The Oakland Police Department says when officers responded to a report of a break-in at a residence, they were informed that someone tied to the break-in was suffering from a medical emergency. After a brief scuffle, the suspect became unresponsive before dying at the hospital.

Update: As KPIX reports, the suspect was identified as former Oakland Raiders running back Doug Martin. No further details have been provided.

As the Chronicle reports, police responded to a call from a house on the 11000 block of Ettrick Street in Oakland’s Chabot Park neighborhood around 4:15 am Saturday. Per KRON4, officers attempted to detain the suspect, resulting in a brief struggle. The suspect was then taken into custody before becoming unresponsive.

The police department posted on Facebook that paramedics provided medical aid at the scene before transporting the person to the hospital where they later died, per NBC Bay Area.

Per the Chronicle, the officers involved in the incident have been placed on administrative leave, and the case is being investigated by the department’s internal affairs bureau, as well as the Oakland Police Commission, Community Police Review Agency, and Alameda County District Attorney’s Office.

Image: Daniel Tadevosyan/Getty Images

Whether it's celebratory riots, large-scale protests, or opportunistic criminals looking to loot because police might otherwise be distracted, Bay Area police departments are bracing for possible crime and bedlam on Election Night or later this week.

The 2024 election had already set off law enforcement activity before polls even opened Tuesday morning, as ballot boxes were set on fire last week in Oregon and Washington state. So, today’s election could prove unpredictable for law enforcement, because after all Donald Trump is running, and he has a way of bringing out the crazy. So the Chronicle reports that Bay Area police departments are gearing up for election-related unrest, which could potentially come Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday night, later in the week, or perhaps never.

In San Francisco, there are no plans to monitor polling station for acts of violence or destruction there (officers are at the ready, as polling places in Georgia did have to briefly close because of threats today). But in the Contra Costa County city of Richmond, police will be deployed to the 22 polling stations there, per the Chronicle. They plan to keep their distance to avoid the appearance of intimidation, but will be able to arrive swiftly in case of incident.

It seems unlikely we will know the winner of the presidential election Tuesday night (though Kamala Harris winning the early-reporting states of Georgia and North Carolina would certainly be an indicator). But police have prepared for the possibility that it could be called tonight, one way or the other. In SF, that could lead to World Series win-type celebrations like we saw the night Barack Obama won in 2008, or more violent anti-Trump protests the likes of which happened in 2016.  

An SFPD spokesperson tells the Chronicle there will certainly be increased patrols Tuesday night. "People are free to exercise their First Amendment right," SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said. "But any kind of violence or property damage will not be tolerated."

Meanwhile, over in Oakland, KTVU reports that some businesses have already boarded up their windows in anticipation of what may come.

Oakland police are particularly on alert after the May 2020 fatal shooting of a security guard by people affiliated with the Boogaloo militia during the George Floyd protests, a crime initially pinned on Black Lives Matter protesters. It’s an example of how criminals sometimes use social unrest as a cover tactic to conceal unlawful activities.

The Chronicle points out that on the night of the 2020 election, a roving band of burglars knocked off several pharmacies, electronics retailers, and cannabis dispensaries in Oakland, presumably anticipating havoc that never arrived because the election did not get called that night. Such burglary attempts could happen again tonight.

And as we also saw in 2020, there will probably be legal challenges in the days to come if someone doesn't get his way. Those legal challenges could spawn their own protests. So it may be a long night and a long week for everyone who's appropriately freaked out over this election, but it may feel even longer for law enforcement.

Related: SF Offices of Law Firm Jones Day Targeted With Protest As Lawyers Continue to Press Trump's Baseless Election Challenges [SFist]

Image: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 15: Police officers form a line as protestors gather at the intersection of Fifth and Mission to block delegates, staff and security personnel from accessing security check points to enter the APEC summit zone at Moscone Center on November 15, 2023 in San Francisco, California. The 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders' Week Summit is set to run through November 17, with more than 30,000 people including dozens of world leaders and hundreds of CEOs attending the event. (Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)

We’ve seen police officers arrested on DUI charges before, but not while they were on the job. Yet it has come to light that two Oakland Police Department officers were arrested for DUI while they were on duty in 2023.

