Berkeley could make racially biased or otherwise discriminatory 911 calls illegal under an ordinance being considered by the City Council.

The ordinance, on the agenda for the City Council meeting Tuesday, was authored by Councilmember Kate Harrison. It would expand the municipal code outlawing false reports to police to specifically ban those based on discriminatory reasons and would allow victims of the crime to pursue civil action, such as seeking damages.

Discriminatory calls are defined as those based on ethnicity, race, nationality, age, sex, religion, disability, sexual orientation, place of birth or creed, according to the proposal.

The ordinance is modeled after San Francisco’s 2020 CAREN Act, which stands for Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies. The name “Karen” has been used to refer to white women caught on video making discriminatory calls to police.

“Such incidents cause serious harm to the person falsely accused of a crime, contribute to defamation, cause anxiety and distrust among people of color and other people, and put an unnecessary strain on law enforcement officers responding to frivolous and false calls,” the ordinance says.

In her proposal, Harrison cited discriminatory calls outlined in a Berkeley Police Review Commission’s report from 2017. In one example, a mixed-race family was at a pizzeria when another diner reported that the couple was “abusing their children by drinking beer and wine in front of their child.” Police officers arrived and were told by the restaurant owner that the family were “minding their own business, watching a football game”; however, the officers questioned the Black father for an hour.

In an infamous May 2020 case in New York City, Amy Cooper, a white woman, called police to report that she was being threatened by “an African American man” who was bird-watching in Central Park. Months later, she was charged with filing a false police report.