{"id":478827,"date":"2026-09-29T01:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T01:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/478827\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T01:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T01:20:08","slug":"ahead-of-key-oakland-police-department-hearing-new-proposal-asks-for-one-year-extension-to-federal-court-oversight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/478827\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahead of key Oakland Police Department hearing, new proposal asks for one-year extension to federal court oversight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahead of a critical court hearing Tuesday afternoon<\/a>, the two attorneys who fought for Oakland\u2019s police force to be overseen by federal judge for the last 23 years say they want that oversight to continue \u2014 albeit, with a significant catch.<\/p>\n

The attorneys, John Burris and Jim Chanin, formally asked a federal judge to continue overseeing the Oakland Police Department for one more year in a new, still-to-be-determined model. Critically, however, Burris and Chanin said the department has improved so much from the early-2000s Riders police brutality scandal that the two attorneys would have \u201cno future role in the case,\u201d and instead leave that oversight to the court\u2019s whims.<\/p>\n

The suggestion \u2014 outlined last week in a letter to the court by the two longtime civil rights attorneys \u2014 comes ahead of a key hearing Tuesday before U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick, who must decide whether to extend his oversight of the department or relinquish control to Oakland\u2019s city leaders for the first time since 2003.<\/p>\n

At the most recent hearing in May<\/a>, Orrick expressed optimism that the city could finally end 20-plus years of oversight<\/a> at this week\u2019s hearing. In the process, he personally lauded Mayor Barbara Lee by saying no prior city leaders had \u201cdemonstrated an awareness and holistic understanding of what we need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet a potential complication emerged earlier this month<\/a> when the department\u2019s federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, said the agency had once again fallen out of compliance on a key benchmark for investigating complaints against its officers.<\/p>\n

During the first three months of 2026, the most recent term available, the department completed 83% of its most serious internal affairs investigations within the required six-month timeframe, Warshaw reported. The mark \u2014 signifying 77 completed cases out of 93 tracked by the monitor \u2014 was a couple percentage points shy of the 85% rate<\/a> mandated by the landmark Riders consent decree that has controlled the agency since 2003.<\/p>\n

In their letter last week, Chanin and Burris called the slip-up \u201cincomprehensible and bitterly disappointing,\u201d adding that the city \u201ccould and should have marshalled every available resource\u201d to show it could remain in compliance. \u201cTheir inability to do so while everyone is paying attention and rooting for their success is an enormous let down,\u201d the attorneys wrote.<\/p>\n

Even so, the attorneys said that \u201ccommand staff at OPD have worked aggressively to attain compliance,\u201d and that \u201cOPD today bears virtually no resemblance to the OPD prior to 2000.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, Chanin and Burris suggested the current court-monitored consent decree \u2014 known as the Negotiated Settlement Agreement \u2014 \u201cend in its present form,\u201d with the two attorneys bowing out of the proceedings.<\/p>\n

In its place, the court could \u201cretain jurisdiction for one year,\u201d during which OPD and the Oakland Police Commission would report to Orrick \u201cto the extent the court wishes.\u201d At the end of that year, the police commission would issue a report to Orrick that includes \u201cwhatever information the parties and the court would deem appropriate,\u201d after which time court oversight would end.<\/p>\n

In their own statement to the court, the Oakland City Attorney Ryan Richardson and Special Counsel Brigid S. Martin struck back at the proposal \u2014 flatly calling it \u201cnot workable.\u201d Doing so, they argued, \u201ccreates a framework that no longer resembles litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the city\u2019s attorneys asked Orrick to simply end court oversight Tuesday, without any new conditions.<\/p>\n

\u201cRecognizing that constitutional policing is a daily obligation rather than a single milestone, the city remains committed to ongoing work to sustain and build on the foundation it has create,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

The proposal comes at a perilous time for Oakland, which has been working for decades to emerge from under federal court oversight in the wake of the notorious Riders scandal. Four officers were accused of going rogue, beating West Oakland residents and planting drugs on them, all while filing falsified police reports. In 2003, a class-action lawsuit resulted in a $10.9 million payout to scores of people who claimed abuse at the hands of those Oakland cops.<\/p>\n

Since then, a federal judge has overseen the department through an appointed monitor, Warshaw, who has long drawn the ire of a rotating cast of mayors and police chiefs who questioned his financial motivations for staying on the case. All of them fought unsuccessfully to end the oversight arrangement \u2014 coming close in 2016 and 2022, only to watch the department once again become embroiled in scandal.<\/p>\n

Opinions vary on whether the court oversight should end.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Orrick, the advocacy group Coalition for Police Accountability argued either for the current oversight arrangement to either continue, or for \u201ca stipulation by the parties that sufficient funding will be made available for effective independent civilian oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n

In doing so, the group chastised the police department for having recently backslid on its obligations, highlighting how \u201cOPD did not bother to prioritize compliance at such a critical juncture,\u201d while suggesting that \u201cit seems naively optimistic to expect more energetic efforts if they are left to answer to no one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the bare minimum, maintaining jurisdiction enables intervention if necessary,\u201d the group argued in its letter, signed by Millie Cleveland, chair of its steering committee, and Larry C. White, who helped author Measures LL and S1.<\/p>\n

Conversely, a group calling itself Safe Oakland penned its own letter pushing Orrick to end his oversight altogether, suggesting that the agency\u2019s reforms have become a part of its very fabric. The group\u2019s leaders include Cynthia Adams, president of the NAACP Oakland Branch; LeRonne Armstrong, a former Oakland police chief; and Carl Chan, chair of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce Foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor twenty-three years, a federal court has held Oakland to the standard of constitutional policing,\u201d the group said in its letter. \u201cThe time has come for Oakland to hold itself to that standard, and for the community to share in that responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of a critical court hearing Tuesday afternoon, the two attorneys who fought for Oakland\u2019s police force to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,861,7,723,138,332,1529,181,23,100,143,145,144,407,408,385],"class_list":["post-478827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-bay-area","tag-bay-area-crime","tag-california","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-east-bay","tag-east-bay-crime","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police-department","tag-police-accountability","tag-regional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478827","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=478827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}