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 63 which there is apparent evidence of criminal misconduct by a member/employee to the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. b. Status of Compliance and Assessment The compliance deadline for this task occurred in July 2004. OPD initially revised General Order M-4, Coordination of Criminal Investigations, to incorporate the requirements of this task. The IMT reviewed M-4 and determined that the draft did not comply with the Settlement Agreement because it did not provide for the required reporting to the District Attorney’s Office. In response, OPD drafted a separate policy, General Order M-4.1, Criminal Investigations Involving Active Law Enforcement, or a Member or Employee of the Department, focusing on the handling of criminal misconduct investigations. During the eighth reporting period, the IMT determined that General Order M-4.1 adequately incorporates this Settlement Agreement Requirement. OPD published this policy on April 21, 2006. The IMT has verified that OPD has trained its personnel on this policy. During the tenth reporting period, the IMT conducted an audit of actual practice compliance with this task. We found that OPD was not yet in compliance with Task 28. A discussion of our audit findings is included in our tenth status report. The compliance standard for this task remains at the 95% level. During the eleventh reporting period, the Parties agreed that OPD will be considered in compliance with this task if it notifies the District Attorney within 24 hours of the Bureau of Investigations (BOI) Deputy Chief learning of criminal misconduct by an OPD member. Previously, the BOI Deputy Chief was required to inform the District Attorney within two hours. During the thirteenth reporting period, we conducted another actual practice assessment of OPD’s compliance with Task 28. In our previous audit of Task 28, we found that OPD did not yet have in place a system for ensuring timely notification of criminal misconduct. As a result, many notifications were made too late to permit OPD and outside agencies to coordinate their efforts from the outset, and coordination of interviews and other investigative steps was lacking. This impacted the quality of these cases. We found these problems were due in large part to a lack of knowledge about OPD’s own policies in this area, or the reasons for those policies, even among those responsible for carrying out the policies. OPD subsequently placed BOI responsibility for these responsibilities at a higher level. As a result, BOI personnel and three consecutive IAD commanders successfully implemented and maintained systems for ensuring that instances of apparent criminal misconduct are, for the most part, identified early and handled with alacrity. Given this significant improvement and generally high level of achievement, as well as the small dataset, we found OPD in conditional compliance with Task 28, even though its compliance rate did not meet the stringent 95% threshold required by this task. Our audit report included several recommendations to assist OPD in its handling of criminal misconduct. Among our recommendations, we urged OPD to continue to assign high level commanders to monitor criminal misconduct cases due to their significance.