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 25 b. Status of Compliance and Assessment The implementation deadline for this task occurred in October 2004. During the last two reporting periods, OPD completed the policies incorporating this Settlement Agreement task and trained its personnel on these policies. These policies are General Order M-3.1, Informal Complaint Resolution Process; General Order M-3, Complaints Against Departmental Personnel or Procedures; the Internal Affairs Policy and Procedure Manual; and Policy C-2, Communications Division Policy and Procedure Manual. During this reporting period, the IMT audited OPD’s actual practice compliance with this task. OPD has made important progress with this task and is in compliance with a number of its provisions, but is not yet in full compliance with Task 4. While OPD and IAD have not fully resolved all problems tracking complaint investigations or internal requests for investigations, OPD is in compliance with the requirement that it maintain a central control system for complaints and Department requests to open investigations. It is also in compliance with the requirement that IAD and the Chief be informed as soon as practicable of complaints that are likely to generate unusual interest. OPD is in compliance with the requirement that it assign each complaint an IAD case number and enter it into a complaint database with identifying information about the complaint. OPD has developed a number of mechanisms in response to previously identified problems with uninvestigated complaints of misconduct. Our review indicated that every complaint is assigned either an intake number or an IAD case number. There continue to be problems with matters that are inappropriately considered service complaints or "No MOR" complaints, and thus assigned only intake numbers rather than IAD case numbers. Since instances of this are relatively rare and because matters with intake numbers are tracked, the lack of an IAD case number is less problematic. OPD is not yet in compliance with the requirement that it meet specified criteria before deciding whether a complaint should be informally resolved, administratively closed, or investigated. We found that 90% of the administratively closed cases we reviewed were appropriate for administrative closure pursuant to OPD policy. We attribute this high compliance level in part to extraordinary efforts by IAD to review administratively closed cases to ensure that they were handled properly. Our review indicated that numerous cases were reopened and investigated as a result of this review. We found that 69% of the ICRs we reviewed were appropriate for ICR and that 27% of the formal investigations we reviewed complied with OPD's own investigative criteria. Many instances of non-compliance with these requirements occur because OPD does not interview the subject officer or other relevant persons prior to completing an investigation as required by the Settlement Agreement. This often happens when investigations are resolved via "Summary Finding." This term is used by OPD to indicate cases that are completed by IAD’s intake unit rather than its investigative unit.