On Friday, Oaklandside broke the news that two Oakland Police Department officers had been arrested for DUI while on duty. Neither of these incidents was terribly recent — one was in June 2023, the other in October 2023. But news of both alleged on-duty DUI incidents is just being revealed now, as the Alameda County District Attorney’s office has recently filed charges in both cases.  

And the Chronicle has the Monday follow-up on that Alameda County DA Pamela Price just sent a letter on the matter to Oakland PD Chief Floyd Mitchell as well as the current acting Oakland PD Chief James Beerre. (Mitchell is currently out-of-the-office for mandatory state training, and Beere is acting chief until November 1.)

“As stewards of public safety, it is critical that we hold police officers to the highest standards,” Price’s letter said. “Having police officers intoxicated while on or off duty represents a clear and present danger to the officer and the public.”

The letter from Price did not detail the officers’ names, but Oaklandside’s report did.

That outlet notes that Officer Nathaniel Walker was arrested by California Highway Patrol officers on suspicion of DUI while he was working on June 30, 2023. A CHP officer wrote in their report that “I observed objective signs and symptoms of alcohol intoxication.” The Chronicle adds that Walker’s blood alcohol content measured 0.15%, which is nearly double the legal limit.

Walker was charged with DUI on June 21, 2024 and his case is pending. Walker had previously been arrested for DUI just before 2 am on March 31, 2023 in San Leandro, and was accused of driving 97 mph in that incident. Walker is currently on administrative leave.

The other accused officer is OPD Officer Trevor Harley, who was arrested by his own colleagues on Oct. 8, 2023. Those colleagues said that they “observed [Harley] to have bloodshot watery eyes, staggered gait, and a strong odor of alcohol,” and that he had “admitted to drinking alcohol prior to driving.” The Chron adds that when he was charged last month, he was also given an “infraction for possession of an open container while driving.”

Harley has a plea hearing scheduled for October 31.    

Oaklandside also points out that Oakland PD Officer Officer Eduardo Arrizon is under investigation for an incident this past August where his truck was seen driving erratically before running into a stop sign. Arrizon claims his vehicle had been carjacked, though eyewitnesses say Arrizon was driving. He’d previously been charged in 2018 for driving under the influence at more than 100 miles per hour.  

Related: Oakland Gone Wild: DUI, Child Porn Charges For Police And Fire Department Officers [SFist]

Image: Oakland Police Department via Facebook

Several US cities have recently ditched the police surveillance tool ShotSpotter that’s used to detect gunfire, and Oakland could become the latest, as critics say it bogs police down with false-positive notifications.  

The gunfire detection system known as ShotSpotter is used by many police departments nationwide, including the San Francisco PD, and it has certainly helped police and first responders to arrive on scene immediately after some shootings, allowing victims to get medical attention more quickly.

But ShotSpotter is also very controversial, as some analysis shows that the technology slows 911 call responses because it distracts police with “false positive” reports where there had not been any real gunfire. And the Chronicle points out that Seattle and Chicago have recently canceled their ShotSpotter contracts for that reason.

Now the City of Oakland may join them. KTVU reports that the Oakland City Council's Public Safety Committee will debate today on whether to renew ShotSpotter’s contract with the Oakland Police Department.  The contract actually already expired on June 30, though the system is still in use, and the Oakland PD has been using ShotSpotter since 2006.

KTVU only got comment from one city councilmember, who was all for renewing the ShotSpotter contract.

"It's no secret that we have problems with our 911 system that we are working actively to resolve," Councilmember Kevin Jenkins told that station. "Sometimes, people call 911 and are left on hold. But when ShotSpotter is activated, the police know exactly where to go and get quick paramedic responses."

