OAKLAND — The city’s police department is no closer to ending two decades of direct oversight by a federal judge, having failed once again to investigate enough complaints against officers within a timeframe set by the court.
Between January and March of this year, the Oakland Police Department’s internal affairs unit finished vetting just 65% of the most serious complaints within six months — far short of a required 85% threshold.
This marks another backslide for OPD, which in an earlier reported period fell short on just one investigation of such allegations. This time around, OPD’s internal affairs missed the mark on 19 occasions.
It is a key task that U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick expects OPD to complete before he brings an end to court oversight, where the department has remained ever since a brutality scandal at the start of the century.
OPD has been plagued by other controversies in the ensuing years, as well as high turnover. Chief Floyd Mitchell’s resignation in October will again leave the department without a permanent leader. His last official day is Dec. 5.
The latest report by federal monitor Robert Warshaw may signal that oversight is here to stay beyond OPD’s next court hearing in January.
Achieving timely internal affairs investigations of officers is one of 52 court-ordered reform tasks the department was required to fulfill as part of a 2003 negotiated settlement following the Riders scandal.
The department remains out of compliance with another task that deals more broadly with OPD’s handling of IA investigations as a whole. OPD was also deemed “partially in compliance” with a task requiring officers to be disciplined in a consistent, non-discriminatory manner.
Warshaw’s quarterly report does echo optimism expressed by Orrick over the summer that Mayor Barbara Lee could steer Oakland to the end of the tunnel.
“We are confident that, under Mayor Lee’s leadership, the Department will fulfill and surpass its obligations to the communities it serves,” Warshaw’s new report notes.
OPD’s regression in investigating complaints quickly is a fairly recent development. The department had previously been in compliance with the “timeliness” task for years.
And the city’s police trended backward from Warshaw’s last report in another category, which involves a less serious level of misconduct. The department investigated 87% of these claims within the required six-month timeframe, down from 91% in the previous reporting period, according to the report.
Warshaw also determined OPD is out of step in how it investigates complaints in the first place — a longstanding criticism of the department across various misconduct scandals over the years.
For this task, the monitoring team offers less precise language, only alluding cryptically to a “number of issues, concerns, and developments which are not yet appropriate for public discussion.”
Jim Chanin, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the Riders brutality case that first led to OPD’s federal oversight, speculated that Warshaw is awaiting the outcome of a felony case against homicide detective Phong Tran, who has been placed on leave.
Allegations that Tran bribed a witness have jeopardized a series of murder cases in Oakland, led several high-ranking police leaders to be disciplined and leveled a blow to OPD’s timeline for exiting oversight.
“They need time to judge if internal affairs has really corrected itself,” Chanin said in an interview of the Tran fallout and Warshaw’s response to it.
The court may also need time to vet the performance of OPD under a new chief following Mitchell’s announced departure.
Earlier this month, Lee named Assistant Chief James Beere, an veteran of the department, as the interim chief. He will likely appear before the judge at the next hearing in January.
Lee also announced that Assistant City Administrator Michelle Phillips would serve in a new role that assesses OPD’s systems of internal accountability.
The specifics of what Phillips — the city’s former inspector general — will actually do in the role are not fully clear.
And it is still nebulous if the internal affairs unit will be absorbed by the investigative arm of the civilian Oakland Police Commission, which represents yet another arm of outside accountability for the department.
“I’m really not sure if that’s actually happening,” Sgt. Huy Nguyen, the head of the Oakland police officers’ union, said Monday. “Nobody’s notified us of anything.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at smukherjee@bayareanewsgroup.com.