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 87 and FTOs entering the program. During the eleventh reporting period, OPD continued to consistently staff a position in the Unit that previously had been staffed on a sporadic basis. In recent years, OPD continued to hire and train new officers. In order to keep pace with the new hires, OPD needed to increase the number of FTOs available to train the new officers. As discussed as an Area of Concern in our eleventh status report, it is critical that OPD not sacrifice the quality of field training it is providing to new officers by selecting unqualified FTOs and/or by otherwise lowering program standards. According to OPD, it shared our concern and had no intention of lowering standards in its field training program. During the twelfth reporting period, we began another assessment of OPD’s Field Training Program. While conducting the assessment, we discovered that despite our previous admonitions regarding lowering the standards in field training, OPD had selected a number of new field training officers who did not appear to meet new program standards. These standards require that ethics, professionalism, relationships with the community, quality of citizen contacts, and commitment to OPD philosophy be primary criteria in the selection process. Additionally, candidates are required to demonstrate their commitment to community policing and be barred from selection if they have an excessive number of complaints, sustained investigations, or excessive numbers of uses of force. OPD did not disqualify any candidates due to their complaint or use of force histories, and certified a number of candidates who are extreme outliers amongst their peers in terms of complaints and uses of force. OPD asserts that all of the FTOs it has certified are qualified candidates but acknowledges that the selection process occurred very quickly and could have been more discerning. Based on the concerns we raised regarding the FTO selection process, OPD committed to re-evaluating all candidates and to not allowing candidates who need further development to train new officers until they have proven their suitability. During the thirteenth reporting period, OPD completed its re-evaluation of candidates. As a result, we were able to complete our actual practice assessment. With the exception of two areas, we found that OPD was in full compliance with all of the requirements of the Field Training Program provisions of the NSA. We found OPD in conditional compliance in the remaining two areas. The first area of conditional compliance pertains to the FTO selection process discussed above. As a result of the re-evaluation of its FTO candidates, OPD decided to decertify seven FTOs and to place nine additional FTOs on informal monitoring. The FTOs that were decertified all recently had been sustained for serious misconduct. According to OPD, the FTOs that were placed under informal monitoring would not be provided trainees. Instead, these officers would be required to participate in FTO staff meetings, have their performance evaluated, and would be mentored and coached. OPD stated that it would not assign trainees to these officers until the officers have demonstrated their suitability to serve as FTOs. While informal monitoring helps ensure that FTOs who may not be prepared to train new officers are not assigned trainee officers, it is not ideal. This is because officers under informal monitoring were still afforded all of the benefits of being an FTO, including increased pay and stature, but without having to do any of the work involved with being an FTO.