Notably, though, Jenkins is not a member of the Public Safety Committee that will be making this recommendation. But he told KTVU, "The price of a life is way more than whatever this contract is. If we save one life, the contract is worth it."

The Chronicle notes ShotSpotter data claiming that the tool has saved 400 lives in Oakland between 2020 and 2023. But that information comes from ShotSpotter’s parent company SoundThinking, who have a multi-million dollar contract on the table here. The Oakland PD could not corroborate those numbers.

And critics say this leaves out how many false positives, or incidents that were not gunfire, but were picked up as such by ShotSpotter and sent police on wild goose chases.

"Chicago, Seattle, and numerous major cities have already canceled this program because it's been proven ineffective,"  Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice executive director George Galvis told KTVU. "Police will then rush into a neighborhood, into a community and zero in on a neighborhood, hyper vigilant. We've already seen what happens in traffic stops where too many times, we've seen black and brown motorists who've been murdered at routine traffic stops."

Still, ShotSpotter is a fairly affordable tool, with Oakland looking at a $2.5 million price tag for a three-year renewal of ShotSpotter.

And the Oakland PD seems to feel the tool is effective enough, according to a letter from OPD Chief Chief Floyd Mitchell included in committee materials for Tuesday’s vote.

“In 2023, ShotSpotter alerted OPD to 8,318 unique gunshot incidents – 8,318 (99%) were not called in by the community and OPD would not have known about them nor have been able to respond in a timely fashion,” Mitchell wrote. “In many cases, ShotSpotter has allowed for the rapid response to shooting scenes where injured victims are able to receive immediate and potentially lifesaving medical aid.”

The Oakland City Council Public Safety Committee meeting is at 6 pm Tuesday night. The committee will only be making a recommendation, not a final decision. The full Oakland City Council will have the final say on the contract renewal in the weeks to come.

Related: SFPD Will Place Its New Surveillance Cameras at 24th and Mission, 19th and Mission Streets [SFist]

Image: SoundThinking

Bodycam video from the Oakland Police Department shows a high-stakes drowning situation near the Lake Merritt Channel, but officers were able to rescue a man by jumping into the water themselves to pull him ashore.

The Oakland Police Department held a press conference Sunday regarding a recent incident where a team of officers saved a drowning man in the waters of the Lake Merritt Channel, according to KTVU.

The incident apparently happened last Sunday, September 29, just before 12:30 am, on the 300 block of East 8th Street, and an OPD officer’s body cam recording of the entire incident can be seen in the Facebook video below.

When the video begins, the man in the water has been lowered some rope, which he’s been able to grab onto, and officers are trying to pull him up the railing of a cement wall. But the man loses his grip of the rope. One officer immediately rips off his shirt and jumps into the water, and a second officer goes in as well. Once they have pulled him close to the shore, two other officers wade in and pull the man safely to land.

The victim appears to be unconscious when pulled ashore, but still breathing. He’s then wheeled away on a stretcher.

"I was just thinking of ways of how we were going to get to him," OPD Officer Jessica Menezes said at a Sunday press conference. Menezes was the second officer to jump in the water, following Sergeant Frank Negrete.

"Failure was not an option for us that night," OPD Chief Floyd Mitchell said at the news conference. "These are the types of stories as chief of police that I just love to talk about, the hard work and dedication these officers have."

As of Monday morning, KTVU is reporting that the unidentified man remains hospitalized, and police have still not determined why he was in the channel in the first place.

Related: Sonoma Sheriff's Deputies Save Woman Drowning in Russian River, She Assaults Them Anyway [SFist]

Image: Oakland Police Department via Facebook

While three suspects had been charged with murder in the December 29 fatal shooting of Oakland police officer Tuan Le, a fourth figured he could just plead guilty to robbing the cannabis shop and have that be that. But now that suspect is facing murder charges too.

