Tag Archives: Urban Shield

Press Room

Victory Over Military Cop Convention

 

by Ann Garrison. Originally published in Black Agenda Report

“The best-selling t-shirt at the previous year’s expo: a picture of an assault weapon with the caption ‘Black Rifles Matter.’”

On March 27, the San Francisco Bay Area’s Stop Urban Shield Coalition claimed victory in its four-year battle to stop Urban Shield, a war games and weapons convention for cops held in Alameda County every year since 2007. Critical Resistance , one of the most active members of the coalition, wrote on its website:

Urban Shield represents everything our movements are fighting against — from collaborating and training with ICE, hosting the white supremacist militia the Oath Keepers, training with and sending officers to apartheid Israel, glorifying policing and militarization, exploiting tragedies and natural disasters and public health needs, and continuing to align with Alameda County Sheriff Ahern’s support of the Trump Administration — Urban Shield has no place in the Bay Area or anywhere.



I spoke to Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director of Media Alliance and co-facilitator of Oa kland Privacy , a citizen’s coalition that works regionally to defend the right to privacy and enhance public transparency and oversight regarding the use of surveillance techniques and equipment. She has worked with the Stop Urban Shield Coalition since 2014.

Continue reading Victory Over Military Cop Convention →

Press Room

What Exactly is Urban Shield Preparing Law Enforcement For?

Originally published at ktvu.com

By Andre Torres

ALAMEDA COUNTY, Calif. (KTVU) – Tracy Rosenberg jumped up and down holding her protest sign outside the Alameda County Fairgrounds gate in Pleasanton last year. “I was not arrested,” she said.

Rosenberg, executive director at communications advocacy group, Media Alliance, admits to protesting the annual “Urban Shield” law enforcement disaster training event in 2016. This year was her first time actually attending the expo, although she had previously read several accounts from journalists who had documented Urban Shield.

Continue reading What Exactly is Urban Shield Preparing Law Enforcement For? →

Press Room

Right-Wing Extremist Group Had Booth at Urban Shield ‘To Explain Who They Are’

Originally printed in the East Bay Express  9-15-2017

By Jessica Lynn

Right-Wing Extremist Group Had Booth at Urban Shield ‘To Explain Who They Are’

The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Oath Keepers as an extremist anti-government group

 

Continue reading Right-Wing Extremist Group Had Booth at Urban Shield ‘To Explain Who They Are’ →

Accountability and Representation

Stopping STOPS: Urban Shield Vendor Vetoed Due To Racist Stereotyping

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On August 1, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, which has been under fire for several years over the police militarization expo Urban Shield, took its first action to enforce 12 reform principles the Board embraced in January of 2017, four months after two dozen people were arrested at the 2016 expo.

After being notified only hours before the meeting by MA executive director Tracy Rosenberg and American Friends Service Committee Wage Peace Coordinator John Lindsay-Poland of extreme racial stereotyping on the website of Urban Shield vendor Strategic Operations of San Diego, the board of supervisors refused to authorize the use of the vendor. Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern’s request to contract with Strategic Operations for $45,000 in “hyper-realistic training” for the 2017 Urban Shield event failed for lack of a motion, with none of the five supervisors willing to support the request. Supervisor Keith Carson removed the item from the board’s consent calender. Supervisor Richard Valle indicated he would not vote for it and Board President Wilma Chan also spoke in opposition.  Continue reading Stopping STOPS: Urban Shield Vendor Vetoed Due To Racist Stereotyping →

Surveillance

Stop Urban Shield

 

Update: The Berkeley City Council had a lengthy and contentious meeting that ended with arrests. Here is a Media Alliance op-ed and the meeting video is available here if you have six hours to kill.

Oakland law firm Siegel and Yee sent a cure and correct letter after the meeting ended in a police riot, but has yet to initiate litigation.

22Cure-and-Correct22-notice

The upshot is that the City of Berkeley reiterated an “intention” to eventually pull out of Urban Shield, but failed to actually do so. CM Ben Bartlett says he is assembling a blue ribbon commission to address Berkeley’s participation in Urban Shield.

For the latest Power Point presentation about the police militarization exercise prepared by the Alameda County Sheriffs Office, click here. 

On June 20, 2017, the Berkeley City Council will consider (for the 4th time in 2017 and the 6th time in the last two years, whether to pull out of the police militarization expo.

Join us at Longfellow Middle School at 1500 Derby Street in Berkeley to see if history will be made with the first California city getting on the record in opposition to the militarization of local law enforcement.

See below for the Stop Urban Shield Coalition’s report, and videos of Urban Shield exercises and SWAT exercises.

Continue reading Stop Urban Shield →

Accountability and Representation

UC Berkeley ASUC Passes Resolution Campus Police Should Not Participate in Urban Shield

 

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. Continue reading UC Berkeley ASUC Passes Resolution Campus Police Should Not Participate in Urban Shield →