We urge the Oakland City Council to place a measure on the
November ballot that would create a citizen-run Public Safety Oversight
Committee.
By Susan Shawl and Robert Oliver
Based on the most recent report issued by federal monitor Robert
Warshaw, the Oakland Police Department will most likely require months of
additional court monitoring — after eleven years of failure to comply with the
Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA). No other city in the United States has
taken so long to bring its police department into compliance with a federal
consent decree.
It is indisputable that the City of Oakland has lacked the ability
to hold its police department accountable to the public it is sworn to protect
and serve, and this inadequacy has led to the expenditure of many millions of
dollars on costly lawsuits, court monitoring, and outside consultants —
resources that might have been used to hire additional police officers or meet
other critical needs.
The Coalition for Police Accountability, composed of Oakland residents,
was formed to address this crisis and has drafted a ballot measure to amend the
city charter to create a Public Safety Oversight Commission (PSOC). This
initiative is being sponsored by City Council Public Safety Committee Chair
Noel Gallo and was scheduled to be discussed at its meeting on Tuesday, June
24.
Currently, the city administrator manages the personnel matters of
the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and all other city departments. This
authority is granted by the city charter. This initiative would transfer
authority to discipline officers found to have violated policy to the PSOC. The
PSOC would also make budget and policy recommendations to the mayor and city
council for implementation.
This structure is based on the police commission model in Los
Angeles and San Francisco. The PSOC would consolidate the staff of the existing
Citizens Police Review Board and Community Policing Advisory Board — so no
additional taxation would be sought. The mayor and city council members would
retain authority to make final decisions concerning the budget, policies, major
program initiatives, and the selection of the police chief.
The Oakland police union — the Oakland Police Officers Association
(OPOA) — believes that police officers do not need civilian oversight, and that
they can adequately police themselves. And for decades, the city's leadership
has deferred to this view. The result has been clear: OPD has failed to adhere
to the terms of the NSA and complete its mandated reforms within five years, revealing
an ingrained resistance to change that has prolonged noncompliance.
The solution we propose protects reforms and best practices
by using Oakland citizens — instead of expensive federal court monitors — to
oversee the implementation of structural change in OPD policy, practice, and
fiscal management. If the city's residents and leaders do not install adequate
civilian oversight of OPD, we may find ourselves going "back to the
future," with further expensive lawsuits and misconduct settlements after the
NSA is concluded.
These issues are critical. Neglecting the need to create adequate
local mechanisms of police oversight for so many years has resulted in massive,
prolonged expenses that Oakland simply can't afford. The city council owes it
to the residents, its constituents, to allow them to choose in November whether
or not to adopt this long-overdue corrective measure.
Two years ago, citizens' groups proposed a similar measure. But
our circumstances are very different now. In 2012, we didn't have the time and
the organization to get the ball rolling. In addition, a Public Safety
Oversight Committee, if it would have been created back then, would have run
afoul of the OPOA's contract with the city. But we believe that issue is no
longer a roadblock.
The provisions of the current measure, if passed by voters on
November 4, 2014, would not take effect until either 180 days after the
election or the termination of the NSA. That brings us up to around June 30,
2015, when the current OPOA contract expires. And this charter amendment would
preclude any provisions of a new contract between OPOA and the city that would
conflict with the language of the measure.
