Editorial: Oakland police are incapable of policing themselves

Oversight should be fully transferred to the city’s civilian Police Commission and Community Police Review Agency.

It’s time to stop pretending that Oakland police can police themselves.

For two decades now, the Police Department has been under federal court oversight, as part of a 2003 settlement in the infamous Riders case, in which officers were accused of beating and planting drugs on West Oakland residents.

Each time that the department seems close to meeting the court requirements for lifting the oversight, a new scandal erupts. The latest came last week with the release of findings that internal affairs supervisors directed a coverup of a hit-and-run incident involving a police sergeant.

The case, which led to Mayor Sheng Thao’s questionable decision to place the police chief on administrative leave, highlights why the department’s Internal Affairs Division should be disbanded — why police oversight should be fully transferred to the city’s civilian Police Commission and Community Police Review Agency.

It’s time to end the parallel and often duplicative investigations of police misconduct from within the department and from the outside. The city and U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick should instead focus on ensuring that civilian oversight, overwhelmingly mandated by the city’s voters, works fairly and efficiently.

In 2016, 83% of voters approved Measure LL, establishing one of the nation’s strongest citizen-oversight systems. Residents had tired of allegations such as cops having relations with an underage sex worker, a drunken off-duty officer assaulting a county probation officer at her home, and police exchanging racist text messages. The unusually high rate of police shootings and the mishandling of discipline cases furthered the frustration.

In 2020, 81% approved Measure S1, increasing the authority, autonomy and responsibilities of the Police Commission and Community Police Review Agency. It also added a new Office of Inspector General to investigate and review the city’s handling of police misconduct.

There were signs that things were improving, that Judge Orrick might finally lift the federal oversight, that the culture of the Oakland Police Department was changing, and that the internal lawlessness had ceased.

Then Orrick last week ordered release of an independent law firm’s review of the department’s mishandling of an internal affairs case. The case involved a sergeant, identified by sources as Michael Chung, who was the driver of a police vehicle involved in a collision with a parked car, left the scene of the incident and failed to report it.

The Oakland Police Department learned of the incident nearly four months later after the city received an insurance claim for the damage along with photos and a video of the collision. Before referring the case to the department’s Internal Affairs Division, a lieutenant who was provided the claim tipped off the sergeant and told him to file a report with police in San Francisco, where the incident occurred.

Next, an Oakland internal affairs investigator probed the case. In a draft report, the investigator concluded that the sergeant failed to obey hit-and-run laws and failed to report to superior officers his dating relationship with his passenger in the car, who was a subordinate Oakland officer. The draft report also called into question the sergeant’s and officer’s credibility.

But the investigator’s commander, identified by sources as Wilson Lau, a captain who has since left the department, ordered the report be watered down so that it merely faulted the sergeant for the preventable collision but not for the hit and run, removed the identification of the passenger as an officer, removed discussion of the relationship issue, and concluded that the sergeant and officer were credible.

It was that revised report that was presented to Chief LeRonne Armstrong, now being faulted in the independent review for not questioning the finding and who has been placed on administrative leave pending further review of the case.

Armstrong, from what has been made public so far, is being punished for not cracking down on what he was told was a cop who was involved with a fender bender. The chief had been trying to address, and should be focusing his attention on, the city’s horrific homicide rates, severe understaffing, unacceptably low response times and accountability for serious transgressions by his officers.

Nevertheless, the independent review asserts that the chief violated department policies for failing to hold his subordinate officers to account, for failing to effectively review the incident and for allowing the sergeant to escape responsibility for serious misconduct.

The details supporting that conclusion, according to the review, are in a separate, confidential Internal Affairs Division report. If that’s true, the findings should be made public as soon as possible. In the meantime, given the facts that have been made public so far, the chief should be reinstated.

While the case against the chief has not been made — at least not so far publicly — the case for oversight change is clear. Review of Oakland Police misconduct cases should be placed solely in the hands of civilian review.