In November 2020, Berkeley voters approved Measure II with 85% of the vote, replacing the Police Review Commission with the Police Accountability Board (PAB) and Office of the Director of Police Accountability (ODPA) — structures the DOJ had cited as a national model for civilian oversight. Hansel Aguilar was hired as ODPA director in October 2022.
By January 30, 2026, the last two original PAB commissioners — Darren Calavita and Tamara Leftwich — had resigned. In their letter, they wrote: "We have seen firsthand that the PAB has not been permitted to exercise its expanded oversight authority and is even less empowered than its predecessor." The PAB was at 4 of 9 seats with no new commissioner appointments complete. BPD had refused multiple records requests, forcing the ODPA to issue subpoenas. In December 2025, Aguilar sued Police Chief Jen Louis directly to compel records release.
On February 9, 2026, the council voted 8–0 (Kesarwani absent) to fire Aguilar under "without cause" contract terms, triggering mandatory severance. Calavita — one of the two commissioners who had just resigned — was quoted: "It looks very much like some of the leaders here do not want a real oversight body."
Immediately following the vote, two members issued public statements describing their continuing commitment to police accountability — the outcome they had just voted to advance.
The 8–0 vote completed the collapse of the oversight structure Berkeley voters created with 85% approval five years earlier. All original commissioners were gone. The board was at less than half its authorized seats. BPD had been refusing records requests. The director had been forced to sue his own chief for access to files he was legally entitled to. The council's response was to fire him.
The accountability failure here is not the individual vote in isolation — reasonable people can weigh Aguilar's specific performance as director. The accountability failure is that no council member is documented as having proposed any structural alternative: a performance improvement process, a mediated resolution with BPD, a commission reconstitution plan, or any mechanism short of elimination. The structure voters approved was not reformed; it was dismantled from the top while the council issued statements about its commitment to its survival.
Immediately after voting yes, LunaParra issued a statement: "I remain equally committed to Police accountability work in Berkeley, and equally concerned that the City and City Council does not prioritize or value Police accountability." She was the City Council in the moment she cast that vote. Her concern about the City Council's priorities was, at that instant, a description of herself.
Her April 2026 farewell letter claimed she "advocated for the Police Accountability Board's authority and independence" — with no acknowledgment that her most recent concrete action was voting to fire its executive director. The farewell letter treats advocacy and outcome as separable. They are not: a vote to fire the director of the accountability office is an accountability act, not an advocacy act, regardless of what statement accompanies it.
LunaParra won her seat in the special election created by Rigel Robinson's resignation. Robinson was a principal architect of Measure II, the ballot initiative that created the PAB and ODPA that her vote helped dismantle.
After voting yes, Ishii issued a statement that the council "remained committed to police accountability" and was focused on "filling the PAB vacancies, finding a new director and restoring credibility." The council had just voted to create the vacancy at the top of the office it was claiming to restore. The statement describes a future state — a filled board, a new director, restored credibility — as if those were plans rather than the bare minimum required to repair what the vote had just done.
The score here is lower than LunaParra's because Ishii's statement is less internally contradictory: she described what the council intended to do next rather than expressing concern about an outcome she had just caused. But a Mayor's statement after a unanimous vote to fire the accountability director — with no PAB director transition plan in place — is a form of institutional theater regardless of tone.