Police Oversight Figures Share Recollections of OPD’s Troubling Past as They Look Toward a Post-NSA Future

Although media may have speculated wildly about OPD's potential departure from the Negotiated Settlement Agreement [NSA] in the days before Tuesday’s NSA meeting, it appears that for the parties involved, there was never much doubt. Judge William J Orrick indeed announced he finds the City/OPD in complete compliance with the tasks for the NSA and is ready to release the City from the settlement this week at the meeting.

But for the public, things were never as clear. In between May’s Case Management Conference where Orrick floated the idea that OPD could soon emerge from oversight to September's meeting, OPD had its second killing of a suspect in 12 months, and saw the majority of its helicopter pilots indicted for certification fraud, along with another officer for overtime fraud. But the most specific cause for concern was that the court’s monitor Robert Warshaw found OPD was out of compliance with Task 2, having missed its 180 closure deadline for serious cases of police misconduct, which has been an ongoing source of friction at the meetings. OPD agreed years ago to meet an 85% completion rate meant to ensure that the statute of limitations for discipline is on track for completion. But OPD has stumbled over the years, and at this crucial juncture, failed the mark by two percentage points.

180 Day Benchmark Miss Not Significant Enough to Continue Oversight, Attorneys Say

A little over a year ago, Orrick himself had chastised the OPD for not reaching what he described as a fairly easy to clear benchmark. At the time, Orrick characterized OPD’s explanations as “a staggering number of excuses" and called the percentile hurdle “generous”.

And during the discussion on Tuesday, plaintiff counsel Jim Chanin said the more accurate way to look at the two percentage miss is as a 17% failure rate for the most serious misconduct cases.

But Chanin seemed to equivocate during his statement about whether he would agree with a decision to end the NSA. He finally did seem to agree with the idea that even if the current task had not been met completely, a vast change from the old OPD warranted an end to court oversight. Chanin called the change at OPD “astronomical”, and characterized current leadership as “acceptable” and the IAB as “sound”.

“Plus, there's the Police Commission, which wasn't there when we started. I feel our time has come, and I'm ready to go,” Chanin said finally.

Chanin had previously said that he had briefly considered offering options to continue federal oversight without the presence of the plaintiff attorneys in the aftermath of the Monitor’s report on Task 2, a statement that was widely reported several days before the meeting. But in conversations with OPD and city stakeholders Channin said he felt more assured that the City shared the view that the failure required accountability and improvement. Burris also appeared to agree that the current failure on Task 2 wasn’t significant measured against decades of oversight.

“Now it's up to the present-day leadership to become a keeper of the traditions that we hope have been established,” Burris said.

Regardless, there was likely no formulation of a lighter oversight structure that might work. As the City’s own attorney Brigid Martin noted, the settlement can not continue without the involvement of the attorneys.

OPD Chief James Beere repeated what appears to be the City's agreed on characterization of the miss. Beere said the delay was on due diligence, to ensure cases are not rushed and noted the 180 day-mark is not a legal deadline, but rather a cautionary one that ensures the investigation is on track to finish by the 365 day statute of limitations. Beere said that the cases at issue involved serious misconduct and officer-involved shootings.

“Ultimately, it's my responsibility. I'm not going to sacrifice the quality of the investigations to make that 180 timeline,” Beere told Orrick.

Lee largely concurred with Orrick that the issue was more of due diligence, an explanation that all the city representatives appeared to share.

The statements seemed to be enough for the attorneys and Orrick. Early in the meeting, it became clear that Orrick would move forward with what he had telegraphed several months ago, the release of OPD from the settlement with “prejudice”, an ironically necessary legal term on a court settlement that indisputably centers on decades of racist policing at the OPD.

Burris, Chanin, Warshaw Describe a Reluctant OPD That Took Years to Move Towards Transparency and Compliance

The meeting was nonetheless notable for the series of first person narratives of decades of troubled policing in Oakland leading up to the emergence from oversight. Several parties agreed that for the first decade or so of the settlement, the OPD did little to meet the benchmarks and appeared disinterested in fulfilling the settlement.

“I mean the first nine years they did absolutely nothing. They just sat there while hoping that we would go away,” Chanin said the only thing that seemed to work was moving to put OPD in receivership, which served as the turning point for OPD.

Burris recalled 4 decades of confronting a frighteningly racist OPD.

“Everyone thought that [the Rodney King case] was the most notorious beating they'd ever seen. But I had a bunch of those cases in Oakland before that. I knew about those kinds of beatings, and so when the Rider’s case developed, you could see that kind of conduct that was occurring, people were not being properly supervised, and accountability wasn't there…” Burris said.

