Charges possible in long-running police abuse case
The attorneys who secured a sweeping civil-rights settlement against Oakland 14 years ago stemming from the Riders police-abuse scandal suggested Wednesday that city officials could be held in contempt for failing to institute court-ordered reforms.
The notion was raised in a court brief ahead of a hearing Monday at which city attorneys will be called to account for blunders highlighted in a report last month that detailed the mishandling of a sexual misconduct case by senior members of the Police Department.
U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson ordered the parties to appear Monday after court-appointed lawyers issued the scathing report that detailed a “wholly inadequate” investigation by police officers into allegations that their peers had sex with the teenage daughter of a 911 dispatcher and engaged in other misconduct.
It will be the first major hearing in the federal oversight case in five years — a sign of the damage last year’s scandal inflicted on the city’s efforts to emerge from court control. John Burris, one of the attorneys who sued Oakland in the Riders case and who now represents the teenager, said in the decade and a half of litigation “it will be one of the most important hearings we’ve ever had.”
In their Wednesday filing, Burris and co-counsel Jim Chanin laid out the years of stalled efforts by the Police Department to comply with the reforms laid out in the negotiated settlement agreement. And they raised stronger remedies Henderson could enact, such as contempt, or revisiting the idea of placing the department into full federal receivership, which would strip much of its remaining autonomy.
Holding individual leaders of the Police Department in contempt of court for neglecting the reform process “has the advantage of punishing the actual party causing the problem,” Chanin and Burris wrote.
In a parallel brief, attorneys for the city said Oakland leaders were “disturbed” but “not discouraged” by the sexual misconduct scandal. They outlined how the Police Department will be reorganized and its policies improved to address concerns raised by the case and to become fully in line with the court-ordered reforms.
The city’s filing did not address the possibility of Oakland officials being held in contempt, and a spokesman for the attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
The problem of officers who engage in misconduct can never be eliminated, Chanin said, but what’s important is how police departments investigate and manage improprieties.
“In this case, there was a problem, and it wasn’t handled at all,” he said. “We’re not happy that an officer had sex with an underage woman. But the fact is, that’s the kind of thing that can happen. And when it does, it has to be handled by high-ranking police officials in a way that sends a message that this is not tolerable.”
Edward Swanson and Audrey Barron, the court-appointed attorneys who reviewed the case, said former Police Chief Sean Whent “sent an unmistakable signal that this case was not a priority,” which shaped how his deputies approached the investigation and the woman. The pair said the matter “casts doubt on whether OPD’s reforms are sustainable in the absence of court supervision.”
In their filing, Burris and Chanin asked city officials to compile a list of all potential misconduct outlined by Swanson and Barron and to explain whether the incidents were investigated — and if not, to explain why not. Officers whose behavior the report called into question may avoid discipline because of a one-year statute of limitations in California under the Peace Officers Bill of Rights.
“My sense is, they missed deadlines,” Chanin said. “This investigation was a throwback to the way Oakland police did this many years ago . ... We have to get back on track.”
The oversight established in 2003, which has cost the city more than $13 million, was not supposed to last more than five years. Henderson enacted a series of one- and two-year extensions when the city police force couldn’t show it was complying with the reforms, such as limiting racially biased traffic stops.
Beginning in 2013, it appeared court oversight would finally sunset and the department would once again be able to police itself, Burris said. Chanin said they had meetings with city lawyers in 2015 to discuss fully ending the negotiated settlement agreement.
The revelations last year of sexual misconduct backpedaled much of that progress.
“It’s unfair to the police officers who are doing a good job, but most of all the public, to have this endless expense and this endless case where the leaders of the department are simply not getting it done,” Chanin said. “We should be open to all remedies if this goes on much longer.”