The Oakland police will soon be in receivership(PDF).
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, effective immediately, the Chief must regularly consult with the monitor on all major decisions that may impact compliance with the NSA. Including but not limited to:
Changes in policies, the manual rules,or standard operating procedures;
personnel decisions, including promotions, engagement of consultants, and disciplinary actions in Class I misconduct cases;
tactical initiatives that may have a direct or indirect impact on the NSA; and procurement of equipment, including software, that is intended for the purpose of NSA compliance
After years and years of being studied for their violations of basic civil rights a judge finally does the right thing and makes the Oakland Police accountable to the public.
After killing, injuring, and maiming many citizens in their care the Oakland police will no longer be able to cover up their misdeeds through incompetent or sloppy investigations or through the blue wall of silence. Officers that refuse to testify truthfully will hopefully be held accountable.
What would I like to see? Permanently on and tamper proof audio and video recording devices installed on the officers themselves. They are public servants and what we have seen them do in our name is hideous.
Yes, those were the Almeda sheriffs Department but they were being supervised by Oakland police and were there at the Oakland Police's' request.
The problems with the Oakland Police has garnered the attention of the world.
A federal judge has granted significant decision-making powers to the monitors charged with overseeing court-ordered reforms at the Oakland Police Department, a move that brings the department one step closer to a federal takeover.
In an order issued late Tuesday, Judge Thelton Henderson wrote that he was in “disbelief” that the department had yet to finish the reforms, adding that the department remains “woefully behind its peers around the state and nation,” and that “words and promises are not enough.”
The department has been under court monitoring since 2003, when the city settled a civil suit over the Riders case, in which several officers were accused of planting drugs on suspects in East Oakland. As a result of the settlement agreement, the department agreed to implement a series of misconduct-related reforms, including an overhaul of disciplinary procedures and use-of-force reporting. But two missed deadlines later, the department has yet to complete the tasks.
Hopefully stories like these will be a thing of the past:
It began with a trifle: Two traffic officers, Sergeant Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege, pulled over 26-year-old parolee Lovelle Mixon for running a traffic light. After Dunakin radioed in Mixon’s driver’s license and learned it was fake, both officers approached the car with the intent of making an arrest. Mixon leaned out of his window and, according to a Board of Inquiry report, “methodically shot each officer twice.” As the officers lay wounded on the sidewalk, Mixon crawled out of the window of his car, stood over them and shot each in the back.
Over the next two hours, roughly 200 officers from several police agencies tore through East Oakland on a manhunt. The magnitude of the response and the absence of OPD brass from the field for 90 minutes would prove critical in shaping the remarkable carnage that followed—three more people killed and two seriously wounded. The lack of senior personnel led to a situation where, as the Board of Inquiry put it, “many responders self-assign[ed] their own activity.” At a moment when OPD’s response needed to be orderly and focused, officers operated without supervision and on their own initiative. One of those officers was Sgt. Patrick Gonzales.
Gonzales would emerge from the day’s dramatic violence as a department hero; some colleagues nicknamed him “Audie Murphy,” the most decorated American soldier of World War II. But to many in the black and Latino neighborhoods Gonzales polices today, he has long been known as something else: a loose cannon. During Gonzales’ 13-year career he has shot four suspects, three fatally. “He’s left a trail of victims in his wake,” says Cathy King, the mother of one of Gonzales’ shooting victims, “but he’s [considered] a valued member of the police department.”