The Informant

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan got her first look up close at the Oakland Police Department’s long-running federal oversight, as U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson yet again criticized OPD for its failure to fully comply with court-mandated reforms. In 2003, OPD entered into a consent decree with attorneys John Burris and Jim Chanin, who represented over one hundred plaintiffs alleging civil rights abuse by four corrupt West Oakland officers known as the Riders.

The Negotiated Settlement Agreement, as it is known, has been extended twice since it was originally set to expire in 2008. In his remarks to the court this morning, Judge Henderson blamed the department for an “attitude of resistance” to the NSA and said that OPD’s standards and practices lag behind those of modern police departments.

“Despite eight years of monitoring, during the first two years absolutely nothing was done,” Judge Henderson said, adding that the systemic problems the NSA was designed to address have yet to be resolved.

“There is going to be ramped-up participation of this court,” Henderson said. The Judge did not specify what form that intervention would take: the court already receives multiple reports per month from the Independent Monitoring Team that audits OPD’s actions. In the past, Judge Henderson has threatened contempt of court proceedings and federal receivership for OPD.

The hearing was divided into two portions: the first half was devoted to hiring practices for bringing in outside consultants to review police shootings, OPD’s propensity for aiming weapons at suspects (armed or not) during street encounters, and the decision to name a summer police sweep “Operation Tune-up.” Henderson took issue with this term: “tune-up” can be used as a popular euphemism for a beating.

The second portion of the hearing was closed to members of the press. At issue were OPD’s rehiring of Officer Hector Jimenez, who was brought back to the force after a labor arbitrator ruled he had been unjustly fired for shooting two unarmed suspects, and a recent decision by U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Patel to award damages to two men who OPD officers allegedly strip-searched in public back in 2007.

Judge Henderson, who despite his faltering health has remained committed to OPD’s reforms, tempered his criticism with assertions that the reform process would successfully conclude. However, on certain matters Judge Henderson was blunt — like on OPD’s unusually high rate of drawing weapons while interacting with the public.

“The level of unnecessary drawing of firearms is astounding,” the judge said. .

Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts, said a department-wide bulletin addressing how officers handle their firearms and tasers while interacting with suspects has already gone out, and a planned retraining will address weapons and search and seizure tactics.

Batts, who took up his position in mid-2009, said that the majority of incidents brought up in court were from 2005 through 2008. The strip-searching of suspects in public, Batts said, “is unacceptable” and has been curtailed by a set of restrictions he imposed shortly after arriving at OPD.

OPD has gone through four police chiefs and three mayors since the NSA began, and each new administration has confronted the high standards set out by the court to ensure that Riders-level corruption never reoccurs in the police department.

“Some of our standards in that consent decree are 95 percent standards – do you get 95 percent of your stories right?” Chief Batts asked a group of reporters gathered at an afternoon press briefing at Oakland City Hall. “Those are brain surgery-level standards.”

Mayor Quan attended the Thursday morning hearing with OPD brass and representatives from the City Attorney and City Administrator’s offices: none of her predecessors had ever attended the NSA court hearings. Judge Henderson appeared pleased with her attendance and her vocal commitment to reforming OPD.

At this afternoon’s press briefing, Mayor Quan said that the court’s concerns about the department’s compliance were valid. “It’s a question of whether or not we’ve changed the way this community and the police relate to one another,” Quan said. However, she maintained her administration more is committed to the NSA reforms than her predecessors, and expressed confidence that the city would soon bring an end to the long-running saga.

“There will be a time while I’m Mayor that we’ll no longer have federal oversight,” Quan said.

Her optimism was not shared by plaintiff’s attorney Jim Chanin. “The city has a limited amount of time to get in compliance,” he said. In order for Oakland to fulfill the NSA’s requirements, it would have to complete 12 remaining oversight tasks – mostly related to complaint investigations and uses of force – by January 2013. “For the last two or three years, we haven’t seen that kind of movement,” Chanin said. “We’re spinning our wheels. That has to change.”