Not that the Oakland Police Department needs any more bad press at this point we have to assume they don't even give a rat's ass what anyone says but a fellow by the name of Van Chau is now suing the department for defamation following his having been added to their Most Wanted list for a 2011 "shooting." The trouble is, Chau had nothing to do with it, it wasn't even a shooting, and the department posted a photo of him that was run by a local TV station. And they even bragged about his capture after he "turned himself in" despite the fact that they released him without charges after three days.
Chau, a 37-year-old accountant who appears only to have been in the OPD's files because of a DUI incident a few years ago, was mistakenly identified by an assault victim in a photo lineup. The assault, in which the victim was kicked, punched, and hit with a bat by a group of men in December 2011, remains unsolved.
You can read Chau's complaint here. He had the wherewithal last February to seek out the help of San Francisco civil rights attorney Stuart Hanlon, who figured out quickly that the OPD did not even have a warrant out for Van's arrest when they listed him as one of their Most Wanted and handed that list, with photos, over to KTVU.
The really astonishing part here is not that the department made a mistake in identifying Chau as a criminal, but the fact that following his turning himself in to clear his name, they touted his capture in a press release as if it was something to be proud of. The release was titled "Most Wanted Turns Himself In," and Chief Howard Jordan even had the chutzpah to say, "Today a victim is one step closer to justice." It points to some serious backwardness in the OPD that they would do this, and points to their sheer lack of success that they would use an incident like this, in which an innocent man was released without charges, as an excuse to tout some meager success in crime fighting.
Anyway, the story's now made national headlines via Gawker and Courthouse News, and the Chronicle subsequently picked it up. In the defamation and civil rights suit Chau is seeking unspecified damages for now having to live in a state of "embarrassment, depression and shame."
