On February 24 2016, the ASUC (UC Berkeley undergraduate student government) unanimously passed a resolution asking for campus police to be banned from participating in Urban Shield, the annual police militarization expo. The graduate student government body is expected to follow suit.
The student government resolution follows a proposal reviewed by the City of Berkeley’s Police Review Commission and the Berkeley City Council for a moratorium on participation from municipal police in Urban Shield until issues of police militarization and racial profiling are examined. The PRC narrowly rejected the proposal by one vote and the City Council followed suit in March.
The Stop Urban Shield Coalition, which includes Critical Resistance, AROC, BAJI, the War Resisters League and the American Friends Service Committee, has worked with community groups including Code Pink, Oakland Privacy Working Group and Media Alliance to surface the Urban Shield issue and confront local Bay Area governments about the participation of their police forces in Urban Shield.
Demonstrations have been held in Oakland for several years while the war games exercises were occurring across the Bay Area, and t-shirts and videos culled from the event have been shown to city governments including Oakland’s City Council, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and the Berkeley City Council.