Statement of Solidarity for Ginale Harris
We are outraged and disappointed over the many ways Ginale Harris has been treated in her volunteer role as a police commissioner, but most recently by the Police Commission Selection Panel in their decision to not reappoint her. Ginale Harris, from the beginning of her time on this commission, has been relentless in her pursuit of truth, transparency, and accountability. She now has been punished for it, setting a dangerous precedent for the exclusion of impacted communities to serve on the police commission which purports to be the nation’s leader on Independent Police Oversight.
Ginale’s voice, as a Black/Latina mother and grandmother from the communities most impacted by police terror, and with 25 years working as an advocate for those incarcerated and on probation, is EXACTLY the perspective this commission needs to engage in true independent oversight. To begin to list the ways she brought so many things to light that other commissioners couldn’t see without her help would take pages and pages.
From the beginning, Ginale suffered attacks, investigations, hostility, and retaliation. People signing up to work on this “Independent” Commission and the voters should be aware of the obstacles for those that speak “Truth over Peace” as Ginale says.
Ginale was forced to “reapply” for her seat to the selection committee, despite being elected three times as vice-chair over 2 years. We are outraged that the selection panel did not reappoint her, not even letting her get to the final round. Three of the seven seats on the commission are mayoral appointees, and they do not have to go through an application process. They can stay in the seat at the mayor’s discretion with no transparency or accountability to the people.
Four of the seven seats are appointed by the Selection panel who should have simply reappointed Ginale. But, as we’ve seen from the beginning of the selection panel process, there have been some serious concerns with several panel members, affiliated with Coalition for Police Accountability, whose white leaders have long been documented as demonizing Ginale, among other Black women leaders in the city of Oakland, whom they disagree with.
The Coalition for Police Accountability led the campaign to create the police commission and since that time has behaved as though the commission belongs to them, rather than the community, and the workings of the commission are under their purview. This has been allowed by many members of the commission themselves, some city council members, and encouraged by the Schaaf administration. Any attempt to insert additional voices from Oakland - and particularly impacted Oaklanders of color - has been met with obstinance and hostility. CPA has had several of its white leaders called out for unprincipled and problematic behavior over the past four years (several of whom serve on the selection panel.) Overall, we have observed multiple examples from these white leaders of:
Anti Blackness/Mischaracterization of Black-Led groups (who disagree with CPA)
Exclusionary Organizing (making decisions about who can and cannot sit at the table)
Erasure of Black leadership in the community that may be seen as “competing”
Gossip
Stealing of ideas and claiming as their own
Dishonesty
Unwillingness to engage in accountability when called in for these issues
And now, we’ve witnessed another Black woman impacted by a campaign from CPA, led by Rashidah Grinage (who has been on record at selection panel meetings bad-mouthing Ginale for nearly 2 years.) Now, a critical representative and independent voice, free from politics will be gone from this commission.
Ginale’s track record is powerful and inspiring … if you are willing to hear hard truths about City Hall, the inner-workings of OPD and the challenges faced by the Police Commission. Often, Ginale would speak truths that too many people wanted to sweep under the rug, focusing on the optics of the Commission instead of the messy work needing to be illuminated and called out.
In retaliation for her truth, we’ve seen false narratives put out by the former City Administrator (who spent $50,000 tax dollars on an investigation that proved nothing), the former Chief of Police (who hired racist PR consultant Sam Singer to smear her name) and the mayor’s office (who leaked reports on Ginale to the Chronicle causing great harm to her.)
The loss of her on this commission is great. Ginale’s legacy as a commissioner is as one who brought transparency to deficient leadership of the Oakland Police Department (leading to the termination of Chief Kirkpatrick), and in CPRA (leading to termination of Anthony Finnel), fought for and won individual contracts to allow the Commission to do its own work AND for independent investigators for cases that the OPD, CPRB/A, and City Hall have long swept under the rug, like the Bey and Bandabalia cases. Ginale worked tirelessly on ad hoc committees and hundreds of projects under the Commission’s purview, demanding accountability from her fellow commissioners, OPD, City Hall and community.
We demand that the members of CPA resign from the selection panel, as they have now in several instances excluded independent Black women who are not aligned with CPA, despite being highly qualified and respected, from participating on the commission.
We demand that the selection panel release it’s rubrics and notes during the interview process to bring transparency to the process that eliminated Commissioner Harris.