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 2 This reporting period, the IMT also went on-scene to the investigations of officer- involved shootings; observed line-ups and Field Training focus groups; met with Training Division staff; attended meetings of the Performance Assessment System (PAS) steering committee; observed OPD’s criminal and administrative investigations of critical incidents; observed staff training sessions; and reviewed and analyzed OPD documents and files, including draft policies, misconduct investigations, personnel appraisals, supervisory notes files, police reports, stop data forms, and use of force reports. The IMT attended several meetings of the Board of Inquiry into the officer-involved shootings of March 21, 2009, including the three-day meeting during which the Board reviewed the evidence provided by OPD, deliberated, and reached its findings. We also continued to provide the Department with technical assistance to assist it in addressing various compliance and/or operational issues. OPD revised several policies during this reporting period. The IMT continued to work closely with OPD to ensure that policy revisions meet OPD’s operational needs and remain consistent with generally accepted best practices in policing as well as the Settlement Agreement’s goals. The IMT continued to assess whether OPD trained appropriate personnel in NSA-related areas. The IMT also completed actual practice compliance reviews of all or part of 15 NSA tasks. III. LOOKING FORWARD AND LOOKING BACK: EFFECTIVE AND RESPECTFUL POLICING IN OAKLAND The Negotiated Settlement Agreement has required a myriad of changes in how the Oakland Police Department operates. It has required changes in how officers are supervised, trained, and evaluated; how force is reported and investigated; and how complaints of officer misconduct are accepted, investigated, and resolved. It has required changes in how OPD measures its community policing efforts; records and tracks car and pedestrian stops; and tracks officer behavior. The NSA has required changes in how officers report misconduct that they see other officers commit; document accounts of force by civilian witnesses; report when they are arrested; and even document the transport of civilians. Despite the number of NSA requirements — 51 tasks divided into hundreds of subtasks — the ultimate objective of the NSA is concise and straightforward: “to enhance the ability of the Oakland Police Department to protect the lives, rights, dignity, and property of the community it serves.” (Negotiated Settlement Agreement at 1.) Over the past seven years, the countless new practices, dozens of audits, scores of policy rewrites, hundreds of meetings, and thousands of interactions between officers and civilians throughout the City of Oakland have been working towards this objective. Going forward, though the number of tasks that will be monitored has changed, and the identities of those serving in roles ranging from Chief to outside monitor have changed too, this end goal must remain the same. The extension of the Negotiated Settlement Agreement reflects that Oakland has not yet sufficiently achieved its goal of improving the Police Department’s ability to protect the lives,