{"id":424903,"date":"2026-08-05T23:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424903\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:08:08","slug":"oakland-police-department-facing-public-records-suit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/424903\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland Police Department facing public records suit"},"content":{"rendered":"

On July 19, Robbie Powelson,<\/a> an affiliate of Berkeley\u2019s Criminal Law and Justice Center, filed a public records request<\/a> to the Oakland Police Department. He was requesting information related to an officer involved shooting that took place<\/a> nearly a week earlier.<\/p>\n

Under the California Public Records Act<\/a> (or CPRA), government agencies have 10 days to answer inquiries. But OPD closed Powelson\u2019s request just nine days later, without providing anything. Its stated reason: \u201crecords responsive to your request are currently part of an active investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Powelson is suing OPD for allegedly violating the CPRA. He told the Oaklandside<\/a> that when an agency withholds records during an active investigation, it has to explain why it\u2019s in the public interest to do so. Powelson is arguing OPD failed to provide such a justification.<\/p>\n

Notably, the name of the man who died in last month\u2019s incident is part of what is being withheld. Powelson also told the Oaklandside that the man who was shot could have been unhoused.<\/p>\n

“For them to withhold these documents is really problematic,” said Powelson. “It can be very challenging to find people’s names and get information out because often people in that situation have a lot of estrangement.”<\/p>\n

On September 17, Powelson and Oakland Police will have to go before a California state court to discuss the case.<\/p>\n

OPD did not respond to KALW\u2019s request for comment in time for broadcast. In an emailed statement to KALW, OPD said “the Oakland Police Department does not comment on pending litigation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On July 19, Robbie Powelson, an affiliate of Berkeley\u2019s Criminal Law and Justice Center, filed a public records…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-424903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424903","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=424903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424903\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}