Almost five months after former NFL player Douglas Martin died while in the custody of the Oakland Police Department, his family is still waiting for answers.<\/p>\n
That means waiting for the Oakland police to finish their investigation of the incident that led up to his death.<\/p>\n
But it also means waiting to hear back from medical experts about whether Martin, who played for seven seasons in the NFL from 2012 to 2019, suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma.<\/p>\n
The Oaklandside has learned that Martin\u2019s family has retained civil rights attorney John Burris to represent them.<\/p>\n
The family is holding off, for now, on deciding whether to pursue legal action against OPD or the city, said Burris.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not presuming in this case that legal action needs to be taken until we\u2019ve reviewed all the reports,\u201d Burris said. \u201cWas it a medical condition? CTE? The police? While we wait for the investigation to be completed, the cause of death is still unclear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin, an ex-running back for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Oakland Raiders, died on Oct. 18<\/a> following a \u201cbrief struggle\u201d with OPD officers who were responding to a home break-in in the East Oakland hills. Police said Martin \u201cbecame unresponsive\u201d after being taken into custody. Medics transported him to a nearby hospital, where he later died, according to OPD. He was 36.<\/p>\n In an interview with The Oaklandside, Burris said Martin\u2019s body was sent to Boston University\u2019s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center<\/a> \u201cimmediately after\u201d his death so specialists can evaluate his brain for CTE, which commonly affects athletes in contact sports, military combat veterans, and those who have undergone repeated head trauma. The disease can only be definitively diagnosed after a person has died, according to the Mayo Clinic<\/a>.<\/p>\n The examination of Martin\u2019s brain for CTE has yet to be completed, Burris said.<\/p>\n The family is still awaiting the results of OPD\u2019s investigation into Martin\u2019s death. The department\u2019s Homicide Section and Internal Affairs Bureau, the Police Commission\u2019s Community Police Review Agency, and the Alameda County District Attorney\u2019s Office are investigating the incident.<\/p>\n The family is also waiting for the Alameda County Coroner\u2019s Bureau to complete its autopsy report. According to Burris, the coroner is awaiting a toxicology scan to determine whether Martin had drugs or other substances in his body before he died. Toxicology tests generally take six to eight weeks to be completed, Burris said.<\/p>\n The police department has not yet made public body camera videos from the officers who detained Martin. However, Burris said that he has seen some, but not all, of the officers\u2019 body-worn camera footage of the struggle leading up to Martin\u2019s death.<\/p>\n \u201cI did see a compilation or summary of the videos, but that doesn\u2019t give you enough perspective on whether there was misconduct on the part of the officers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In December, Interim OPD Chief James Beere declined to make public body camera videos<\/a> from the incident, saying that because of an active investigation, the videos are exempt from a state law<\/a> requiring law enforcement agencies to release footage within 45 days of a \u201ccritical incident.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The law, passed in 2018 by the California legislature to increase transparency and trust between the police and communities, defines a critical incident as one in which an officer fired a gun at someone, or an officer\u2019s use of force resulted in great bodily injury or death.<\/p>\n Burris has also reviewed some incident reports showing which officers were present during Martin\u2019s arrest, but details about which of the five officers may have used force are still under investigation. The officers involved in Martin\u2019s arrest have been placed on paid administrative leave per department policy, according to OPD.<\/p>\n The ambiguous timeline for these reports has frustrated Burris.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s disappointing to me that it\u2019s taking this long, but for a high-profile case such as this, it\u2019s not surprising,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The last time he heard from OPD regarding the investigation was earlier this week, but he said he hasn\u2019t heard anything \u201cof critical importance.\u201d<\/p>\n OPD told The Oaklandside on Thursday it has \u201cno new updates\u201d on the investigation.<\/p>\n In an Oct. 20 statement, Martin\u2019s family said he struggled with mental health issues, and his parents had called police that night seeking help.<\/p>\n \u201cFeeling overwhelmed and disoriented, Doug fled his home during the night and entered a neighbor\u2019s residence two doors down, where he was taken into custody by police,\u201d the family said.<\/p>\n “*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost five months after former NFL player Douglas Martin died while in the custody of the Oakland Police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[12292,143,145,144,2452,1492],"class_list":["post-218250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-doug-martin","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218250","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=218250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}