Burris also recounted that during the community backlash against the police killing of Melvin Black in 1979, he had to advise a young Black man to leave town. Burris said the man never returned to Oakland. Burris said that he felt safer as a Black person driving in Oakland now, and that his children also do.

A surprise speaker at the CMC was the court monitor Robert Warshaw. Orrick introduced Warshaw by saying he had decided to keep silent about the potential for his presentation, because he did not want to give undue insights into his decision. Warshaw praised nearly everyone involved in the process and especially and warmly, Rashida Grinage and Mayor Barbara Lee, and gave insights about his role and experience in the process unheard until now. Though usually a silent target of anti-oversight activists for a over decade, Warshaw was surprisingly talkative and spoke for about 15 minutes.

Warshaw said that when he first arrived with his team to take over monitoring OPD, he and his team were “horrified” by how many Black men were being shot by police, the excessive use of force and the “humiliating practice” of "curbing" Black men by OPD. He said they found a closed and insular department unwilling to police itself or investigate wrong-doing of its officers. Warshaw said that despite the ongoing bad behavior, OPD did take steps, including the use of body worn cameras, and hiring Dr Jennifer Eberhardt. He said the insularity that he first observedbegan to decrease with OPD eventually focusing on good auditing practices and taking sound advice from the City Attorney—although extremely slowly and with major setbacks. Despite sounding positive, Warshaw said that even at its best, OPD had suffered from many scandals that had tarnished its advances and cautioned leaders to not take for granted the positive arc.

Oversight Ends Amid New OPD Controversies and Dimming Transparency and Contested Oversight

But for those that watch OPD carefully, and outside the very specific areas of the NSA tasks, the release from the NSA could not likely have come at a stranger time. Use of force by OPD has increased since 2025, after a long period of being kept in check. OPD arrest attempts have led to two deaths in the past 10 months. And in both cases, OPD has been accused by public advocates of withholding information. Likewise, an alleged scheme of FAA fraud has two officers defending themselves from federal charges, and OPD’s Argus helicopter virtually grounded. Another police officer has been charged with illegal overtime activities.

And in the race to freedom from the NSA, the City under Lee’s leadership has chosen odd ways of showing it supports transparency. The City made the move of cloaking its radio transmissions and now reporters who follow the scanner traffic have no alternate evidence for OPD claims after an incident in the short term.

The Lee administration and the City Council have for their part made mystifying decisions involving the independent oversight body that is expected to take over the duties of the court monitor, the charter-empowered Oakland Police Commission. The Police Commission has seen its funding dwindle. Though its investigatory arm, the CPRA, was once envisioned as taking on some of the OPD’s IAB load, it's lost much of its funding to do so and the process has been backburnered since Lee took office. Yet more cuts to the bodies during the City's mid-cycle budget process led CM Carroll Fife to wonder aloud what the Council's true intentions for oversight are.

Several months earlier, Council members helped marginalize a Police Commissioner and decline their reappointment, and the OPOA admitted to pressuring them to do so in the East Bay Times. In the aftermath, CMs began more visibly exerting their influence on the Selection Panel that selects community members to the body.

During this period, Lee floated several mixed messages about her belief in the importance of oversight, by using her appointments as passive critiques of the current Commission. Despite the fact that Lee’s appointments to the body had never been involved in any police oversight organizing in Oakland last year, she sent out an uncharacteristic press release celebrating their future leadership of the body—during the same period that other Police Commissioners were struggling to be reappointed. Lee mentioned "leadership" several times in the communique, despite the fact that the Council had just voted down the then-current Chair of the body, apparently after pressure from OPOA.

“Oakland needs steady, experienced, principled leadership on the Police Commission, especially during a police chief transition and as we redouble our commitment to completing the NSA,” said Mayor Lee. “Doug Wong and Judge Evelio Grillo are exactly the kind of experienced leaders and public servants we need right now. Together, they bring deep experience in public safety, accountability, and government oversight.”

But one of those appointments, Doug Wong, was forced to step down after two embarrassing public exchanges in which he could not explain the role of the Commission nor define constitutional policing. During this same period, CM Ken Houston attempted to introduce a charter amendment to significantly weaken the Police Commission, joining comments made in the past by Jenkins about the need to introduce amendments to the OPC.

Oversight Still Technically Not Over, Actually

Despite the celebrations by the Lee administration after Orrick's on the record statement about his intention, court oversight is not yet over. During the meeting, Orrick noted that he would issue his final order and dismissal "in the next few months" after going over more details with the City's legal counsel.

Though its unlikely given the trajectory of the CMC discussions that any issue or even scandal would be deemed severe enough for Orrick to revisit the decision before its final, it has to be noted, the NSA is not over yet.