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The Oakland Police Department appears to be backsliding in its efforts to investigate officer misconduct, according to new court filings this month.
From January to March of this year, OPD investigated just 65% of severe misconduct allegations lodged against officers within six months — falling 20% short of a court-mandated threshold. The requirement is one of three remaining reforms the department needs to make to end more than two decades of federal oversight stemming from a major police brutality scandal involving a group of officers known as the “Riders” in 2000.
“We’ve been on this journey for many, many years, and so hopefully, we were getting closer to closure,” said civil rights attorney John Burris, who represented the group of Oakland residents who brought the Riders misconduct case against the department. “However, this sort of puts at bay the possibility that it will happen very soon. These are still significant issues.”…