Orrick said he was particularly concerned about the racial disparities found in internal affairs investigations outcomes and officer discipline. A recent report<\/a> examining OPD\u2019s internal investigations showed that in 2024, only four white officers were \u201csustained\u201d \u2014 meaning there was sufficient evidence to show they did engage in the alleged misconduct, and that it violated department rules \u2014 compared to 23 Black and 25 Hispanic officers. For internally generated cases, or accusations of misconduct reported by an OPD employee against another, white officers had no sustained findings, compared to 47% of Black and 24% of Hispanic officers.<\/p>\n \u201cInequities in the department\u2019s disciplinary system call into question inequities in the delivery of police services to the community,\u201d Orrick said.<\/p>\n John Burris, one of the civil rights attorneys who sued the city and OPD in the 2000 case resulting in the longest police reform effort in the U.S., echoed Orrick. \u201cHow you treat the officers within the department may reflect how you treat the people in the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Orrick asked the city and OPD to submit internal investigations data from 2025 before the next court hearing, scheduled for May 27.<\/p>\n Some Oaklanders have been pushing to end court oversight<\/p>\n Ahead of Tuesday\u2019s hearing, a group calling itself \u201cOakland Neighbors for Oakland\u2019s Future\u201d submitted a petition<\/a> to the court imploring Orrick to end federal oversight. Rajni Mandal, a public safety activist who has written critically of the federal monitor<\/a>, wrote in the group\u2019s letter that Oakland should be focused on \u201cstrengthening\u201d its police oversight institutions, such as the Police Commission and the Community Police Review Agency, rather than indefinitely remaining under federal oversight.<\/p>\n \u201cProlonged federal oversight continues to divert millions of dollars each year away from urgent community needs such as housing, youth programs, violence prevention, and neighborhood safety,\u201d Mandal wrote. \u201cAfter more than two decades, the costs of continued monitoring now outweigh the benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n Addressing the petition signers, Orrick said he agreed that city leaders and the Police Commission \u2014 not the court \u2014 should hold the police department accountable, but that the city hasn\u2019t crossed that threshold yet.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a reason the city agreed 25 years ago to achieve 100% compliance with the NSA,\u201d said Orrick, \u201cand that is a recognition of the paramount importance of constitutional policing and the destructive legacy of racism, corruption, brutality, and cultural rot exemplified by the Riders.\u201d<\/p>\n The Riders was a group of Oakland police officers<\/a> in the 1990s who were accused of kidnapping, torturing, and planting drugs on dozens of people.<\/p>\n Some argue that court oversight has actually been good for Oakland\u2019s finances. In past decades, the city paid out tens of millions of dollars to victims of police violence. In recent years, that liability has plummeted, according to KTVU<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI contend that we have saved the city money by the low amount of payouts,\u201d said Jim Chanin, the other civil rights attorney representing the plaintiffs in the Riders case, in an interview with The Oaklandside.\u00a0<\/p>\n Orrick appears enthusiastic about Mayor Lee\u2019s effort to institutionalize constitutional policing Last year, Lee brought back Michelle Phillips, Oakland\u2019s inaugural inspector general who left the city after a year<\/a> to work in Minneapolis, as an assistant city administrator. Over the past month and a half, Phillips has been the city\u2019s interim constitutional policing administrator, a role she described at Tuesday\u2019s hearing as being embedded in the Police Administration Building while having direct lines of communication with the mayor and the city administrator.<\/p>\n Phillips told Orrick that she\u2019s seen \u201ca transformation of the culture\u201d within OPD. \u201cIt is very encouraging for me to see on the outside looking in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Interim Police Chief James Beere, who was appointed by Lee last month after former Chief Floyd Mitchell resigned<\/a>, told Orrick the biggest obstacle to achieving full compliance with the NSA is OPD\u2019s understaffing. The department is currently budgeted for 678 officers, but its operational strength \u2014 meaning the number of officers able to work and not on some type of leave \u2014 has hovered recently around 500. At the most recent Police Commission meeting, Lisa Ausmus, deputy chief of OPD\u2019s Bureau of Risk Management, said 109 officers are currently on some type of leave, whether that be administrative or medical.<\/p>\n To address staffing issues, Beere said he\u2019s considering transferring more officers to OPD\u2019s Internal Affairs Bureau, which investigates allegations of officer misconduct, and training more officers to become acting sergeants.<\/p>\n Chanin told Orrick he was \u201cexcited\u201d about the leadership changes, but voiced concerns about whether the culture of the department has truly changed. He mentioned high-ranking OPD supervisors\u2019 mishandling of a case involving Phong Tran<\/a>, a homicide investigator who was charged with bribing a witness and committing perjury and currently faces trial in superior court<\/a>. After two murder convictions were overturned because of Tran\u2019s actions, OPD opened an internal investigation. But the department, including command staff, cleared Tran of wrongdoing, allowing him to return to the job. Since then, a third person in another of Tran\u2019s cases has been freed from prison<\/a> because of Tran\u2019s misconduct.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one\u2019s perfect, but of this size and magnitude, it\u2019s unacceptable, and it can\u2019t happen anymore, as it has over and over again,\u201d Chanin said.<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oakland Police Department appears near the finish line in its 23-year federal court oversight program \u2014 but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[74580,143,145,144,2452,75629,1492],"class_list":["post-153612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-negotiated-settlement-agreement","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police","tag-opd-nsa","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Interim-OPD-Chief-James-Beere.jpg\")
Interim OPD Chief James Beere, center, discusses Oakland\u2019s drop in violent crime at a press conference at Oakland City Hall on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. Credit: Roselyn Romero\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n