The Advocate

Recent reporting from The Mercury News shows SLPD as a participant in a disturbing trend of contracting with a glorified propaganda firm known as Critical Incident Videos, LLC. Run by former TV news reporters, this company is contracted with over 100 local law enforcement agencies to help them sway public opinion in order to justify excessive use of force, especially lethal instances of police brutality. The hallmark of their work is “a 3-D map of the scene, 911 dispatch tapes and text set up a narrative before viewers see selected bodycam footage … a police chief or sheriff opens the video explaining why the shooting was justified. Often, the chief is reading from a script written by an outside consultant. The edited camera footage may not even show the actual use of force – an effect far different from a raw cellphone or body cam video of a confrontation that leaves watchers wondering, “Why did they have to shoot?” But here’s the truly shocking and shameful part: “Less than three ho

( Credit: Gawker ) The SLPOA distributed a press release recently that was picked-up by several outlets. See https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-leandro-police-union-concerned-about-increase-in-violent-crimes. Let's break this down piece by piece. Where is SLPOA getting their stats from? Accordingly to city officials, such as city council member Benny Lee, SLPOA is getting their stats from https://cityprotect.com. If so, then we need to have an honest conversation about that website. All data it receives is taken from law enforcement's own reporting. It doesn't give aggregate numbers, but a data visualization. So SLPOA's numbers are coming from SLPD directly and not the website. In fact, those numbers are coming from data SLPD hasn't publicly disclosed because they don't match with what SLPD is supposed to report publicly. (See below.) This is concerning because SLPOA is not supposed to be using city resources for their own agenda and SLPD is not supposed to have two