Oakland Police Department's 23-Year-Long Federal Oversight Is Over

After 23 years of a federal court-mandated monitor overseeing the Oakland Police Department, stemming from a scandal that occurred 14 police chiefs ago, a federal judge has lifted the mandate.

It was a historic day Tuesday and a triumphant one for Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and newly installed OPD Chief James Beere, after US District Judge William Orrick proclaimed that the longest-running federal oversight program of an American police department was coming to an end. Orrick made the announcement from his courtroom in San Francisco, with a swath of Oakland dignitaries, including City Council, in attendance, as the Chronicle reports.

"I have decided to end federal court oversight of OPD," Judge Orrick said, per the Chronicle. "While it was important for this court, I think, to have played the role that it has over the last 23 years … now it’s important for the court to get out of the way."

The role that the court has played for over two decades has been to oversee the department’s implementation of 51 mandated reforms relating to use of force, discipline, training, and internal affairs investigations. These reforms were part of a 2003 agreement that resolved a class-action civil rights case stemming from the so-called Riders scandal, which came to light in July 2000.

Three Oakland Police officers were criminally charged and tried — while a fourth, Francisco "Choker" Vazquez, said to be the ringleader, fled the country and remains a fugitive — for engaging brutal and illegal tactics while arresting and interrogating suspects. They were charged with 26 counts, including kidnapping, fabricating evidence, planting drugs, and beating suspects, and the department was seen as complicit in protecting a culture that condoned such tactics.

119 individuals sued the city and department for civil rights violations, and the settlement in that case led to a federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, being assigned to oversee the department, for a period that was initially expected to last five to seven years.

But for over two decades, as the department sought to prove that it was reformed, new scandals would emerge that showed officers and higher-ranking members of the department engaging in shady or outright illegal activities. Officers were caught exchanging racist memes in 2016, and that same year, a number of Oakland police officers were embroiled in the Celeste Guap scandal, in which an underage girl had been communicating with and having sex for money with them and other law enforcement officers in other Bay Area departments.

In 2022, two rookie officers engaged in a "ghost chase," without lights or siren on, going after a suspected sideshow participant at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour on city streets, which led to a a crash that killed a bystander. And former OPD Chief Leone Armstrong went through the department's revolving door of chiefs in 2023, when he was fired by former Mayor Sheng Thao for allegedly failing to properly handle internal affairs investigations about police misconduct.

But Judge Orrick signaled back in May that he was ready to end federal oversight of the department, leaving the Oakland Police Commission in charge of oversight from here on out.

Mayor Barbara Lee, at a press conference Tuesday, praised Chief Beere and the executive team at the OPD for having "worked diligently to foster a culture of accountability" in recent months and years.

And Beere said it was a "historic" day for the Oakland community. "They’re getting their police department back. The oversight is going to belong to the people of Oakland," he said.

Oakland's negotiated settlement agreement, referred to locally as the NSA, has outlasted the many consent decrees that have been mandated for other troubled police departments around the country. As the New York Times notes, the Trump administration has rejected consent-decree deals in Baltimore and Chicago, and rejected calls for consent decrees in Louisville and Minneapolis.

The Chronicle quotes plaintiffs' attorney John Burris, who represented the original plaintiffs in the civil rights suit and has sued the department multiple times since, saying, "I hope the commitment to the NSA puts me out of business."

Previously: Oakland Police Department May Soon Be Free of Federal Oversight For First Time In Two Decades