Another successful lawsuit against the City of Berkeley

On November 30, 2021, Secure Justice sued the City of Berkeley for failing to vet surveillance technology via their surveillance ordinance as required. City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley first unlawfully attempted to declare that exigent circumstances were present based on a single unrelated incident that had occurred months prior, before illegally installing security cameras with pre-installed analytics on them at a city park. Among the many analytics, the Avigilon cameras includes facial recognition, automated license plate readers, object detection, and voice recording. Documents in our possession revealed that the City had licenses for at least some of these analytics, and possibly all of them (due to the constant upgrading of the license).

For unknown reasons, the city first ignored our “right to cure” letter that must precede any lawsuit per the ordinance requirements, which gave Berkeley a free and very generous 90 days to cure the violation - namely, to submit the required impact analysis and proposed use policy through the proper channels for possible adoption and public engagement on potential uses. When Berkeley failed to cure, we sued. It strangely took Berkeley 1.5 years to acknowledge they skipped the steps required by the ordinance. Even more frustrating, of the 8 such vetting frameworks in California, Berkeley’s is the 7th weakest. It’s not difficult to comply with.

Secure Justice recovered 100% of its attorney fees and court costs, totaling $7,586.21. The City of Berkeley used multiple attorneys, staff time, and multiple closed sessions with elected officials and although we don’t know the full amount they spent defending against the action, it is certainly more than the $7,586.21 we spent. The taxpayers should demand answers as to why it took both so long and cost so much when the issue was black and white - prior to installation or use of any surveillance technology, the proposal must go through the steps required by the ordinance before possible approval is given.

We want to acknowledge and thank our wonderful attorney Iustina Mignea for her help bringing this lawsuit.

For more background on the claims themselves and a copy of the lawsuit, see our prior blog post here.