ninth-report.pdf

Independent Monitoring Team Ninth Status Report of the Independent Monitor Delphine Allen, et al., v. City of Oakland, et al. May 13, 2006, to November 30, 2006 Page 20 • IAD command and the Department’s command staff must regularly monitor compliance with these timeliness standards. • If IAD experiences an unusual proliferation of cases and/or workload, IAD staffing must be increased to maintain timeliness standards. b. Status of Compliance and Assessment The implementation deadline for this task occurred in July 2004. During the last two reporting periods, OPD completed the policies incorporating this Settlement Agreement task and trained its personnel on these policies. The policies are General Order M-3, Complaints Against Departmental Personnel or Procedures, the Internal Affairs Policy and Procedure Manual and the Departmental Discipline Policy. During this reporting period, the IMT audited OPD’s actual practice compliance with this task. Task 2.1 requires that OPD conduct timely internal investigations. General Order M-3 defines timeliness and requires that IAD investigations be completed, reviewed, and ready for discipline recommendation by the Discipline Officer (where appropriate) within 90 days of the Internal Affairs Division (IAD) intake date. It requires that Division-level investigations (DLIs) be completed, reviewed, and ready for recommendation by the Discipline Officer (where appropriate) within 120 days of the IAD intake date. For sustained cases, General Order M-3 requires that the discipline recommendation process, including Chief of Police approval, disapproval, or return for further investigation, be completed within 30 calendar days of receipt of the reviewed investigation. These timeframes are consistent with those required in similar agreements and best practices, nationwide. At the time OPD adopted these timeframes it expressed doubt that it could attain them, noting the resource pressures facing OPD and that other agencies under court ordered agreements had been unable to meet similar timeliness requirements. OPD is not in compliance with these timeliness requirement, but the significant strides OPD has made in just one reporting period, along with our judgment that these timeframes are reasonable, indicate that OPD is capable of attaining these timeliness goals. OPD has indicated that it will seek to revise these timeliness requirements. The IMT assessed all investigations with intake dates of March 1, 2006, through May 31, 2006, that were not administratively closed or informally resolved to determine the timeliness of OPD internal investigations. This time period was selected because it is well after the implementation of General Order M-3, and the due dates for completion have passed for all complaints received during this timeframe. We did not consider extensions granted to investigators by IAD management.