Some Bay Area cities are starting to take steps towards curbing police use of force.
The Berkeley City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to prohibit the city’s police department from using tear gas.
The issue originally up for a vote was whether the city should ban the use of tear gas during the pandemic. But in light of recent protests calling attention to police brutality, City Council members amended the item and instead voted to ban the use of tear gas permanently.
The move comes as health officials have called particular attention to the use of tear gas during the coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s so little known about COVID-19 but the one thing we know is that it’s a respiratory disease,” says Dr. Rohini Haar, an ER doctor and researcher at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley’s School of Law. “The severe reactions from them are primarily respiratory: that you feel like you can’t breathe, you’re suffocating.”
Health experts have said tear gas may make people more susceptible to developing serious cases of COVID-19 and could make protestors more likely to spread the virus because it induces coughing.
In San Francisco, supervisors formally introduced a proposal that would ban police from using rubber bullets and tear gas against protestors.
“We have not set a clear enough standard and law protecting people and their First Amendment rights,” said Supervisor Matt Haney, who introduced the bill along with Shamann Walton and Hillary Ronan. “Military weapons, chemical sprays, rubber bullets, pepper balls and flexible baton rounds should never be used on peaceful protestors, period.”
10 out of 11 supervisors also voted to reject San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s nominee for the Police Commission, Nancy Tung.
“I do not see a history of fighting for justice reform or fighting for communities of color from this candidate. That is very problematic for me,” said Supervisor Shamann Walton, citing Tung’s past support of police use of tasers.
In a statement, Tung said she is disappointed and believes that some of the Supervisors distorted her record on police reform.
The other candidate, Geoffrey Gordon-Creed withdrew his candidacy before the vote.
“It is imperative that we have people on our Police Commission that understand the need for aggressive police reform and who do not have a history of enabling some of their very behaviors that need to change,” said Walton.