The December 29 shooting and killing of undercover Oakland police officer Tuan Le in an Oakland cannabis dispensary robbery gone bad quickly resulted in the arrest of four suspects. Mark Demetrious Sanders (27) is suspected of actually firing the fatal shots, though accomplices Allen Starr Brown (28) and Marquise Cooper (34) were also charged with murder. A fourth accused accomplice, Sebron Russell (30), was set just plead guilty to a lesser burglary charge, which seems like pretty good lawyering on the part of Russell’s attorney.

That deal is no longer available to him. The Bay Area News Group reports that DA Pamela Price's office is now charging Russell with murder too, and boy is his attorney irate.

“The District Attorney is attempting to thwart Mr. Russell’s rights with this proposed amended complaint,” that attorney David Knutsen wrote in a court filing.

Russell was the only one of the four suspects who’d been offered bail, at $200,000, and he’s been out of custody and showing up for court appearances. But he’s now back in custody at Santa Rita Jail, and it’s unclear whether he’ll be offered bail again.

The News Group notes that it may or may not be related that previously dismissed home invasion robbery and first-degree burglary charges, stemming from a 2019 cannabis-related robbery, are apparently being re-charged against Russell. Those charges were dismissed due to lack of evidence last November, about a month before Officer Le was shot and killed.

It’s fair to speculate that some new evidence has come to light against Russell.

Related: Now Even the Mother of Man Accused of Killing Oakland PD Officer Has Been Arrested as an Accessory [SFist]

Image: City of Oakland

The U.S. District Court judge in charge of the Oakland Police Department's federal oversight says he’s “concerned” that the city hasn’t had a police chief for a full year now. Well, how do you think 450,000 Oakland residents feel, pal?

It was actually a year ago this past Sunday when Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong was yanked off his job over alleged mishandling of an internal disciplinary investigation (he was formally fired nearly a month later). And while he’s made noise about wanting his job back, the Oakland Police Commission has overseen a bizarrely politicized process that has resulted in the recommendation of only Armstrong and some other suspect candidates, all of whom Mayor Sheng Thao has rejected. Hence, no permanent Oakland Police Chief for a year as crime in that city soars.

The lack of a permanent police chief was a sore point with U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick in an early Wednesday morning hearing on the ongoing federal oversight of the OPD. (That process has been going on for more than 21 years.) And KTVU reports Orrick went off that he was “concerned” that Oakland has gone so long without a proper police chief.  

Oakland Police Commission chair Marcia Peterson told Orrick that she had declared a "media blackout" on any further police chief deliberations, so hearings like this are apparently all we’re going to hear about the process for the time being. But she insisted the commission was meeting weekly to come up with a better list of candidates.

She admitted the first list was "not robust," as after all, it contained the fired Armstrong and the San Leandro Police Chief who is himself on forced administrative leave. She insisted they would offer a new and improved short list by March 1.

"So keep working at it," Orrick reportedly told her.

But for perspective, a recent Oaklandside reports out that Oakland has taken forever to find a police chief before. Oakland lacked a permanent police chief for a year and a half between October 2011 and May 2013 (a time during which there was plenty of Occupy Oakland unrest), and for nearly a year between April 2020 and February 2021, with the backdrop of the George Floyd riots, before Armstrong was eventually hired from within.  

Related: Oakland Police Chief Search Halted as Police Commissioners Boycott Their Own Meeting [SFist]

Image: OAKLAND, CA - MAY 09: Acting Oakland police chief Anthony Toribio looks on during a news conference at Oakland police headquarters on May 9, 2013 in Oakland, California. A day after Oakland police chief Howard Jordan abruptly resigned citing medical reasons, a report by the Bratton Group that was commissioned by the City of Oakland revealed problems in the department in several key areas. The report comes days after the FBI reported that Oakland has the highest robbery rate in the country with an average of 12 robberies occuring every day. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Oakland Police Department cut short a pilot program that asked the public to report car break-ins on social media platforms like Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). It lasted less than a day.

