Judge fires back at Oakland, orders payments for policing experts

The federal judge overseeing Oakland’s mandatory police reforms lashed out at city officials Thursday and ordered the city to pay for court-appointed experts to fix the troubled Police Department — with or without a city contract.

“This is untenable,” U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson said of the City Council’s refusal this week to renew the annual contracts with compliance director Robert Warshaw and his consulting group, Police Performance Solutions LLC.

Henderson ordered the city to deposit $100,000 into the court registry by Feb. 1 and to comply with future payment orders to keep that fund fully replenished until the expert services are no longer needed.

The council on Tuesday voted to extend the contracts for only two months, saying the costs are exorbitant and should be vetted by the council’s Public Safety Committee to see if the city is getting its money’s worth.

The city has spent $13.6 million on court costs, mandatory audits and monitors since 2003, the year it settled a landmark civil rights case over alleged beatings and falsified reports by a group of officers known as “The Riders” in West Oakland.

At the meeting Tuesday, she accused Warshaw of delivering perfunctory, “cut-and-paste” reports and of concealing details about police discipline — including the sexual misconduct scandal that led Chief Sean Whent to resign in June.

Attorney John Burris, who helped represent 119 plaintiffs in the civil rights case that put Oakland under federal oversight, praised Henderson for “striking back with a vengeance.”