Oakland police data on force questioned
Overseer’s review of files finds some reports have ‘troubling’ omissions
An independent monitor overseeing Oakland Police Department reforms called into question the agency’s celebrated decline in use-of-force incidents, saying in a report Thursday that officers on several occasions had failed to properly disclose that they had pointed their guns at subjects or gotten physical with them.
The court-appointed monitor, Robert Warshaw, said he discovered the undocumented uses of force by reviewing police files and watching body-camera footage in a sampling of arrests. He called the omissions “troubling” and opened a wider investigation, declaring he would look into a larger batch of arrests.
The probe could add yet another complication to the city’s 15-year-old reform program that stemmed from the Riders scandal, in which a group of officers in West Oakland was accused of beating residents and planting evidence. A civil settlement in the case laid out dozens of tasks that had to be completed before the force could emerge from federal court oversight.
“It is important to note that supervisors approved these reports — even though there
were no accompanying force reports,” wrote Warshaw, a former police chief of Rochester, N.Y., and deputy drug czar under President Bill Clinton. “While to date, we have found no instance where the force used was unwarranted or inconsistent with policy, the actions described above are troubling and appear to depict reportable force that was, in fact, not reported. This would indicate a significant supervisory failure.”
Officer Johnna Watson, a Police Department spokeswoman, said she was unable to comment on Warshaw’s report because it involved personnel-related subjects. She said the department is in communication with the monitoring team.
Justin Berton, a spokesman for Mayor Libby Schaaf, said she welcomed the “intensive and ongoing review” to “ensure the highest level of police practices and accountability.”
“Public trust in the accuracy of data — particularly around use of force — is vital to the community-police relationship,” Berton said in an email.
The drop in use-of-force incidents in Oakland has been dramatic, gaining acclaim inside and outside the city. Excessive use of force had long been a problem for the department, leading to community distrust and costing taxpayers millions of dollars to pay for civil rights lawsuits as well as monitors and consultants.
Use-of-force reports fell 75 percent from 2012 to 2017, records show, and are on pace to decrease 34 percent this year. Officer-involved shootings have dropped in recent years, too, with none occurring in 2016, one in 2017 and one this year.
City officials have credited better training, new policies and the use of body cameras during confrontations. Schaaf said on Twitter in July, “Oakland’s steep drops in violent crime and use of force are no coincidence ... Building policecommunity trust is at (the) core of our success.”
But Warshaw said the numbers need another look. In his latest report, he said he had wanted to provide “validation” of the dramatic decline, so he analyzed arrest data over a three-month period this year and reviewed police files “for cases including assault on an officer, disorderly conduct, and obstructing or resisting arrest” in which uses of force were not documented.
“In our experience,” Warshaw wrote, “these offenses have a high probability of involving a use of force.”
In looking at 29 cases, Warshaw said, he found six cases that raised concern. He said body-camera videos showed three instances of officers pointing their guns directly at suspects and four instances of officers deploying physical force to take people into custody. All are considered uses of force that should be reported.
“In light of this preliminary finding,” Warshaw said, “we are currently reviewing the second-quarter 2018 reports for designated offenses that have no accompanying force report to determine the need to view related video data to consider whether force was used but not reported.”
The Police Department’s inspector general, whose office provides audits and analysis of the agency, has also opened an internal review to see whether the reporting of force is adequate, Warshaw said.
The report also noted that, last month, three high-ranking commanders concluded that a group of officers acted within department rules when they broke the arm of a man accused of jaywalking and then resisting arrest. Warshaw said the conclusion was wrong.
In the encounter, officers stopped a man who jaywalked early one morning, according to Warshaw’s report, which did not say when or where the incident happened. After the man declined to show officers identification and tried to walk away, the officers attempted to take him into custody.
“As officers attempted to arrest the individual, he resisted, which resulted in the officers’ application of force, including an arm bar hammerlock, a bent wrist hold, and a leg sweep. The force resulted in injuries to the individual, including a broken arm,” Warshaw said.
A “force review board,” composed of three commandlevel police officialswho examined the case, said the use of force was consistent with policy. Warshaw said that while force review boards have previously been “detailed and thorough,” this one did not “meet high investigative standards.”
The review board’s findings were not well grounded in a constitutional analysis of what is “objectively reasonable” force or the professional opinions of subject-matter experts, Warshaw said.
The department has not emerged from federal court oversight because Warshaw deems it to be out of compliance with a few remaining reforms, such as properly analyzing traffic stop data for racial disparities and putting into place a risk-assessment system designed to flag problem officers.