials and local agencies.
Our investigation shows Long Beach’s SB 272 compliance leaves a lot to be desired. While other cities and counties have extensive multi-page lists covering all their agencies and departments, Long Beach has a single page list that only covers core systems used by city hall.
By way of comparison, Long Beach lists only 20 enterprise systems, and none that are specific to the LBPD. The County of Los Angeles lists almost 400 systems.
The L.A. Sheriff’s Department lists 28 LASD specific systems, many of which are systems the LBPD also uses (including ALPR, the LACRIS facial recognition database, others biometric identification databases, inmate tracking, inmate visitation, CLETS, gang databases, and systems related to video surveillance).
The LBPD was asked for a list of their enterprise systems, as a public records act request. The LBPD replied that they had no responsive records and that “the enterprise system catalog that the city published listed applications used by the majority of the city's departments, including PD.”
However, that answer defies belief. CheckLBPD’s investigations into LBPD surveillance systems found over a dozen LBPD systems that should be on the city’s enterprise systems list. And the number should probably be closer to the 28 listed by the LASD.
Long Beach is missing other obvious enterprise systems—knowledge of which would be helpful to journalists, activists, and researchers. The Long Beach Department of Health does not list a single enterprise system, not even epidemiological data, while the Los Angeles Department of Health lists 29 systems. L.A.County also considers campaign finance databases to be enterprise systems, while Long Beach does not.
While SB 272 non-compliance is a relatively minor violation, with no enforcement mechanism unless someone initiates a lawsuit using their standing as a taxpayer, it is part of a pattern of lack of transparency. A pattern that makes it harder for citizens of Long Beach to hold their government accountable. CheckLBPD had to issue dozens of PRA requests to find out all the surveillance systems the LBPD has in place, when many of those systems should have been publicly disclosed under SB 272.
And More to Come
Contact us with suggestions or to help out: Greg@CheckLBPD.org (encrypted on our end with protonmail)
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