Antioch City Councilmemeber Mike Barbanica warned the community that if they keep attacking the Antioch Police Department that officers will not apply and others will leave.
The comments came after Antioch Police Chief Brian Addington introduced four new officers Tuesday night during the Antioch City Councilmeeting. He introduced Officers Church, Jones, Lorono and Serna, who all graduated from Alameda County Sheriff’s Office Regional Training Center.
Preparing to go take a photograph with the new hires, Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe, who appeared a bit stunned, questioned whether they actually had public comments under new employees.
Several people then spoke (paraphrased public comments):
- Frank Sterling: “I am a public critic of the racist violent police I don’t want” who shared his version of survival against Antioch Police calling himself a “survivor”. He told the officers if they see racism, violence, to speak out.
- Leslie May: claimed she knew one of them was a “good guy” because he is a brother of one of her friends—but would not label them all “as bad” and they would change the culture of the police department. She said she would give them all the benefit of the doubt. She encouraged the new officers to “not let these bad apples spoil you”.
- Katheryn Wade: urged the officers to stand by their oath. She said she wanted to feel like she could trust the new officers and not get with the “old officers” and get the training under their command and harm people. She urged them to combat crime, not create crime.
- Sarah: urged the officers to remember why they came into policing and if they are asked or required to do something in the shadow or open that is consistent with historical racism and violence that they have seen, they will take a step back and look for other work.
- Rosalva: spoke directly to the new officers about how a rookie officer assaulted her son and left her scared for life and hoped they had patience and never do that. She urged them to make a difference.
- Unnamed speaker: urged the new officers to stay away from certain officers because there was nothing good they could teach—but to be bad. She urged them to be honorable and not have hate in their hearts as officers.
After public comments, councilmember Tamisha Torres-Walker welcomed the new officers but then proceeded to tell the community each of the new officers their badge numbers and were hired to do “non-biased policing”.
General Public Comments:
- Leslie May – brought up a new lawsuit filed against Pittsburg Police and Chief Brian Addington for an incident that occurred two-years ago. She then stated she had no confidence in Chief Addington. “You have disgusted me, you lied to me and I trusted you. You need to step down. You have no business whatsoever being over this city.” She called him “not even human, to me, you are an animal”.
- Katheryn Wade – she also referenced the news article on the federal lawsuit, and seems like nothing changed and referenced false police reports. She said she didn’t see Antioch moving forward.
- Nicole Harrington – addressed Addington and how he brought back officers and now there is a lawsuit in Pittsburg. She said he can’t be trusted. Said every police officer she talks to says, “Antioch is a mess”, “Antioch has problems”, “its not cool out there”.
Barbanica responded to Torres-Walker and to several public commenters later in the meeting during council comments.
Here is the statement:
“When we talk about our police department, I believe everybody sitting up here wants a strong police department, wants us to have a workforce that is out there serving this community. That is what residents deserve. However, if we continue to tear down everybody that comes to this city that wants to come here and serve this community, we aren’t going to have any police, that is really what this boils down to.
Let’s talk about lawsuits and how they work, generally speaking, and I am not an attorney, but I’ve been around this since 1985 in public service and I will tell you generally speaking when an officer or a city employee or in private practice as well, is sued, often, that goes up the chain and the person who is running the organization is named. Case point, the mayor and I were having a conversation today, there was a lawsuit that he ended up getting named in. Why? Because he is the mayor. It’s the same thing when you have a police chief. It’s the same thing when you have a CEO of an organization.
So if we continue, every time we make progress to bring somebody in, and we continue to tear those people down and attack them when we do not know the facts, and its only an accusation that was made, where are we headed in this city?
We need to stand behind the folks that are coming here and working to make this is a better community. And, we need to wait and find out the facts before we jump to conclusions. I 100% support our police chief, I’ve known the man since 1994 and I’ve said it before, he is an extremely honorable man, thank you.”
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