Police Chief Who Helped Create ‘Facebook Unit’ Steps Down
‘It’s obvious to me that I’ve lost the trust of the city council,’ police Chief Dave Bertini said during a virtual town hall
One of the key architects of the “Facebook Unit,” a controversial team within the Menlo Park Police Department in California, abruptly stepped down on Friday, citing a loss of community trust. Menlo Park police Chief Dave Bertini announced his sudden, early retirement during a town hall forum about issues with local law enforcement.
Earlier this month, local residents protested the police unit, which is financially supported by millions of dollars from Facebook, the city’s largest employer. They demanded Facebook cease funding the Menlo Park Police Department.
Around 2016, Facebook approached the Menlo Park Police Department about creating a police force to patrol the area surrounding its campuses. Facebook offered to fund the department in exchange for “assigning a specific team of police officers to the Facebook campus,” Bertini wrote colleagues in an internal email published by Motherboard last year. (At the time, Bertini served as commander.) In 2017, Facebook agreed to donate $11.2 million to the city’s general fund over five years so the money could be allocated to policing needs. While…
