UC Berkeley spent $7.8 million to deploy its personal forces to wall off and safe Individuals’s Park, the storied 2.8-acre inexperienced house that activists seized within the ’60s to function open house for freethinkers.
That multimillion-dollar whole is anticipated to develop considerably as outdoors police businesses submit their payments to the college.
And the price of holding folks out of the park continues to be excessive: The college pays almost $1 million a month to station personal safety guards outdoors the park, 24 hours a day.
The huge dead-of-night operation to clear the park and encompass it with a double-high stack of 160 metal cargo containers was executed in early January, in anticipation of the Berkeley campus being cleared to construct a brand new housing complicated.
Litigation continues to dam the development of 1,100 models of pupil housing, 125 models of supportive housing for homeless folks and a memorial to the park south of the Berkeley campus.
College officers hope that the state Supreme Courtroom will hear a case about the way forward for the park this spring, doubtlessly ruling by summer season whether or not to permit development on the property, first seized and was open house by activists in 1969.
In response to a public data request, Berkeley campus officers revealed Wednesday that they spent $2.85 million to construct the 17-foot-high perimeter across the park. These funds went to pay for the transport containers (at a value of $972,000), for gates, lighting, different gear and supervision ($1.27 million) and for engineering and surveying ($515,000.)
An extra $3.77 million went to pay, home and feed the law enforcement officials and sheriff’s deputies who cleared and surrounded the park in early January. Practically $1.5 million of that cash went to pay additional time to officers from the College of California Police Division.
The $7.8-million tally additionally consists of $1.16 million that UC spent to maneuver homeless folks from the park to a High quality Inn, the place they obtain meals and different providers.
Nonetheless remaining to be submitted and/or totaled are payments from the California Freeway Patrol, sheriff’s departments for Alameda and San Francisco counties and from 9 different UC and Cal State College police departments. A UC spokesman mentioned “it might take a number of extra months” for these IOUs to reach. It’s anticipated that they may add thousands and thousands of {dollars} to the price of the park clearance.
In a letter accompanying the figures, UC Berkeley spokesman Kyle Gibson defined in an announcement that the extraordinary operation, cloaked in secrecy, was designed to keep away from the type of battle that had prevented the college from growing Individuals’s Park for greater than half a century.
“Our highest priorities for the closure have been security, avoidance/deterrence of battle, and the minimization of disruption for college students and neighboring residents,” the assertion mentioned.
The letter described the “vandalism, violence and different illegal actions” that occurred when the college tried, and failed, to take management of the park in August 2022. That prior expertise “necessitated extraordinary measures, precautions and expenditures” when UC moved in January to safe the park, Gibson’s letter mentioned.
Activists who fought for years to maintain the park mentioned they have been outraged however not shocked on the excessive price of the college’s takeover.
“The recklessness with which UC spends the general public’s cash is well-known to this group,” mentioned Andrea Prichett, a member of the Individuals’s Park Council and Berkeley Copwatch. “Consider different issues that would have been achieved with that cash. It’s a tragic waste.”
Park activists have complained, specifically, that the college disrupted a group of homeless individuals who have been supporting each other on the property, which lies simply steps to the east of Telegraph Avenue.
However college officers insist that the unhoused residents are higher off within the High quality Inn, with meals and providers offered by group teams and faraway from the crime that at instances went unchecked within the park.
Though opponents name the metal barricade a “monstrosity,” college officers mentioned it had helped maintain the park clear — and prepared for development — for the primary time since group members planted flowers and bushes there, in 1969.
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