OPD had set up accounts called @OaklandAutoBurg on Instagram and X, so people could send direct messages reporting burglaries in real-time, an alternative method to reporting such crimes, as ABC7 reported. "DM the details of individuals, & vehicles, and the crime's location. DON'T attempt to stop the crime!" OPD reportedly said.

The social media pages were launched on a Friday and initially planned to remain active throughout the weekend, per the Chronicle. The release emphasized that the social media reporting was not intended to replace traditional methods like calling or texting 911 but rather to complement them for the duration of the weekend.

However, at 11 p.m. on that very Friday, the police department reportedly deactivated these accounts and directed individuals to report crimes through the standard 911 channels.

The Oakland Police Department told the Chronicle that reason for the deactivation was "so that we can review the effectiveness of the pilot program."

OPD also said that the this was a test and it concluded as scheduled, but that "this account will be reactivated ahead of our next test.”

As ABC7 reported, Oakland’s had more than 11,000 auto burglaries so far this year — a 36% increase compared to last year.

Image via Oakland Police Department.

It’s likely to cause more tension between the Oakland Police Department and Alameda County DA Pamela Price that Price has issued an arrest warrant for OPD officer Phong Tran on five felony counts of perjury and bribery.

In Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s less than four months on the job, she has established a Public Accountability Unit that her office says is tasked with “holding law enforcement and public officials accountable for misconduct.” And that’s a political fight, because law enforcement and public officials don’t like being held accountable for misconduct. So you can see these political battle lines already shaping up, as the Chronicle reports Price’s Public Accountability Unit has issued an arrest warrant for Oakland police officer Phong Tran for bribery and perjury.

Those allegations stem from two 2011 murder convictions that were thrown out last month because, in the words of Oaklandside, “a key witness in the case recanted her trial testimony and alleged that an Oakland police investigator secretly paid her thousands of dollars before the trial.”

KTVU has a copy of the arrest warrant, which has a slew of charges, but the big felonies here are the two counts of perjury, plus counts of bribery of a witness, attempted bribery of a witness, and subornation of perjury under oath. The warrant otherwise has little background on the case, but KTVU adds that it’s “a no-bail warrant and Tran must surrender within 48 hours.“

But the Bay Area News Group has the details of the case. The murder convictions were tossed last month after one of the key witnesses came forward and said Tran paid her “tens of thousands of dollars to lie on the stand,” according to the news group. That outlet adds that “Tran admitted to paying the woman, but claimed the amount was far less than she stated," and Tran was “placed on leave last year but returned to detective work with the Oakland Police Department.”

And that detail could jeopardize the other cases on which Tran has done detective work.

"There's a very good likelihood that other cases will be dropped as well," USF law professor Bill Hing told KTVU. "It depends on what this officer did on the various homicide cases. If his investigations involved coercion and bribery on a regular basis, well those cases are going to be dismissed."

While the department has been silent except for the above tweet acknowledging the arrest warrant, the Oakland Police Officers Association union that represents the officers is coming out swinging.

“We are confident that this officer will be vindicated once a competent court reviews these unfounded charges,” sergeant Barry Donelan of the Oakland Police Officers Association said in a statement to the News Group. “This case is not about seeking justice or ensuring public safety; rather, it appears to be an attempt by District Attorney Pamela Price to undermine the credibility of dedicated public servants and facilitate the release of convicted murderers.”

Technically, they’re no longer convicted murderers. But you can see a familiar battle line being drawn here, where district attorneys are politically accused of letting killers walk free whenever they prosecute law enforcement or public officials. And since DA Pamela Price already faces controversy over charging decisions, that narrative is likely to be shoehorned into this case of an officer being accused of bribery and perjury.

