Contra Costa leaders in Geneva to speak at Human Rights Council meeting

When the United Nations Human Rights Council meets in Geneva on Thursday, two Contra Costa County community leaders will be there alongside panels investigating human rights violations in Ethiopia, Russia, Myanmar and Haiti.

Antioch Mayor Pro-Tem Tamisha Torres-Walker, Safe Return Project director, and James Herard, Lift Up Contra Costa director, were both invited to speak about their organization’s work in light of the decades of alleged racism and corruption in local law enforcement. Nearly half of the Antioch police force allegedly sent or received racist texts, while some have been accused of other crimes that brutalized minorities and breached civil rights.

The local leaders’ appearances in Switzerland are timed in conjunction with a report from a United Nations panel of experts, called the International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the Context of Law Enforcement. Formed in the wake of George Floyd’s death in 2020 to investigate systemic racism, including in policing and the criminal justice system, the panel recently visited with victims of abuse, law enforcement officials and others in the United States and released its findings days ago.

Torres-Walker, who has long supported police reform, said the Edfu Foundation, a group that advocates for human rights, invited her to take part in the event, which will focus on advancing racial justice and equality. For her, the discussions are long overdue.

“I will be speaking about American policing, tying it to what we’ve all experienced in Antioch, and taking it to the United Nations Human Rights Council to call on America to do something,” she said in a phone call from Germany en route to Switzerland.

“Antioch is just a small picture of what communities of color, undocumented communities, Black communities experience nationally, like what’s going on with APD,” she said. “If in what was a small town — Antioch — if this (the police scandal) could happen there, then we know it’s happening in other places. Why isn’t the U.S. government doing something about the racial and social inequality in policing in this country?”

Though Torres-Walker notes that various government officials have tried to roll out reforms, they haven’t always worked, she said.

“And the question is, why isn’t it working?” she said. “There have been national calls, national demands for change in the American policing structure, and it hasn’t worked — and why?”

For nearly 15 years, Torres-Walker has worked with Safe Return Project, a nonprofit that works to end mass incarceration and mass criminalization of people of color. Begun in Richmond, the group has created a re-entry support network to help reduce the number of people who, with no resources when they were set free, later end up back in jail.

“We do whatever we can to keep people out of jails and prisons by putting resources in a community, by organizing on the heels of AB109 (a California bill that shifted responsibility over repeat, nonviolent offenders from state prisons to county jails),” said Torres-Walker, who herself was once incarcerated.

As part of her work, Torres-Walker also has advocated for programs to reduce gun violence and add resources to make cities safer and build relationships between law enforcement and the community. She’s seen some success in Richmond, she said, but it can only be done “if the community is on board,” she said.

“The difference between Richmond and Antioch was that in Richmond people were fed up with the violence,” Torres-Walker said. “They were tired of sending generations of Black men across the water to San Quentin, and decided to come to the table with the police departments and build relationships and work together. Not all relationships are perfect, but Antioch hasn’t done that work yet.”

In general, investing in public safety, though, does not mean police, she said.