Readers of this blog know what I think of Robert Warshaw, OPD’s federal overseer. He’s a maggot who makes his living by persecuting police departments, particularly Oakland’s. He’s become rich by persuading the U.S. Department of Justice to allow him to “reform” police departments, while making such “reforms” impossible for those departments to achieve by constantly moving the goal posts. He’s Lucy pulling that football away from Charlie Brown. Warshaw is now in his thirteenth year as OPD’s monitor (although the consent decree itself dates back to 2003), and if he has his way, he’ll be there for another thirteen. After all, he gets a million bucks a year, so why would he get off that gravy train?
Every time OPD is on the verge of achieving compliance, Warshaw somehow discovers another problem that makes it necessary for him to stay on—or gives him an excuse to. (Warshaw also was the eminence grise behind the unjust firing of OPD Chief LeRonne Armstrong, for the precise reason that Armstrong was doing too good a job of complying with Warshaw’s rules.) Everybody in Oakland knows Warshaw’s running a con (except for police haters like Cat Brooks and Carroll Fife), but no one has had the courage to stand up and say so. As a result, Warshaw has been allowed to get away with his self-promoting shtick, with no oversight whatsoever.
It’s unclear just how many American police departments are under federal monitorship. In addition to Oakland, we know that Minneapolis, Louisville KY, Ferguson MO, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, Cincinnati, Seattle, Washington D.C, Missoula MT, Baltimore, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, Phoenix and Pittsburgh are now or have been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The Trump administration ended the consent decree process, but the Biden administration, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, resumed it. The process has always been divisive. There’s no data on how many complaints have been lodged against federal monitors like Warshaw, but my guess is that they’ve been mounting. I infer this by the new rules for consent decree monitors just issued by Garland. It’s a remarkable document that strongly suggests Garland and his boss, President Biden, finally understand the extent of monitor abuses, and are intent on stopping them.
The new rules implicitly recognize that some of these watchdogs (like Warshaw) drag their monitorships on and on for purely venal reasons, and so they place limits on them: individual monitorships will now be kept to five years duration. The rules also place caps on monitors’ fees, and state that monitors can work on only one monitoring team at a time, to eliminate the “double-dipping” Warshaw has been accused of. They also place term limits on monitors, and require them to undergo further training. Conflicts of interest, which appear to be numerous, from now on will be more strictly inspected.
Said Garland, “The department has found that--while consent decrees and monitorships are important tools to increase transparency and accountability--the department can and should do more to improve their efficiency and efficacy.”
This is a really good start and shows that the Biden administration is hearing from Americans who are fed up with the choke hold these monitors have on police departments. (Wokes tend to love these monitors, for the obvious reason that they weaken police departments.) People like Robert Warshaw need to be weeded out of the monitoring business, which—if it’s needed at all—should be much more closely scrutinized. The only problem with the new rules—if I’m reading them correctly—is that they apply only to future federal monitorships; it’s not clear they will retroactively apply to existing ones, like Oakland’s. I’m trying to find out. Meanwhile, we should celebrate this development, which is long overdue, and hope that, before long, we’ve seen the last of Mr. Warshaw (and his crony, Judge Orrick).
Steve Heimoff