Oakland police on track to exit federal oversight by September

Over the 23 long and arduous years that the Oakland police have been under federal court oversight, many comparisons have been made to describe the city’s progress and stumbles toward reform.

On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick, the federal judge overseeing the Oakland Police Department’s 23-year federal oversight program, added one more analogy to the pile. He told city leaders that he’d been thinking if anything in the world of sports could compare to the moment Oakland has reached.

That moment was announced last week when OPD’s federal monitor issued a report saying that, for the first time, OPD had complied with all 51 court-mandated reforms stemming from a 2000 police brutality and corruption case.

Finding comparisons to plays, like a touchdown, or scenarios, like being five yards from the goalline in football, unsatisfactory, Orrick zoomed out.

He compared OPD’s progress in finally achieving its court-mandated reforms not to a single play or moment in a game, but rather to building a Major League Baseball franchise.

“You have to have the infrastructure, the building, the leadership,” he said to a packed courtroom inside the San Francisco federal courthouse. “You’ve got to have the guys in the minor league who are coming up to the majors, and then making the hard decisions.”

Orrick signaled optimism that Oakland’s leaders, from Mayor Barbara Lee to the city’s Interim Police Chief James Beere, are committed to constitutional policing.

“I hope to see this proud franchise continue,” he said, continuing the baseball metaphor.

During Wednesday’s light-hearted hearing, OPD leaders, city staff, attorneys, and residents also appeared hopeful that the department’s federal oversight is nearing its end. But many acknowledged there’s still work left to do to ensure OPD remains compliant with the tasks mandated by the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, the deal Oakland struck in 2003 to settle the Riders lawsuit.

The Riders scandal involved a group of officers accused of beating, kidnapping, and planting drugs on West Oakland residents. The ensuing lawsuit resulted in a Negotiated Settlement Agreement, under which OPD would need to complete dozens of tasks ranging from reporting uses of force to reducing racial disparities in traffic stops, among others.

“No one can say, ‘Mission accomplished,’ but I do congratulate OPD and the city for getting this far,” Orrick said.

“I am close to finishing my job here,” said Jim Chanin, one of the civil rights attorneys who filed the Riders lawsuit in 2000 and has helped oversee OPD’s reforms.

Citing the Martin Luther King Jr. quote, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Chanin told the court that he hopes his efforts over the past 23 years have forwarded OPD’s progress toward constitutional policing.

“I started this case as a middle-aged man, and I’ll be leaving as a senior citizen,” said John Burris, Chanin’s co-counsel.

Both attorneys stopped short of saying the case should be closed. Chanin said he was still concerned about the number of misconduct complaints officers made against their colleagues and the racial disparities among sustained complaints.

At the last hearing in January, Orrick said he, too, was concerned about OPD’s 2024 officer discipline report, which showed that Black and Hispanic officers accused by their colleagues of wrongdoing were faulted at higher rates than white officers. The department, at Orrick’s request, submitted preliminary officer discipline data for 2025 showing that sustained misconduct rates increased across all races except Black officers, which stayed the same.

“The way officers treat each other cannot help make me feel that this disparate treatment can be reflected in the way Oakland citizens and visitors are treated on the streets,” Chanin said at Wednesday’s hearing, drawing parallels between the disparity report and the Riders case in which all but one of the 119 plaintiffs were Black.

Burris said he wanted more time to determine whether OPD is in full compliance with the reforms, particularly those related to reducing racial inequities in traffic stops and tracking OPD’s progress in doing so. Many of the 51 tasks haven’t been assessed in years because they were completed long ago.

The department’s analysis comparing 2024 and 2025 officer discipline data is expected to be completed in June, according to Warshaw’s most recent report to Orrick.

Nonetheless, Warshaw wrote that the preliminary findings “are trending in the right direction.”

“While there is still work to be done, the Mayor’s leadership and the Department’s commitment to addressing these three Tasks have culminated in success,” wrote Warshaw, whose monitoring team determines OPD’s compliance through quarterly visits, audits, and progress reports.

The court is also waiting for the department’s Office of Internal Accountability to release its survey findings regarding officers’ perceptions of the fairness of the internal investigations process.

Orrick asked that, ahead of the next hearing, the city and plaintiffs’ attorneys reflect on the lessons they’ve learned from this case. He also requested that the city provide the number of police misconduct lawsuits against OPD dating back to 2000, as well as the annual amount of settlement payments from those cases.

City leaders feel upbeat about the progress

“Today does mark a milestone for community trust and constitutional policing in Oakland,” said Lee.

Since assuming office, Lee has dedicated resources to support OPD in exiting federal oversight, including hiring Michelle Phillips, an assistant city administrator and the city’s interim constitutional policing chief.

Ricardo Garcia-Acosta, chair of the Police Commission, the city’s civilian police oversight body, echoed Lee’s optimism, describing OPD’s completion of the 51 tasks as “an incredible feat.”

“I do believe that we have the infrastructure, the systems, the relationships, and the trust to have this be sustainable moving forward,” Garcia-Acosta said.

Others in attendance included former Mayors Libby Schaaf and Jean Quan, councilmembers Noel Gallo, Ken Houston, and Kevin Jenkins, and several community members.

“This is a fairly momentous occasion,” said Rockne Lucia Jr., the attorney representing the Oakland police union. OPD is “a different department” from what it was 23 years ago, when the NSA began, he said.

The next court hearing is scheduled for Sept. 29 at 3:30 p.m., after which, Orrick said, Oakland might finally regain complete control over its police force.

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This story was originally published by The Oaklandside and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.