Oversight judge seeking progress
OAKLAND >> The federal judge overseeing the Oakland Police Department didn't have much interest Tuesday in discussing Chief Leronne Armstrong, whose firing amid a misconduct scandal has ensured that he will not lift its oversight any time soon.
Instead, Judge William Orrick described how the cover-up of a police sergeant's hit-and-run of a parked vehicle reflected a “cultural inability of the Oakland Police Department … to hold itself and its officers accountable without fear or favor.”
The judge noted how the lack of accountability echoed “the same kind of problems” found in the infamous Riders brutality cases that first brought OPD under federal oversight two decades ago.
“It's this lack of integrity — this culture that plays favorites and protects wrongdoers — that undercuts the foundations of constitutional policing,” Orrick said. “And 20 years of court supervision hasn't solved that problem, which was a major concern with the Riders.”
Still, the judge leaned toward a problem-solving approach at the hearing, the first since Mayor Sheng Thao fired Armstrong in February. Orrick listened intently to positive portrayals of OPD'S improvement over the years, agreeing that the department has made progress, and asked each of the parties present what the court could do to help.
City leaders and the police union have made clear that their priority is to get OPD out from federal oversight — an outcome that depends on the department complying with 45 tasks laid out by Robert Warshaw, the monitor appointed by Orrick to oversee the department.
Warshaw determined in a report last month that the department still is not in compliance with two tasks: handling citizen complaints through internal affairs and maintaining consistent disciplinary processes for officers.
Neither Orrick nor Warshaw has commented on Armstrong, who led an exhaustive campaign to be reinstated and strongly implied at various points that the federal monitor was conspiring against him.
When Jim Chanin, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the Riders case, on Tuesday began criticizing the chief's claims, Orrick interrupted to say, “I don't want to talk about Chief Armstrong.”
“I appreciate your support of the monitor — he has my full support,” Orrick said.
With one of the country's strongest police oversight groups keeping a close eye on its affairs, OPD had been making steady progress toward getting out from under Warshaw's watch by this summer.
But the scandal in January extinguished those hopes, and Armstrong's ensuing public campaign against Warshaw contributed to Thao's decision to fire him.
“When the mayor put him on leave, I thought there was a chance he could get his job back, and I wouldn't have objected to it,” Chanin said in a recent interview. “When he started saying those things about the mayor being a pawn of the monitor, which wasn't true, that was when I decided that he had to go.”
Warshaw's report acknowledged some technical progress made by the department, concluding that “myriad of cultural deficiencies linger” and noting that internal affairs captains had allowed the sergeant to “evade serious discipline” for the hit-andrun incident.
It also cited data showing that Black officers “very clearly experience more severe discipline” than White officers when they fail to accept — or refer to internal affairs — a citizen complaint about their conduct.
Nearly half of women officers in the OPD, meanwhile, said in a survey they had experienced discrimination or harassment at work, and the same percentage attested to witnessing other officers deal with the same.
“When you look at organizational culture and ask how do you change it, it always begins with hiring folks that are aligned with the values of the organization and the community,” Darren Allison, the acting police chief, told Orrick in a pledge that internal accountability would improve.
Thao, along with a deputy city attorney and the police union's lawyer, similarly assured the judge that things would improve and noted that OPD has made strides over the years that police oversight persisted.
The mayor has not been shy about making an end to federal oversight of OPD one of her goals, even as her decision to fire the chief in February appeared to go against what its largest local oversight body — the Oakland Police Commission — had planned.
Orrick on Tuesday took a sympathetic tone to efforts by Thao and others. But he made clear he expects more progress.
“We went into this sustainability period without actually being fully compliant — we did it because everybody was so anxious to transfer (accountability measures) into the hands of the city,” he said. “Turns out we were premature.”