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Police use of force at last year’s Occupy protests led Berkeley officials to question the city’s mutual aid agreements with outside departments.

However, at its meeting Tuesday night, Berkeley City Council approved three of five previously unapproved agreements, including one with UCPD.

The city’s mutual aid pact is a set of agreements between Berkeley and other security and law enforcement agencies that provides outside aid when one agency lacks sufficient resources to address a situation. The pact was last brought to the council’s attention in November for reapproval, which the city’s Municipal Code requires be done annually.

The five agreements that came up at the council’s meeting Tuesday night were carried over from November after the council requested — in response to the controversy surrounding recent protests — they be held for further review.

“We want to engage in mutual aid that respects civil liberties,” said Councilmember Jesse Arreguin. “It sends a message to … people in the community that we will protect public safety.”

Tuesday’s 8-1 vote reaffirmed an operational agreement with UCPD that came under fire following community concern regarding the campus department’s crowd control tactics.

The council also reapproved a standing agreement with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, meaning the city will continue to provide information on civil disobedience to the federal government in the form of suspicious activity reports.

Prior to the council’s vote, members of the Coalition for a Safe Berkeley, the National Lawyers Guild, local representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and community members voiced concern that some of the agreements might jeopardize civil liberties. In fact, all community members who spoke at the meeting expressed opposition to the agreements that passed.

“We need to successfully balance security and liberty,” said Berkeley resident and civil rights attorney Veena Dubal.

The third agreement passed Tuesday specifies BPD crowd control tactics during times of civil unrest, which council members and Berkeley citizens said had become increasingly militarized in the past year.

The council tabled six amendments Arreguin proposed, all of which responded to the concerns brought up at the November meeting and which would have put restrictions on the ability of BPD to aid neighboring police departments during nonviolent protests and limited cooperation with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when illegal immigrants are in city jails.

“Berkeley has an excellent police force that, for (the) most part, protects civil liberties,” Arreguin said. “The problem is when participating with federal intelligence programs, we are being asked to do things that are not in keeping with our own values and policies.”

Arreguin’s amendments were tabled after council members and city officials said they did not have enough time to review the language of the amendments, which they said they had not received until the day of the meeting.

BPD chief Meehan said that he particularly wanted the definition of “civil disobedience” to be fleshed out in Arreguin’s mutual aid amendments.

According to the city manager, the earliest the amendments could be brought back to the council is May.

Councilmember Kriss Worthington, the only vote in opposition to the agreements, said their passage makes the city one of the most conservative in the country.

Prior to the vote, the agreements were technically out of effect, as they had not been approved since April 2010.

Anjuli Sastry covers city government.

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