seventeenth-quarterly-report.pdf

Seventeenth Quarterly Report of the Independent Monitor for the Oakland Police Department April 28, 2014 Page 33 Discussion: As previously reported, directives relevant to this Task include: Departmental General Order A- 19, Supervisory Span of Control, issued on July 26, 2006; Departmental General Order D-13, Assignment to Acting Higher Rank or Classification, issued on June 17, 1999; and Special Order 8435, Acting Sergeant Selection Process, issued on July 26, 2006. As of the publication of this report, the Department is revising its acting sergeants policy; we will discuss this further in our next report. As the Department has trained at least 95% of relevant personnel on the above-listed policies, we find OPD in continued Phase 1 compliance with this Task. Task 20.1 requires that sufficient primary sergeants be assigned at the draw board/master detail level to permit one primary sergeant for every eight officers under normal conditions (compliance standard: Yes/No). During the third reporting period, we were granted access to Telestaff, the Department’s electronic scheduling system. Telestaff continues to function as a “master detail” that is updated at least daily as loans, transfers, and other personnel changes alter supervisory assignments. OPD remains in compliance with Task 20.1. Task 20.2 requires that relevant squads – that is, Patrol squads, Problem-Solving Officer units, Crime Reduction Teams, Gang/Guns Investigation Task Force, and Foot Patrol – are actually supervised by their primary, or assigned, supervisors (compliance standard: 85%). OPD uses a tiered system of supervision in the Bureau of Field Operations (BFO). Under this system, each squad is assigned one primary sergeant and one relief sergeant. In the absence of both the squad’s primary and relief sergeants, the squad is supervised by one of four “Tier 2 relief supervisors.” To assess Tasks 20.2 and 20.3, we examine the supervision of each squad on each day of the reporting period, as opposed to the supervision of patrol squads on only a random sample of days. We consider supervision by both primary sergeants and relief sergeants as in compliance for this subtask. We do not, however, consider OPD’s “certified acting sergeants” to be legitimate supervisors for this purpose – even if, according to the Department, these individuals were “assigned” as primary or relief sergeants for a particular squad. Since the beginning of our tenure, we have expressed our concerns regarding the Department’s practice of certified acting sergeants. Sergeants are the building blocks of a police department’s supervisory structure – they respond to scenes, handle complaints from citizens, approve arrests made by officers, and review and write reports that are eventually sent up the chain of command. Officers must know who they report to; the consistency of supervision makes a police organization effective and increases officers’ accountability to their department, and the department’s accountability to the community it serves. A so-called acting sergeant who is assigned to supervise a squad of officers does not provide the mentoring, training, guidance, and intervention that his/her squad needs. Case3:00-cv-04599-TEH Document979 Filed04/28/14 Page34 of 88