Police Department poised to end two decades of federal oversight

OAKLAND >> A federal judge Wednesday signaled he soon may release the Oakland Police Department from the federal oversight it has been subjected to for almost two decades since four officers known as “the Riders” were accused of brutalizing people on the streets.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick said he intends to issue an order outlining how the Police Department can prove during a one-year “sustainability period” that it'll implement court-ordered reforms over the long term.

“I will be an extraordinarily happy person if a year and a bit from now, we'll be able to close out this part of Oakland's history,” Orrick said. During the hearing that preceded his remarks, police officials, the city's lawyers, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and the attorneys who filed the civil rights case almost 20 years ago all agreed that the department has made significant progress in reforming itself.

The Riders case culminated in a 2003 settlement agreement that required the Police Department to ultimately enact 52 reform measures and report its progress along the way to an outside monitor and a federal judge. The measures include documenting use-of-force incidents, investigating complaints of officer misconduct and eliminating racial disparities within the force.

Orrick found the department now has complied with all except one of the reform measures: It still must discipline officers consistently, after a report determined Black officers are disciplined more often than White officers in some department investigations.

John Burris and Jim Chanin, the civil rights attorneys who filed the lawsuit in the Riders case, said they support letting the department show it can reach full compliance over the next six months.

“What we are looking for is a department that can identify problems and major scandals if and when they occur and will not leave them to someone else,” Chanin said.

Burris said he hopes the department is at a place where it has a system of “checks and balances” to deal with problems as they arise. “What I'm concerned about — this is no secret — is how people are treated in the streets,” he said.

In a joint statement filed with the court, Burris, Chanin and the city's attorneys said they hope the federal monitor who has been overseeing the department will work with the police commission's recently hired inspector general to share best practices for going forward.

Police Chief Leronne Armstrong and other police leaders expressed optimism that they can continue the reforms.

Schaaf agreed, though she acknowledged the city has more work to do.

“We believe it represents an important milestone in our continual journey in being the most progressive and professional police department in America,” Schaaf told the judge. “Oakland leaders are united in commitment to this continual journey.”

The Riders criminal case, the longest in Alameda County history, ended in dropped charges against three officers — Clarence “Chuck” Mabanag, Matt Hornung and Jude Siapno — after two juries failed to reach verdicts. A fourth officer and the alleged ringleader, Frank Vasquez, fled before the criminal trials and remains a fugitive. Authorities believe Vasquez may have left the country.

The alleged abuses, which included beating West Oakland residents, planting drugs on them and falsifying arrest reports, came to light after a rookie officer resigned and reported his former co-workers' activities to the Police Department's Internal Affairs Division.

In 2003, the city settled the class-action lawsuit by paying out almost $11 million to 119 people who claimed they were brutalized by police and paid one of the officers a $1.5 million settlement for wrongful termination.

Although the settlement was expected to end within five years, it stayed in effect until now as police resistance to some of the reform measures and a series of scandals that rocked the department impeded progress. The settlement has outlasted numerous police chiefs and political leaders, sometimes creeping toward compliance but never quite meeting the full checklist of reform goals.

In 2020, the city's police commission fired thenPolice Chief Anne Kirkpatrick for allegedly allowing the department to slide back into bad habits. When he took over the department in February 2021, Armstrong said one of his priorities would be to see all the reform measures enacted within a year.

The Police Department came close to seeing the court decree lifted in August, when Burris and Chanin told Orrick they believed it had made substantial reforms under Armstrong's leadership. Orrick generally agreed but said he was looking for more improvements in reducing racial disparities over who gets stopped by police, recruiting officers who “reflect Oakland's diversity,” investigating officers' use of force, processing misconduct complaints and imposing discipline consistently and equitably across the force.

Orrick said then that another key in determining how long the federal oversight continues was how the department would deal with an outside company's probe of officers involved in an Instagram account that featured racist and misogynist posts and mocked department policies governing brutality and use of force.

A month later, the company released an investigative report that criticized the Police Department for not initiating its own investigation of the scandal until months after learning about it.

Brigid Martin, an attorney for the city working with the police, said the department had published some of the new policies and orders that have been developed as a result of that investigation and was working to implement the others.

Orrick expressed both disappointment with the lack of full compliance by the department and hope that it will be able to accomplish it by the next hearing in September.

“I did expect total compliance with everything, so it's disappointing,” he said. But he thanked Armstrong, Schaaf and the other city leaders for their efforts, adding that sustaining the reforms will “require the ongoing strong commitment that has been shown by everyone who has spoken today.”