Related: More Oakland PD-LeRonne Armstrong Drama, Fired Captain Claims He Was Made A Scapegoat [SFist]

Image: OAKLAND, CA - DECEMBER 06: An Oakland Police patrol car sits in front of the Oakland Police headquarters on December 6, 2012 in Oakland, California. Oakland City officials have come to an agreement to forfeit broad power over the Oakland Police Department to a court-appointed director to avoid federal takeover. The new compliance director would have the power to seek approval from a judge to fire the police chief. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A 14-year-old girl was rushed to the hospital Tuesday, after a man stabbed her in the face as she walked to school.

The East Bay Times reports that the attack occurred at 8:52 a.m. Tuesday, as the child walked on the 400 block of 29th Street, which is between Telegraph Avenue and Broadway in Oakland.

According to CBS 5, the victim had just started her freshman year at Oakland Emiliano Zapata Street Academy, an alternative school located at 417 29th Street.

That's where she was headed when classmate Jasmine Gaona tells CBS 5 that she saw the victim "bleeding from the face as a man with a large knife stood by."

“Her face was just leaking and there was a guy that was just running…with a knife about this long,” Gaona told CBS 5, as she held her hands about a foot apart.

The suspect confronted the victim on the sidewalk, then began stabbing her in the face, police say. Employees at a nearby nursing home intervened, CBS 5 reports, turning the attacker's attention from the child and toward themselves.

“He just charged at them," a nursing home spokesperson told CBS 5. "They obviously retreated. They shut the doors and it was enough to where just shutting the doors — for some reason — just stopped him in his path.”

According to the EBT, the suspect then fled, but "witnesses followed him to the 3000 block of Summit Street," where police arrested him. As of Wednesday morning, the suspect had not been publicly identified, but a police spokesperson says officers "recovered some knives that were found near where the suspect was arrested."

The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital, and is in stable condition, CBS 5 reports.

Speaking with CBS 5, Oakland Police Department spokesperson Marco Marquez says that “It appears that it was a random attack. It also appears that the suspect and the victim are unknown to each other.” As of Wednesday morning, the EBT reports, police are still "trying to determine a motive" in the stabbing.

Related: 24-Year-Old Oakland Man Convicted Of Murdering Friend While On LSD Camping Trip

A person died while in police custody, Oakland Police have announced, saying that the loss of life happened following the use of a Taser.

If that sounds confoundingly vague, you're not wrong: Oakland police are releasing few details on the case, saying via press release that the death happened at 2:26 p.m. Thursday on the 4100 block of Foothill Boulevard, in Fruitvale.

Characterizing the incident as "an in custody death involving an electronic control weapon (TASER - intermediate force option)," the Oakland Police Department says that "the Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau will determine the cause of death."

The OPD declined to provide any identifying details on the deceased, saying only that "additional information will be provided at a later time."

The death will be investigated by OPD's Homicide Section and Internal Affairs Division, they say, with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is conducting an independent and parallel investigation.

Even with these mere fragments of information, this news is sure to galvanize both sides of the current debate on arming San Francisco police officers with Tasers. According to Mission Local, that "debate will continue on Oct. 2 at SFPD headquarters, where a working group, comprising several local organizations, will work on crafting the Taser policy that the Police Commission will later vote on."

Peter Nicks's is a cinema verit—-style documentary focused on the Oakland Police Department as things stood shortly after the arrival of then-police chief Sean Whent in 2014. At that point, the Oakland PD had been under federal oversight for a little over 10 years, following a scandal centered on police misconduct, and Whent's mandate was to whip the department into shape, once and for all. Anyone who has lived in the Bay Area for the past three years knows that didn't happen.

But knowing how the story ends doesn't make The Force a bore. Watching almost feels like being embedded in the department. The film observes, but doesn't comment. There's no narration and it mostly stays away from talking-head interviews as it loosely follows a couple of new officers through their training, induction, and eventual patrolling. And while we don't learn too much about them, it still comes as a shock when it's revealed that one of them was involved with one of the department's (woefully abundant) controversial shootings.

Some scenes play out like a less sensationalized episode of Cops, as we're placed smack dab in to the middle of some police calls. These moments help illustrate how even something as seemingly straightforward as a call to help an injured pedestrian can evolve into a potentially deadly incident.

