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 67 During future reporting periods, the IMT will monitor actual compliance with this Settlement Agreement task. 6. Citizens Signing Police Forms (Task 38; S.A. VI.F.) a. Settlement Agreement Requirements • By August 25, 2003, OPD personnel must ensure that citizens who sign written statements on Statement Forms draw a diagonal stripe from the end of the written narrative to the bottom of the page and sign along the stripe. Citizen statements on offense reports must be signed by the citizen immediately following the statement. b. Status of Compliance and Assessment The compliance deadline for this task occurred in August, 2003. OPD achieved policy compliance by publishing an Information Bulletin on Citizens Signing Police Forms on October 22, 2003. During the sixth reporting period, OPD provided the IMT with sufficiently reliable training data to enable us to confirm that OPD had trained 95% or more of relevant personnel on this task. During the seventh reporting period, the IMT interviewed officers on all three patrol shifts regarding their understanding of Task 38’s requirements. Based on our interviews, we found that OPD officers have a solid grasp of the most important elements of this task. As a result, the IMT changed its conditional training compliance determination for this task to an unconditional in-compliance finding. During an audit conducted during the second quarter reporting period, the IMT determined that OPD’s actual practices in this area were not in compliance with the Settlement Agreement and made several recommendations to OPD to help achieve compliance. These recommendations included providing refresher training; explaining to officers the intent and importance of this Settlement Agreement provision; exploring the use of a single, uniform method for obtaining citizen statements; and improving supervisory review of citizen statements. During the seventh reporting period, OIG conducted an internal audit of Task 38 and found OPD’s current practices in compliance with the Settlement Agreement’s requirement that citizens who sign written statements on Statement Forms draw a diagonal stripe from the end of the written narrative to the bottom of the page and sign along the stripe. OPD did not audit whether citizen statements on offense reports were signed by the citizen immediately following the statement because the Department no longer allows officers to take citizen statements directly on offense reports.