Oakland PD pulled from FBI joint force
The City Council also approved a new policy on use of force by the police
Oakland police won’t participate in a controversial FBI counterterrorism task force that critics say engages in overly broad and discriminatory surveillance of residents, the City Council decided this week.
The council’s action Tuesday came in response to the requests of privacy and civil liberties advocates.
“We’re not terminating all interactions (with the FBI); this is specific to the joint terrorism task force,” council President Rebecca Kaplan said. The FBI “has a troubling history of profiling” and the task force “undermines community safety and does not strengthen community’s ability to solve crimes,” she added.
John Bennett, the FBI’s special agent in charge of the San Francisco division, sent the council a letter earlier this month objecting to such a move, noting his agency expects Oakland police officials to ensure officers who participate in the task force comply with state and
city laws.
Though acknowledging that the FBI still will have an obligation to investigate terror activities in Oakland, Bennett said the city would lose “visibility” in federal investigations there.
Members of the city’s Privacy Advisory Commission and other advocates counter that a lack of transparency and accountability worries them, according to city documents.
Under city law, the task force was required to disclose its actions to the commission and the council annually, but according to a memo from Kaplan, the reporting was insufficient. As a result, the privacy commission started raising questions in April 2019.
“The inadequate report left little room for oversight and protection of the civil liberties of the Oakland community,” Kaplan’s memo says.
A Police Department memo explains that the department brought its 2018 task force report to the privacy commission but had to revise it to include additional information requested by the commission. So it delayed bringing the report to the council while the commission reviewed other documents, including a memorandum of understanding with the FBI.
In its 2018 and 2019 reports about task force activities those years, the Police Department didn’t record any instances of city or state laws being violated.
Regardless, advocates said, the FBI’s history of activity and surveillance is worrisome. They pointed to recent promises by U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate “criminal organizers and instigators” of violence during police brutality protests as domestic terrorists. A letter sent to the Oakland City Council by a coalition of civil rights groups also contends Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian communities were subjected to “pervasive discrimination and surveillance by the federal government based on nothing more than their religion or national origin” since Sept. 11, 2001, and cites the task force’s partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as other reasons to withdraw from the partnership.
Brian Hofer, chairman of the city’s privacy commission, said withdrawing from the task force would not preclude Oa k land from being warned about threats to the city or hurt other partnerships the city has with the FBI. He noted other cities, including San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, also have withdrawn from the task force.
San Francisco leaders cited similar concerns to Oakland when they opted out of the partnership in 2017.
“(Joint terrorism task forces) have terrorized our communities for far too long, targeting peaceful protesters and profiling entire communities based on nothing more than race, religion and ethnicity,” Javeria Jamil, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, said in a statement. “Oakland’s communities are safer with this partnership coming to an end.”
In other action Tuesday, the council also approved the Oakland Police Commission’s proposed use of force policy.
The new policy requires officers to use de-escalation tactics and consider disengaging in confrontations instead of immediately resorting to force. It also requires officers to intervene if they see their colleagues using inappropriate levels of force and restricts the amount of force officers can they can use when deemed necessary.
The Police Department this summer banned officers from using carotid restraint holds — intended to slow or stop blood flow to the brain — in training or on the streets, according to police spokeswoman Officer Johnna Watson.
But the commission and Police Department had disagreed about exactly how a person being arrested should be restrained. Ultimately, the two sides worked out a policy that states that though “transitory” body contact between an officer and person is allowed, officers cannot kneel, sit or stand on a person’s chest, back, stomach or shoulders, limiting his ability to breath.
“The Black community has suffered enough. We needed a new use- of-force policy that clearly guides officers to protect us, not harm us,” Ginale Harris, a member of the police commission, said in a written statement. “I don’t believe that policy changes behavior, and I believe it’s going to take more than just this policy to have accountability. However, I do believe this new policy is a start.”
“(Joint terrorism task forces) have terrorized our communities for far too long, targeting peaceful protesters and profiling entire communities based on nothing more than race, religion and ethnicity.” — Javeria Jamil, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus