Federal oversight authorities call the OPD “deficient in several ways” over its handling of officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths.

The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight since way back in 2003, after a long-ago scandal involving a group of officers who called themselves “The Riders” forced a multimillion-dollar payout to 119 victims of beatings, kidnappings, and the planting of false evidence. Attorneys representing those victims, and the federal regulators who now oversee the department, are both in agreement that the Oakland Police Department is backsliding, according to statement they made to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The OPD is sliding backwards on multiple fronts,” attorneys John Burris and James Chanin said in a statement to the East Bay Times. “If this negative trend is not reversed in short order, (we) will have no choice but to consider additional measures,” including firing the chief, and yet more increased federal oversight.