I’d wager that most people who follow the news think that Robert Warshaw is going to lift the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA) against the Oakland Police Department sometime this year. Indeed, I reported on that possibility last March. But suddenly, there’s increasing feeling that Warshaw is intent on continuing the NSA for even longer.
Warshaw, you may recall, has been the Independent Monitor for the Oakland Police Department since 2010, although the NSA itself dates back to 2003, meaning the Federal government essentially has been running OPD for twenty years. The original reason for the monitoring was because of the “Riders” scandal of 2000, in which it was alleged that four veteran Oakland cops, informally known as The Riders, kidnapped, planted evidence on, and beat suspects, while the Department itself turned a blind eye to the misconduct.
Under the terms of the NSA, OPD was saddled with 51 specific “tasks,” across a range of areas. In the twenty ensuring years, the Department has complied with all but one of them, and it was expected that OPD would resolve that sole remaining task this year. In fact, in May, 2022, there was a sigh of relief at OPD that the NSA’s end was in sight. A Federal judge, William Orrick, ruled that “Oakland can now enter a one-year probationary period,” meaning that, if OPD continued its progress, the NSA would end this coming May, 2023. Libby Schaaf and OPD Chief LeRonne Armstrong both celebrated this. Even one of the lawyers who had sued OPD over the Riders, Jim Chanin, said that “they [OPD] are now on the cusp of compliance," although the attitude among rank-and-file cops was more like “We’ll believe it when we see it.”
The cops’ skepticism proved to be accurate. In October, 2022, just five months after Orrick’s announcement, Warshaw reversed course and announced that two alleged cases of officer misconduct had made him reconsider lifting the NSA. “While these [misconduct] investigations are not yet complete,” he said, “information that has been developed to date regarding the Department’s internal investigation and discipline process is deeply troubling.”
When Chanin, the lawyer who had filed the original complaint against The Riders—the same man who had said OPD was “on the cusp of compliance” with the NSA—learned of the misconduct allegations, he said, with his partner John Burris, “This threatens to draw the sustainability period to an abrupt halt.”
We have almost no details about the two alleged misconduct cases. The investigation is said to be ongoing. However, there’s growing concern that Warshaw never had any intention of lifting the NSA, not even after twenty years. He makes a lot of money off it. The longer he can keep it going, the longer he gets to enjoy his cushy job and his million dollar-plus budget. I’ll leave the last words to former OPD Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, who was fired by Libby Schaaf under pressure from the Police Commission:
“If the facts were honestly told, they would demonstrate that the Oakland Police Department has met its reform goals, and Warshaw’s million-dollar job would disappear. As he lines his pockets, he’s putting the community in the line of fire.”
Steve Heimoff