OAKLAND — Almost two decades after the Oakland Police Department was placed under federal oversight following the infamous Riders case, two attorneys who have dogged the department over every misstep say enough progress has been made that the shackles should come off.
“After years of backsliding, there is real momentum toward substantive compliance with multiple outstanding … tasks,” civil rights attorneys Jim Chanin and John Burris stated in a brief filed in federal court ahead of a hearing scheduled for next week.
Chanin and Burris represent the plaintiffs in a civil case against a group of Oakland police officers known as “The Riders” who were alleged to have beaten Black residents, planted drugs on them and falsified records.
The attorneys said in court documents it’s time to wind down the settlement agreement that stems from a police misconduct lawsuit. The agreement has required the department to report its progress in 52 reform measures to an outside monitor and a federal judge since 2003. The measures involve documenting use-of-force incidents, investigating officers’ misconduct and eliminating racial disparities within the force.
The agreement was supposed to end within five years but has dragged on, burdened by resistance to some of the reform measures and a series of scandals that have rocked the department.
“The Oakland Police Department has moved from being one of the worst police departments in the San Francisco Bay Area to being one of the best police departments in comparable cities in the country,” the attorneys wrote.
Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said he was heartened by the attorneys’ statements and believes the city should be proud of the changes made.
“It’s good to see that we would be recognized for the work that’s being done, but we, we have not crossed the finish line, and so there’s still more work to be done,” Armstrong continued. “We are still diligently meeting with the federal monitor to make sure that we’re meeting all of our mandates, but there’s still more work that we need to do, but it is encouraging”
The settlement agreement and federal oversight have outlasted numerous police chiefs and political leaders.
Last year, the city’s police commission fired then-police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick for allegedly allowing the department to slide back into bad habits.
When Armstrong became chief last February, he promised to make the department comply with the settlement agreement within a year. And in a recent interview with this news organization, he reiterated that promise, saying the department was accomplishing the tasks set by the federal judge and monitor.
Chanin and Burris agree, noting in court documents that the department “is closer to compliance in several other Tasks than it was in February 2021.”
Back then, they noted, police were still taking too long to complete internal investigations and not fully investigating use-of-force incidents, documenting who gets stopped by police and why and applying discipline consistently across the force.
In fact, Chanin and Burris wrote, the police department at that time was ‘substantially farther from compliance with all NSA tasks than it was just two years ago, in January 2019.’ ”
Six months later, the department has turned much of that around despite still facing some obstacles, the attorneys said.
In February, U.S. District Judge William Orrick urged the city to go after officers connected with an Instagram account that featured racist, misogynists posts. Chanin and Burris argued then that the posts revealed a harmful culture among at least some officers. They said they were disturbed that no thorough internal investigation was started until after news outlets reported about it in January and that some officers signaled support for a former Oakland officer’s posts about the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
In the most recent documents filed Wednesday evening, the attorneys acknowledged that the “quality” of the police investigation into the Instagram posts “will be a critical barometer of the Department’s progress toward … compliance.”
But they ultimately expressed confidence that beefing up the roles of outside institutions, such as the inspector general and the city’s police commission, can “support and verify OPD’s future compliance with the core tenets of the (negotiated settlement agreement).
Court-appointed federal monitor Robert Warshaw also wrote earlier this week that he feels “cautious optimism” that the department could see an end to the oversight program.
Even if Orrick agrees that sufficient progress has been made, the police department must remain in a “sustainability period” for one year to demonstrate it can maintain the reforms without outside oversight.
“Assuming the Instagram case is handled appropriately, there is no reason that the Sustainability Period cannot start very soon,” the attorneys wrote.
Staff writer George Kelly contributed to this report.
