fourteenth-report.pdf

Independent Monitoring Team Fourteenth Status Report of the Independent Monitor Delphine Allen, et al., v. City of Oakland, et al. July 31, 2009 to January 13, 2010 Page 7 We believe that overall, these types of incidents are relatively rare (although for some officers we believe they are all too frequent). The fact that they are the subject of complaints indicates that they have not become accepted or expected practice. Moreover, we have witnessed and read many instances of officers going beyond what was required to ensure that they respected the dignity and rights of individuals as they carried out their law enforcement duties. Nonetheless, the ripple effect of unnecessarily demeaning or callous acts, combined with routine derogatory profanity by some officers and other unprofessional behavior, undercuts efforts to forge alliances in the community and results in a high number of complaints that requires the attention of scare resources to resolve. To stop this unhelpful and unnecessary behavior, OPD needs to provide focused training to officers on how to interact with the public, take corrective action where necessary, and sustain complaints of such misconduct where the evidence shows that it occurred. Even with the current Chief, who seems to understand the critical importance of professionalism and respectful policing, completing this fundamental change in culture and attitude will be difficult. But it is necessary for OPD to come into compliance with the remaining requirements of the Settlement Agreement and, more importantly, to appropriately protect the lives, rights, dignity, and property of the community it serves. IV. COMPLIANCE OVERVIEW Our discussion of OPD’s compliance efforts and status is organized around the 12 Settlement Agreement sections from which OPD derived 51 “tasks.” At the start of the monitoring process, the IMT reviewed OPD’s task designations, found the task division to be workable, and in the interests of clarity and consistency, adopted the same designations.1 The 12 Settlement Agreement areas around which we organize our report are: 1) Internal Affairs Division; 2) Supervisory Span of Control and Unity of Command; 3) Use of Force Reporting; 4) Reporting Procedures; 5) Personnel Assessment System (PAS); 6) Field Training Officer Program; 7) Academy and In-Service Training; 8) Personnel Practices; 9) Community Policing Plan; 10) Departmental Management and Annual Management Report; 11) Independent Monitoring; and 12) Compliance Unit. As of the eighth reporting period, all 51 Settlement Agreement tasks became due. As noted in our previous reports, OPD must complete each of three steps (policy, training, and actual practice) to achieve compliance with a Settlement Agreement requirement. The following chart lists the 51 tasks and summarizes the current state of compliance. Every task has been assessed, thus a lack of any checkmark indicates that the task has not been found in compliance or is no longer in compliance. 1 Section XV of the Settlement Agreement imposes additional obligations on the Parties (e.g., semi-annual status reports to the Court and meet-and-confer obligations). Because the IMT agrees with OPD that there is no need to “task” these obligations, they are not included in the description of compliance efforts and status. Nevertheless, failure to abide by these provisions would, of course, constitute a violation of the Settlement Agreement.