For over 30 years, Berkeley Copwatch has been filming police misconduct and serving as a hub for people to gain valuable Know Your Rights information and report abuses by law enforcement. As a volunteer-led group that represents a broad range of ages, abilities, LGBTQ folxs, unhoused individuals, students and local organizers, they have been instrumental in  collecting footage and documentation to support legal, advocacy and policy initiatives. Their work has also helped create a rich record of community-led initiatives around issues like gentrification, racism and abusive policing against vulnerable populations like the unhoused community and people living with mental health issues.

Given the challenges of maintaining decades of sensitive footage in an all volunteer-run organization, WITNESS engaged in this collaboration with the objective of identifying ways to streamline their workflows, develop important protocols and policies for users, and strengthen their platforms for collecting, organizing and analyzing data in ways that make the information more useful to individuals, lawyers, journalists and advocates. While the Database is not intended to be put online or made public because of privacy and security issues, it serves as an internal resource for the group, and the information will be used for organizing purposes and shared with trusted sources and community members upon request. 

Already this work has supported Berkeley Copwatch to influence policy discussions of the Berkeley Mental Health Commission by working with various commissioners to show them footage of police use of spit hoods and the police role in mental health emergencies. They also shed light on the misconduct of UC Berkeley Officer Sean Aranas, who abused homeless people for years, by curating footage of many separate incidents of his gross misconduct. He “retired” within two months of the release of their footage and campaign. 

Through our many hours of planning, building, testing, tinkering and practicing, we’ve gained many learnings that we are eager to share with other human rights documentation groups. We’ve made available a Planning Workbook, a FileMaker Pro Template, Data Diagrams, a customizable Data Dictionary and Controlled Vocabulary. Learn more about the project and download the resources here. 

This project builds on our previous human rights database initiative Profiling the Police, a collaboration with El Grito de Sunset Park, and furthers our quest to identify simple, low-cost solutions for human rights defenders working to analyze, share and preserve video for advocacy and evidentiary purposes.

Aaron comes to WITNESS in an interim role after almost four years working with grassroots organizations on civil rights, international human rights, and humanitarian law issues. Aaron has spent most of his career documenting human rights abuses and advocating to international justice mechanisms about humanitarian law violations in Syria and the occupied Golan Heights with the Public International Law and Policy Group and Al-Marsad. He also has experience combatting sexual and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and providing legal support to immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in the U.S. Aaron has authored numerous publications and investigative legal reports on civilians in conflict and post-conflict areas while supporting grassroots NGO operations in conflict-stricken regions.

Aaron is licensed to practice law in New York and graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Law, with honors in a concentration in international law, where he was a Frederick K. Cox International Law Center Senior Fellow and a Hugo Grotius International Law Scholar. While in school, Aaron held internships at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and Human Rights Watch. Aaron is also passionate about storytelling through the use of video and holds an undergraduate degree in journalism with a concentration in film journalism.

Dalila takes on the new Associate Legal Advisor role after spending almost five years at WITNESS working on new and innovative approaches to digital activism and learning, and the meaningful exchange of tools and tactics on the creation of trustworthy video, use of video as evidence, filming for advocacy, digital security, and media literacy. Her team’s materials reach over one million people a year with critical guidance on documenting abuses and ensuring trustworthy video is seen from critical stories around the world. She has trained activists and key stakeholders including the United Nations Populations Fund, European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation, Duke University, Google, and the International Bar Association. 

Prior to joining WITNESS Dalila spent close to a decade working with grassroots campaigns internationally on post-conflict activism, housing rights, and advocating for at-risk and homeless youth. Her legal experience includes working at a boutique law firm supporting U.S. immigration and elder abuse cases, and with the City of London Appeals Clinic on criminal appeals and human rights law research in the U.K. She has also served as the International Relations Director at the Ann-Arbor Roosevelt Institute think tank and on the Board of Directors of the Royal Oak Community Coalition. Dalila is currently finishing her legal studies at Queen Mary—University of London where she has produced legal education materials for Lawyers Without Borders initiatives on gender-based violence in Africa and is writing her dissertation on the comparative use of video as evidence and authentication mechanisms in criminal courts.  Dalila speaks fluent German and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, and has an elementary understanding of Arabic, Russian and Ukrainian. 

WITNESS is excited to bring on board such talented young activists and looks forward to lending greater assistance to its partners combating impunity and fighting for justice around the globe.