NEWS > 09 December 2005

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Inside Bay Area - Oakland, CA,
09 December 2005

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Cops get 3 months to enact ref

SAN FRANCISCO � The Oakland Police Department has three months to correct the lingering problems with its effort to implement the reforms required by the settlement of the Riders police-misconduct scandal, a federal judge said Thursday.
While U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson proclaimed himself pleased with the progress of the department, he vowed not to hesitate to impose sanctions if the city fails to meet the deadline.

"The department may have truly turned a corner, but I have remaining concerns about the number and depth of deficiencies," Henderson said. "Serious tasks remain incomplete."

City officials promised to abide by the judge's order and apologized that the necessary changes to the department's use-of-force and discipline policies, as well as a computerized system to track complaints against officers, were 18 months overdue.

"We hope we have convinced the court that we have a plan to address those areas of concern and look forward to the next court date, when we will be more successful," Chief Wayne Tucker said.

Henderson called the finding by the court-appointed monitoring team keeping track of the reform effort that officers frequently fail to report misconduct by other officers and suffer retaliation when they do "totally unacceptable."

Vicki Laden, a supervising city attorney, said she was very alarmed by the report, which she said struck at the heart of the effort to reform the department and vowed to immediately address the problems.

While senior commanders will be trained on the department's new discipline policy Saturday, it will take several weeks to train the entire department. Once the revised use-of-forcepolicy is approved by the monitoring team, training will begin immediately, officials said.

But the computerized system, which is designed to help reduce misconduct by alerting commanders to problem officers early, will not be in place until the end of 2006 � leaving just 12 months for the monitoring team to audit the system and verify that it is working before the settlement agreement expires.
An interim system is currently in place.

Concerns over the short time frame were voiced by John Burris and James Chanin, the two attorneys representing the 119 plaintiffs who filed a class-action lawsuit against the city alleging they were beaten and framed by dozens of officers.

In response, Henderson said he would be willing to extend the agreement to allow for such oversight.

The city likely would oppose an extension.

"I'm here," Henderson said. "I'm not going away."

In addition to agreeing to reform the department, the city also paid $10.5 million to the plaintiffs.

After two criminal trials stemming from the Riders scandal, one former officer was acquitted, and a jury failed to reach a decision on charges against two other former officers. A fourth is a fugitive.

Henderson said he was "much encouraged" by the department's extensive efforts to remake the Internal Affairs Division. The judge also lauded Tucker, saying he was delighted with the integrity and enthusiasm the chief brought to the department.

City officials told the judge an outside investigation into whether officers should be disciplined after several hundred complaints of police misconduct were not investigated will be completed by the end of February.

"There must be accountability and sanctions for officers who don't do what they are supposed to do," Henderson said.

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Article sourced from

Inside Bay Area - Oakland, CA,09 December 2005

Cops get 3 months to enact ref

EiP Comments:

Inside Bay Area - Oakland, CA,
09 December 2005