Over the 23 long and arduous years that the Oakland police have been under federal court oversight, many comparisons have been made to describe the city\u2019s progress and stumbles toward reform.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick, the federal judge overseeing the Oakland Police Department\u2019s 23-year federal oversight program, added one more analogy to the pile. He told city leaders that he\u2019d been thinking if anything in the world of sports could compare to the moment Oakland has reached. <\/p>\n
That moment was announced last week when OPD\u2019s federal monitor issued a report saying<\/a> that, for the first time, OPD had complied with all 51 court-mandated reforms stemming from a 2000 police brutality and corruption case.<\/p>\n Finding comparisons to plays, like a touchdown, or scenarios, like being five yards from the goalline in football, unsatisfactory, Orrick zoomed out. <\/p>\n He compared OPD\u2019s progress in finally achieving its court-mandated reforms not to a single play or moment in a game, but rather to building a Major League Baseball franchise.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to have the infrastructure, the building, the leadership,\u201d he said to a packed courtroom inside the San Francisco federal courthouse. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have the guys in the minor league who are coming up to the majors, and then making the hard decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Orrick signaled optimism that Oakland\u2019s leaders, from Mayor Barbara Lee to the city\u2019s Interim Police Chief James Beere, are committed to constitutional policing. <\/p>\n \u201cI hope to see this proud franchise continue,\u201d he said, continuing the baseball metaphor.<\/p>\n During Wednesday\u2019s light-hearted hearing, OPD leaders, city staff, attorneys, and residents also appeared hopeful that the department\u2019s federal oversight is nearing its end. But many acknowledged there\u2019s still work left to do to ensure OPD remains compliant with the tasks mandated by the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, the deal Oakland struck in 2003 to settle the Riders lawsuit.<\/p>\n The Riders scandal<\/a> involved a group of officers accused of beating, kidnapping, and planting drugs on West Oakland residents. The ensuing lawsuit resulted in a Negotiated Settlement Agreement, under which OPD would need to complete dozens of tasks ranging from reporting uses of force to reducing racial disparities in traffic stops, among others.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one can say, \u2018Mission accomplished,\u2019 but I do congratulate OPD and the city for getting this far,\u201d Orrick said.<\/p>\n \u201cI am close to finishing my job here,\u201d said Jim Chanin, one of the civil rights attorneys who filed the Riders lawsuit in 2000 and has helped oversee OPD\u2019s reforms.<\/p>\n Citing the Martin Luther King Jr. quote, \u201cThe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,\u201d Chanin told the court that he hopes his efforts over the past 23 years have forwarded OPD\u2019s progress toward constitutional policing.<\/p>\n \u201cI started this case as a middle-aged man, and I\u2019ll be leaving as a senior citizen,\u201d said John Burris, Chanin\u2019s co-counsel.<\/p>\n Both attorneys stopped short of saying the case should be closed. Chanin said he was still concerned about the number of misconduct complaints officers made against their colleagues and the racial disparities among sustained complaints.<\/p>\n At the last hearing in January, Orrick said he, too, was concerned about OPD\u2019s 2024 officer discipline report<\/a>, which showed that Black and Hispanic officers accused by their colleagues of wrongdoing were faulted at higher rates than white officers. The department, at Orrick\u2019s request, submitted preliminary officer discipline data for 2025 showing that sustained misconduct rates increased across all races except Black officers, which stayed the same.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way officers treat each other cannot help make me feel that this disparate treatment can be reflected in the way Oakland citizens and visitors are treated on the streets,\u201d Chanin said at Wednesday\u2019s hearing, drawing parallels between the disparity report and the Riders case in which all but one of the 119 plaintiffs were Black.<\/p>\n Burris said he wanted more time to determine whether OPD is in full compliance with the reforms, particularly those related to reducing racial inequities in traffic stops and tracking OPD\u2019s progress in doing so. Many of the 51 tasks haven\u2019t been assessed in years because they were completed long ago.<\/p>\n The department\u2019s analysis comparing 2024 and 2025 officer discipline data is expected to be completed in June, according to Warshaw\u2019s most recent report to Orrick.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Warshaw wrote that the preliminary findings \u201care trending in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhile there is still work to be done, the Mayor\u2019s leadership and the Department\u2019s commitment to addressing these three Tasks have culminated in success,\u201d wrote Warshaw, whose monitoring team determines OPD\u2019s compliance through quarterly visits, audits, and progress reports.<\/p>\n