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For New UC Berkeley Chief Yogananda Pittman, Building Trust Is Key to Modern Police Work

Now, after helping to guide the force through a time of crisis and rapid change, Pittman will become chief of the UC Berkeley Police Department. Starting Feb. 1, she will lead an ambitious initiative, begun under retiring Chief Margo Bennett, to broadly modernize campus police operations and strengthen sometimes strained community relations.

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Yogananda Pittman, the incoming chief of the UC Berkeley Police, says she will respect the community’s diversity and listen to many voices as the department works to improve campus security. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small).
Yogananda Pittman, the incoming chief of the UC Berkeley Police, says she will respect the community’s diversity and listen to many voices as the department works to improve campus security. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small).

In the hours after the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol, veteran police leader Yogananda Pittman faced a profoundly difficult choice: She was offered the position of interim chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, a post for which she’d been preparing for nearly two decades, but it would mean taking charge of a department that was reeling and certain to face intense scrutiny and pressure to reform.

Some, sensing a no-win assignment, would have declined it. Pittman, however, said yes, not so much out of ambition as out of a belief that leaders must lead — and seize the opportunity for reform — even in chaotic conditions. Two days after the insurrection, she became the first Black woman to lead the Capitol Police.

Now, after helping to guide the force through a time of crisis and rapid change, Pittman will become chief of the UC Berkeley Police Department. Starting Feb. 1, she will lead an ambitious initiative, begun under retiring Chief Margo Bennett, to broadly modernize campus police operations and strengthen sometimes strained community relations.

“Nothing is more important than the safety and well-being of our community, and I am confident that Yogananda Pittman has all of the skills, qualities, and experience necessary to excel as our next police chief at UC Berkeley,” said Chancellor Carol Christ. “Chief Pittman’s remarkable record of achievement and her steadfast commitment to reform and social justice make her perfectly suited for this essential leadership role on the Berkeley campus.”

Pittman will direct a police force of about 140 officers, community safety officers and staff, with an annual budget of $15 million. In recent years, the campus police department has struggled with reduced budgets, depleted ranks, and rising crime.

Like other urban police agencies nationwide, Berkeley’s at times seems caught between competing pressures from advocates — including students and parents — who want a stronger police presence on campus, and those who would abolish the department and use the funds for social welfare programs.

For Pittman, that’s a new landscape. But in an interview, she said that her experience in policing, leadership, and diplomacy have prepared her to build essential bridges. Respect for diversity and inclusion will be crucial, she said. So will be listening.

“In the first 100 days after I arrive,” Pittman said, “I want to have a campaign of meetings with all of the entities that have a vested interest in safety and security on campus. Once I understand what everyone’s concerns are, then we’ll be able to come up with ways to address those concerns.

“To achieve change, it helps to have leaders who have deep professional experience, but who also know the perspective of people who have been on the receiving end of unfortunate encounters with law enforcement.”

A commitment to social justice leads to a career in police work

Pittman’s path to law enforcement and her rise to its highest ranks have been shaped by unexpected choices and extraordinary challenges.

She grew up in Cambridge, Maryland, a Chesapeake Bay community not far from Washington, D.C. In the 18th century, the town was a center of the slave trade; two centuries later, in the 1960s, it was a national flashpoint for the modern civil rights movement.

Her adoptive parents died when they were young, and she was raised by her aunt, the Rev. Enez Stafford-Grubb, a minister at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Cambridge and a prominent civil rights organizer.

Education, service, justice — these were core values in Pittman’s family. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 1999 from Morgan State University, a historically Black research university in Baltimore.

But then came the decision that, from the outside, might seem surprising: To be an agent for social change, Pittman reasoned, she could be more effective working within an institution, rather than challenging it from the outside.

As a police officer for 20 years, she maintained that approach through a series of historic crises that have reordered the American political and social landscape.

She was sworn in to active duty on the Capitol Police force just a few hours after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York City and Wash., D.C. In the ensuing years came the presidential inaugurations of Barack Obama and then Donald Trump, a seeming epidemic of police violence against Black people, and the insurrection against U.S. democracy on Jan. 6, 2021.

A quiet, persistent struggle against the forces of racism and sexism

As Pittman rose through the ranks, taking promotions with more responsibility and more influence, it seemed that race and gender were constant themes — not just in the national landscape, but in her own career, and in her family.

