It was supposed to be a night to "Ground the Drones" but, as Berkeley, CA., Peace and Justice Commissioner Bob Meola put it, "it was more like the movie, Groundhog Day " — an experience of being trapped in a maddening rerun of past events and unable to move forward. It was back on December 18, 2012, that the Berkeley City Council was first presented with a resolution to proclaim Berkeley a "No Drone Zone."

At the time, the Berkeley Review Commission asked the City’s Peace and Justice Commission (PJC) and Police Review Commission (PRC) to gather more information report back to council "for further consideration of the issues" at a Council Workshop on Drones.

In May 2013, the two commissions hosted a crowded three-hour Town Hall meeting to gather public input on a proposed citywide ban unmanned aerial vehicles, a.k.a. drones.

Representatives from prominent civil rights and electronic privacy organizations were joined by scores of citizens who raised concerns about the documented risks drones pose to both public safety and personal privacy.

Based on these hearings —and months of research— the PJR and PRC produced an extensive 19-page report backed up with no less than 57 detailed footnotes.

On April 29, in advance of the City’s regular Tuesday Council meeting, the Mayor Tom Bates and a half-dozen councilmembers convened a special workshop to consider the commissions’ joint-report and a resulting "No Drone Zone" resolution.

The commission’s findings were underscored by the expert testimony of a bevy of civil rights lawyers. But, at the end of the workshop, instead of acting on the extensive information that had been gathered, the council majority elected not to act.