We are proud to honor Stop Urban Shield with the Volunteer Townie of the Year Award on June 20. (Join in the celebration!) Through years of organizing resulting in victory, Stop Urban Shield struck a massive blow to police militarization in the Bay Area and beyond. A coalition of grassroots organizations, they successfully ended Urban Shield, a highly militarized policing program and the largest SWAT training in the world run by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.

Timeline of Actions:

2012: Stop Urban Shield begins what will become years of grassroots organizing, legislative pressure, strategic media and communications, direct actions, and popular education to fight back against the police militarization.
2014: The coalition successfully compels the City of Oakland to no longer host the Urban Shield weapons exposition, garnering national attention to the racism and violence of the program.
2016: Stop Urban Shield organizes a massive statewide mobilization and direct action that shut down the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, successfully disrupting the Urban Shield weapons exposition and militarized training exercises taking place.
2018: After building broad community opposition in cities across the Bay Area, Stop Urban Shield successfully moved the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to end Urban Shield.
2019: The County reaffirms its decision to ultimately defund Urban Shield!

While Urban Shiled is over, the fight to hold the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office accountable for actions that harm our communities continues.

Oakland Rising and our partners are calling for an audit of the Sheriff’s department which is responsible for:

more public money going to payouts for civil rights abuses by deputies than any other county in the region;
34 in-custody deaths under Sheriff Ahern’s watch since 2013;
mistreatment and abuse of pregnant women; and
deputies illegally recording privileged conversations between minors and their attorneys.

There’s no denying that police force is a public safety issue as our neighbors are criminalized just for being Black and Brown, young, or low-income. We need an independent audit of Sheriff Ahern’s Department to reveal how he is spending public money, improve transparency and accountability, and redirect resources to benefit our communities rather than abusing our neighbors and locking them up.

Come out to one of our Volunteer Walk Days on June 4, 5 and 11. We’ll train you and team you up to go door-to-door to talk with neighbors about police accountability. Contact [email protected] to learn more.