“When I came onto the Capitol Police force,” she recalled, “there were zero persons of color in leadership and definitely not any women — zero, none.”

“It was not easy. As I continued to get promoted, I was oftentimes the only woman and always the only person of color in the room. And more often than not, people let me know that I wasn’t welcome, that I wasn’t part of the team. They questioned my capabilities.”

“But coming from my hometown, from my parents, and from Morgan State University, your mind is trained to believe just the opposite: ‘I am just as good, if not better, than anybody in this room.’”

At the same time, she experienced the crisis in American policing through her two sons, young Black men who today are ages 22 and 17.

“Even in 2022,” she said, “I’ve had to have the talk with them about what not to do when you engage with police. I’m a police chief, and I have all this knowledge about law enforcement tactics, and I’m still fearful of what happens if they get pulled over. I can only imagine what the average mother feels when her son goes out the door.”

And so, even as she pursued her day-to-day work, she had a parallel goal: to help lead the way toward a more diverse, more inclusive Capitol Police culture.

“This was not just some statement, or to check a box,” Pittman explained. “We really worked to make the culture different, because the men and women of the organization deserve it.”

The terror of Jan. 6: Capitol Police ‘saved democracy that day’

So many of these deep social conflicts were present — but dangerously unresolved — in the days leading up to Jan. 6, 2021. That was the date that Congress had set for certifying Joe Biden’s election as president, and it was to be a crucial test for American democracy.

Pittman said the Capitol Police had substantial evidence that extremists could pose a violent threat to the certification, and to the safety of lawmakers. Then-Chief Steven Sund repeatedly asked the sergeants-at-arms for the House and the Senate to use their power to declare an emergency and to put the National Guard on standby, but they refused.

And then, on Jan. 6, an estimated 30,000 protesters marched to the Capitol, where the Capitol Police had 1,200 officers on duty. Some 2,500 rioters breached the building. Vastly outnumbered, the officers, along with reinforcements from other departments, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with extremists for over five hours.

In retrospect, Pittman sees their efforts as heroic.

“I could not be more proud of the men and women of U.S. Capitol Police,” she said. “The votes to certify the election were counted. We achieved the transfer of power. It was not pretty, but because our officers stood, our democracy didn’t fall.”

“They saved democracy that day.”

After the insurrection, a reckoning

In the immediate aftermath, there was a brutal accounting: Within hours after the battle, two officers were dead. Over 100 others were injured. The Capitol building sustained damage approaching $3 million.

Sund resigned the next day. The sergeants-at-arms of the House and Senate soon followed.

On Jan. 8, Pittman became the first Black person and the first woman to lead the Capitol Police — and while that might have been a cause for celebration, she quickly became the focus of blame and recrimination.

At first, that seemed a distraction. There was work to be done: consoling the families of deceased colleagues, connecting with the injured cops, and restoring order and morale in the department. Biden’s inauguration was just days away, and the police had to be ready.

But as time passed, she came to understand what was driving the criticism. Not that she agreed — she saw the insurrection and the Capitol Police response as the confluence of many forces, across many institutions, converging over time toward a systemic breakdown. No single person or department was to blame.

But as the department’s former head of intelligence, and now its chief, she had to take responsibility.

“As a leader,” she said, “the more you can embrace your mistakes, own them, take full accountability for them, that’s the only way you’re going to get past them. You open yourself up to learn better ways. And that’s what we did.

In the ensuing months, the deeper toll of Jan. 6 became clear. Four officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 took their own lives. Others suffered post-riot psychological trauma.

During her time as acting chief, Pittman guided an intensive reform campaign. New tactics, training and equipment were put in place to make sure that department personnel were prepared for future crises, while new programs and services aimed to support a traumatized workforce.

In July 2021, a new permanent chief was named, and Pittman returned to the rank of assistant chief. Last week, after 21 years on the job, she announced her retirement from the Capitol Police, effective early in 2023.

“D.C. has changed,” she said. “Our democracy is being challenged in ways that we never expected or never imagined…I don’t ever run from a challenge, but I know I’ve left the department I served in a much better space than we were prior to Jan. 6.”

