With robberies rebounding citywide to pre-pandemic levels, and officials focusing attention on an apparent rise in the targeting of older women, the City Council is slated to consider reviving a decades-old pedestrian escort program.
The Commission on the Status of Women asked the council to have its Public Safety Policy Committee devise a program “to address the current rising crime against women, particularly older women,” according to a letter from Carole Marasovic, who chairs the commission.
The request is on the consent calendar for Tuesday’s City Council meeting. However the council’s policy committees have been put on hold temporarily as it navigates the unexpected resignations of councilmembers Rigel Robinson and Kate Harrison, so it’s unclear when the committee might take the idea up.
The commission asked for safety escorts similar to a program launched in 2003, in which the city contracted with the Berkeley Boosters Association to provide safety escorts at evening rush hours during the winter months, when commuters often return home after dark. Escorts met commuters at the North Berkeley and Ashby BART stations.
“These escorts should be available throughout the entire community of Berkeley upon request,” according to the letter. The commission also asked the council to consider expanding its rideshare voucher program, Berkeley Rides for Seniors and the Disabled, which it operates through GoGoGrandparent, and to look into whether community ambassadors, such as those who work for the Downtown Berkeley Association, could participate.
The proposal comes as robberies citywide have rebounded to pre-pandemic levels following three years of relatively fewer incidents.
From 2016, the first year police began publishing data, through 2019, the last year before pandemic restrictions emptied out city streets, Berkeley averaged approximately one robbery a day, according to police data. Those numbers fell to 282 in 2020, 271 in 2021 and 285 in 2022 before rebounding to 368 last year. The data available in the department’s Transparency Portal does not specify victims’ ages or genders.
At UC Berkeley, students and university police community service officers run BearWalk, a service that provides safety escorts from dusk until 2:30 a.m. on campus and in several surrounding neighborhoods. Those who want an escort can call 510-642-9255 or book online through the RideCell service.
Councilmembers also cited spiking violent crimes against older women as one of the reasons for building out the Berkeley Police Department’s surveillance network with new fixed cameras. At the council’s Jan. 30 meeting, Councilmember Mark Humbert recounted a mugging of two women, one of them 80, after which the muggers came back to steal a car belonging to one of the victims on a nearby street.
Councilmember Ben Bartlett said several of his constituents, many over 70, had been the victims of “violent, vicious attacks,” especially in the area of Woolsey Street and Shattuck Avenue, close to the Ashby BART station.
The 2003 program cost $40,500, but the commission suggested that price tag “is obviously outdated as it is a figure from 20 years ago.”
The commission’s letter also asked for community forums, geared towards women, that would focus on safety and crime prevention, as well as analysis from police to identify “geographic locations which are high priority for safety escorts.”
