A growing bill for police reform
The city of Oakland has spent a lot of money on a 14year-old court-ordered effort to reform its police department: $13 million on court monitors and equipment since 2003, to be exact. Some members of Oakland’s City Council feel like that’s enough.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Councilwoman Desley Brooks motioned for the council to extend the city’s contracts with compliance director Robert Warshaw by just two months.
Brooks wants Oakland’s Public Safety Committee — which she chairs — to scrutinize the contracts and added that she wanted the council’s action to make a comment to the court. The council’s comment was certainly made: Brooks’ motion passed unanimously.
The next day, Thelton Henderson, the federal judge overseeing the reforms blasted the council, saying its refusal to renew the contract was “untenable.” But the council’s frustration is both reasonable and justified.
The contracts date back to a landmark civil rights case that was supposed to bring about desperately needed police reforms. Oakland was supposed to have made enough progress on police reforms to get out of its federal consent decree years ago.
That hasn’t happened, for a variety of bewildering reasons. There have been changeovers and internal disagreements between all of the parties involved. While the consensus in recent years was that the Oakland police force had made substantial progress, it still wasn’t meeting all of the necessary targets.
Then came last year’s parade of misconduct cases, stemming from a racist text message scandal and the case of a teenager who said she had sex with more than a dozen Oakland police officers.
All the while, cashstrapped Oakland has been on the hook for a courtordered bill.
“I just don’t see the returns on the public’s investment,” said Councilman Noel Gallo. “This could go on forever if we allow it to continue the way it’s going. We need to get out of the way and let the police chief do (her) job.”
That would be Oakland’s new police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick will need to sort through all of these feuds, in addition to remedying the police department’s cultural problems and conduct violations. It won’t be an easy job. The court should focus on helping her, instead of fighting with the City Council. It could start by offering Oaklanders more transparency.
What’s in the contract, and what has the city gotten for all of those tax dollars? What can people expect if the reforms aren’t fulfilled within a set period of time? If the reforms can’t be fulfilled, why not?
Henderson is right to insist that the police department needs to comply with orders to clean house. But it’s also untenable to ask Oakland, a city with many needs, to foot the bill for a contract it can neither control nor question.