At Berkeley, ‘we can … really show the world what’s possible’

Last summer in downtown Cambridge, an artist completed a brightly colored outdoor mural featuring 12 pioneering women from surrounding Dorchester County. Among them are Harriet Tubman, the iconic antislavery activist; Donna Wolf Mother Abbott, the first woman chief of the Nause Waiwash tribe; and Bea Arthur, an actor on stage and screen. And in the lower left corner? Yogananda Pittman, smiling in her blue watch cap and uniform.

Her place in the mural reflects the place of honor she holds in her hometown and in much of the Wash., D.C., area. She hadn’t foreseen the day that she would leave, but when Berkeley reached out to discuss the coming vacancy on its police force, she was intrigued.

Through her sons, Pittman has an affinity for young adults. She’s drawn to academic culture. She has a master’s degree in public administration, and she’s working on the final chapters of her Ph.D. thesis in that field, focused on gender diversity in law enforcement. She’s inspired to see that at UC Berkeley, racism is seen as a public health issue.

Of course, in ways both superficial and profound, the U.S. Capitol in Washington is a long way from the Berkeley campus. One features the nation’s highest-ranking elected officials and visiting dignitaries; the other, extraordinary scholars and young people who are just beginning to find their way in life.

But Pittman and university officials are focused on the points these geographies hold in common. Both are sprawling campuses with diverse communities numbering in the tens of thousands. While the Berkeley police department is far smaller than the Capitol’s, both must manage a range of threats to safety and security.

“The environment for policing on large, urban campuses is challenging,” said Marc Fisher, Berkeley’s vice chancellor for administration. “This is a nationwide phenomenon, and Berkeley is not immune. But in Chief Pittman, we have a leader of incredible personal and professional experience. She has confronted extraordinary challenges and achieved results, both in policing and community-building.

“We are very fortunate to have her join the UC Berkeley Police Department.”

Pittman will arrive as a leader in managing a multi-year campus security reform program, initiated in 2020, to improve emergency management, mental health crisis response and security technology, and to strengthen relations with diverse communities.

She has experience in all of those areas. She’s already met with campus officers during a recent visit to their headquarters in the basement of Sproul Hall. She said she “connected with them immediately.”

Beyond that, though, she’s not offering specific plans or bold pronouncements. Instead, she said, her early days in office will be for listening, learning, understanding — and building trust and legitimacy. It’s a topic that she’s spoken about recently to groups in Canada and Germany.

To those debating the need for protection from crime versus a greater commitment to social services, Pittman answers that both are needed. The goal is building consensus for a balanced approach.

“There does not have to be an either-or in terms of policing and much-needed mental health services, services for the unhoused or drug and rehabilitation services,” she said.

“I’m confident that when we work together, we will find that balance to accommodate the needs of everyone.”

“I hope we can take the lessons we’ve learned and really show the world what’s possible.”

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 15 – 21, 2023

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 15 - 21, 2023

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Activism

Richmond Promise Scholarship Application Deadline Closes March 17

Qualifying applicants can receive up to $1,500 annually for four years toward their post-secondary educational goals at a two-year or four-year college and/or while pursuing a Career Technical Education Certificate at any not-for-profit institution in the U.S. 

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Scholarships are available for high school graduates who want to go to a two-year or four-year college or a nonprofit vocational/technical school. Photo courtesy of Richmond Promise.
Scholarships are available for high school graduates who want to go to a two-year or four-year college or a nonprofit vocational/technical school. Photo courtesy of Richmond Promise.

Calling all high school seniors from Richmond and North Richmond: The Richmond Promise Scholarship Application period for the 2022-2023 school year closes on Friday, March 17.

High school seniors and GED students under the age of 24 who reside in Richmond and North Richmond and attend public, private, or charter schools in West Contra Costa County are eligible to apply for the scholarship.

Qualifying applicants can receive up to $1,500 annually for four years toward their post-secondary educational goals at a two-year or four-year college and/or while pursuing a Career Technical Education Certificate at any not-for-profit institution in the U.S. 

Students can also petition for an additional two years of extra funding. Throughout the process, the program provides supportive services to participating scholars from high school through college graduation, including support with identifying and applying for financial aid.

Richmond Promise launched in 2016 with a $35 million, 10-year investment by Chevron Richmond. The funds are part of a $90 million community benefits agreement between the City of Richmond and Chevron connected to the $1 billion Refinery Modernization Project.

To apply for the Richmond Promise Scholarship, go to https://richmondpromise.tfaforms.net/81. Need some help? Reach out to Richmond Promise at scholarships@richmondpromise.org. Learn more about the organization https://richmondpromise.org/

Kathy Chouteau contributed to this report

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Bay Area Native Dr. Terri Jett Honored by Indiana’s Butler University

Terri Jett arrived at Butler University in 1999 to begin her teaching career as an assistant professor of Political Science and Peace and Conflict Studies after earning her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from Auburn University. Originally from California, Jett was unfamiliar with the Hoosier state, but was drawn to the energy of the faculty and students she met at Butler and the opportunity she saw for connecting her teaching and research with the broader Indianapolis community.

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Dr. Terri Jett poses with Butler Blue, the mascot of Butler University. Photo courtesy of Butler University Stories.
Dr. Terri Jett poses with Butler Blue, the mascot of Butler University. Photo courtesy of Butler University Stories.

By Jennifer Gunnels
Butler University Stories

Bay Area native Terri Jett was received a Distinguished Faculty Award at Indiana’s Butler University.

Terri Jett arrived at Butler University in 1999 to begin her teaching career as an assistant professor of Political Science and Peace and Conflict Studies after earning her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Public Administration from Auburn University.

Originally from California, Jett was unfamiliar with the Hoosier state, but was drawn to the energy of the faculty and students she met at Butler and the opportunity she saw for connecting her teaching and research with the broader Indianapolis community.

More than 20 years later, Jett has excelled at the work she set out to do. Last year, she was named a 2021-22 Distinguished Faculty Award recipient for her profound contributions to Butler University over the course of her career.

In many ways, Jett has been a trailblazer at Butler, including becoming the first Black female to earn tenure, and in 2020 becoming the first Black female to be promoted to full professor. Along with her teaching responsibilities as a member of the faculty, Jett has taken on numerous additional roles over the years including faculty director of the Hub for Black Affairs and Community Engagement (the Hub), member of the Steering Committee of the Race, Gender, Sexuality Studies Program (RGSS), faculty senator, and Faculty Fellow at the Desmond Tutu Peace Lab Think Tank. She also served as Department Chair from 2007-2014, a role she has currently resumed as interim while the current Chair is on sabbatical.

Jett has developed almost two dozen courses — core, departmental, honors, and even taught in our Washington D.C. Semester Program — and is always eager to seize on opportunities to take her students beyond the borders of campus. She has led students on numerous occasions to Selma, Alabama with the Honors course Voting Rights in Black and White: The Case of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. She says walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge is always a moving and eye-opening experience for her students that brings the Civil Rights Movement to life in new ways.

Of the many courses she has taught, Jett says one of her favorites to teach is the Politics of Alice Walker, which she teaches nearly every summer. Prior to the pandemic, Jett also offered the course several times at the Indiana Women’s Prison and was able to bring some of her Butler students to visit her class in prison.

Jett is committed to doing good things in the world herself and is known in the Indianapolis community for her service and activism. She currently serves on the board of Indiana Humanities and is appointed by Mayor Joe Hogsett to the Indianapolis Land Improvement Bond Bank Board. She also moderates a series on local PBS station WFYI called Simple Civics, which provides short civics lessons and was nominated for a Great Lakes Region Emmy in 2020 and again in 2021.

Jett says her community activism is inspired in part by a desire to demonstrate how to be an engaged citizen for her students as well as a desire to connect her teaching and research to issues happening within the community.

“And I do it because it’s fulfilling,” she said.

Though Jett has various roles within and outside of Butler, she finds satisfaction in discovering ways to integrate her teaching, research, and service. For instance, her research focuses on agriculture and food justice, and last year she leveraged her area of academic expertise and her role as Faculty Director of the Hub to partner with Indy Women in Food in hosting the organization’s first conference on Butler’s campus focused on food insecurity in the city.

“I’m thrilled when I’m able to do that,” Jett said. “All of the hats that I wear are sort of constantly engaged at the same time, and I like that I get to work like that. I’m not running from one thing to the next, I feel like my work is layered with multiple connection points.”

This article is part of a series honoring the 2021-22 recipients of the Butler University Distinguished Faculty Award. Printed with permission.

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