But understanding how an incident might turn deadly doesn't equal justification, and screen time is also given to the growing Black Lives Matter movement, its associated protests (including the one that shut down the Bay Bridge in 2016), and community gatherings where citizens are so fed up with the police violence that they even begin to volley ideas about how they might organize their own police force, as they've completely lost trust in the one that's been provided to them.

Peter Nicks, a longtime resident of Oakland, also directed the documentary The Waiting Room, about Oakland's Highland Hospital. He will reportedly follow up The Force with a doc centered on Oakland's education system. It's unlikely Nicks could have foreseen how much worse the Oakland PD would actually get when he started filming, and that becomes more evident when the now well-known underage sexual exploitation scandal hits the department. The film almost seems unprepared for it, with much of the exposition surrounding that story coming from local news clips and newspaper headlines.

Nicks doesn't vilify the police — they're more than able to do that themselves — and he doesn't pretend the city's protests were without their own violence. The film is about as bipartisan as you can get when it comes to the topic of the police and the growing civil unrest surrounding many of the nation's departments. Of course, that won't stop some from seeing an anti-police bias simply because the choice was made to focus a film on a police department with long-standing and very infamous problems. No, the Oakland Police Department is not every PD in America. But every PD in America would do well to learn from their mistakes.

'The Force' is a current advertiser on SFist, however advertising is entirely negotiated by our New York parent site, Gothamist, and SFist previews and reviews are all written objectively and without regard to any such sponsorship.

Bodycam footage from police officers is typically used only to determine innocence or guilt in high-profile use-of-force incidents. But a new Stanford study puts big-data analysis to bodycam footage, analyzing 981 routine Oakland Police Department traffic stops and the 483,966 words used in them. In findings whose full text was just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Stanford researchers found that police were more likely to use polite and courteous terminology with white drivers than black drivers.

“Police officers speak significantly less respectfully to black than to white community members in everyday traffic stops,” the study says in its top-line findings and abstract. “We find that officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop. Such disparities in common, everyday interactions between police and the communities they serve have important implications for procedural justice and the building of police-community trust.”

As far back as the 70s, one expert says, heads of first-responder agencies (think police and fire) have been the recipients of pension pay from a previous position even as they pull down even more in their current one. It makes for a nice figure! The Chron's Matier and Ross ran down the details of SF's new top cop, as well as Oakland's heads of fire and police, and found that each were getting a very nice second paycheck from the gigs they'd left behind.

San Francisco Police Department Chief Bill Scott
Sworn in just last week, Scott had devoted the last 27 years of his life to the LAPD. That's why, in addition to the $316,000 base salary he'll get to head the SFPD (reportedly the highest salary for a police chief anywhere in the country), Scott will receive a $152,000 annual pension from our pals down south.

Total: $468,000/year

It took Oakland seven months to find a head for its troubled department, and finally they convinced Kirkpatrick to join as its first female chief earlier this month. Though she came to us from Chicago, where she was the head of their Bureau of Professional Standards, Kirkpatrick has had a lengthy career in multiple police departments across Washington State and was most recently Spokane's top cop. That's why she's got a $87,420 annual pension payout to add to her base salary in Oakland of $270,000. (Up for in the air is an additional $55,000 in "special pay" that her predecessor in Oakland received, so we'll leave that out for now.)

Total: $357,420/year

Oakland Fire Chief Teresa Deloach Reed

The Ghost Ship Fire thrust Reed into the spotlight last month, as she was frequently on camera to explain the circumstances behind the deadly blaze. The first female big-city fire chief when Oakland named her as head of the department in March 2012, she had served in the San Jose Fire Department since 1986, ending her career there as Assistant Fire Chief. That's why San Jose continues to pay her a $127,000 annual pension, in addition to her yearly base pay in Oakland of $241,000.

Total: $368,000

Related: SFPD Salaries By The Numbers