April 27, 2021

President Michael V. Drake
Office of the President
University of California
1111 Franklin St., 12th Floor
Oakland, CA 94607

Delivered via Email to: president@ucop.edu

Dear President Drake,

The Council of UC Faculty Associations (CUCFA) objects to the UC Systemwide Administration’s proposed revisions to the Universitywide Police Policies and Administrative Procedures. The regressive content of the proposed changes, the undemocratic and opaque processes through which they have emerged, and the administrative hypocrisy around racial justice they reveal are unacceptable.

As the Riverside Faculty Association (RFA) has laid out, each of the four proposed revisions is troubling. The Use of Force policy minimally conforms to statewide legislation that bans carotid holds but does not otherwise address police violence. The Body Worn Video Camera policy legitimizes numerous discretionary opt-outs that protect the police use of force and not those who are its targets. The proposed change to the Concealed Carry Weapons policy presumes that only a heavily armed police force, including its retirees, can ensure public safety. Most disturbing of all is the Systemwide Response Teams policy, which serves to further militarize our campuses and communities through a UC-version of the National Guard authorized to deploy military-grade weaponry and tactics in the name of “riot control.”

In this moment of unparalleled reckoning with white supremacy and police violence in this country, we must reject reforms that expand rather than contract institutions of policing on our campuses. We follow UC students, faculty, and other workers who have already organized and spoken on these issues. The University of California Student Association issued a statement calling for the UC Police Department to be “disarmed and dismantled.” The UC Academic Council, representing the academic senates of all ten UC campuses, approved a set of recommendations that included “substantially” defunding the UCPD, banning UCPD officers from carrying firearms, and dissolving any partnerships with non-UC law enforcement agencies. AFSCME 3299 has called for the dismantlement and dissolution of the University of California Police Department, and an end to all University contracts with local police agencies in their Resolution on Police and University Policing.

Given such widespread consensus for disarming, defunding, and dismantling UCPD, we have to ask: Whose interests are UCOP trying to protect in asking for “revisions” of its policing policies that expand and further militarize its functions? What does it say about campus leadership that it would put forward such a document now? Freedom and safety for all instead come from equality and empowerment. UC and nationwide campaigns call for debt-free and tuition-free higher education, food security, access to housing, and fair wages for all, including student workers.

The campus community demands a deliberative process to implement these changes, alongside practical models of safety and community-based care already well-established and well-known. Crucially this process must include those most harmed by current police policies. We ask that UCOP rescind the deadline for comments on the proposed revisions as a necessary step to fostering rather than obstructing the urgent collective reimagining of public safety called for by thousands of UC faculty, staff, students, surrounding communities, and even UCOP and the Regents.

Sincerely,

Constance Penley,
President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
and Professor of Film and Media Studies, UCSB

Wendy Matsumura
Vice President, Council of UC Faculty Associations
and Associate Professor of History, UCSD

cc: UC Chancellors
Regent’s Chair John Pérez