City Government

Schaaf Administration Accused of ‘Hamstringing’ Police Commission

Published

6 years ago

May 2, 2019

Members and supporters of the voter-created Oakland Police Commission went to City Council this week to seek support to end city administrators’ continuous foot dragging and blocking the commission from doing its job to provide independent oversight of the Oakland Police Department.

Reaffirming the need for an independent police commission, Council President Rebecca Kaplan and a majority of council members voted at Tuesday night’s meeting to require the City Administrator to hire commission staff, including an Inspector General, that are independent of the city administration.

City Attorney Barbara Parker and City Administrator Sabrina Landreth, who reports to Mayor Libby Schaaf, are taking the position that the council resolution is illegal, violating the City Charter, and the administration does not have to implement it.

The Police Commission was created in November 2016 by Measure LL, an amendment to the Oakland City Charter that was passed with the backing of 83 percent of the voters. The commission is made up of seven regular and two alternate members, who are all Oakland residents and serve in a volunteer capacity.

“It’s not enough that the community called for this in great, great numbers. But we have been hamstrung in every way possible. Talk about tools, talk about staff, we have none of them,” said Regina Jackson, chair of the commission, speaking at the council meeting.

“The City Administrator didn’t follow the vote or the direction of the City Council. The City Administrator acted as if the vote never happened,” said Jackson.

“The problem is that we’re here to do a job in a volunteer capacity. We’re spending hours upon hours. And everywhere we turn we’re stopped. It’s blatant obstructionism.”

Police Commissioner Edwin Prather asked the council to support the commission so that it could start doing its work, speaking at the April 9 Public Safety Committee meeting, a video of which was played at the council meeting.

“We are behind the eight ball – all the time … Whatever you can do to get us the help we need would be greatly appreciated,” he said.

He said that when he took the position on the commission 16 months ago, “I knew that getting the police department to accept oversight where none previously existed was going to be a difficult thing.

“(But) I don’t think I understood that there were going to be forces in the city that were going to be dilatory and obstructive towards our progress.”

The only position created so far has been an administrative analyst, but that person works in the City Administrator’s office and has been told not to attend Police Commission meetings, according to police commissioners speaking at the council meeting.

The central issue at the meeting was the refusal of City Administrator Landreth and City Attorney Parker to allow the police commission to create a staff job position for an Inspector General who would be supervised by the commission and not by the City Administrator.

Councilmembers voted 5-0 to back a resolution reaffirming a vote last year that required the City Administrator to create the independent Inspector General position that would report to the Police Commission. The resolution was submitted by Councilmembers Kaplan, Noel Gallo and Nikki Fortunato Bas. Also backing the resolution were Councilmembers Sheng Thao and Loren Taylor. Dan Kalb abstained.

“There is no question that Oakland residents value the necessity of having a civilian police commission, and one of the first steps to ensure an effective oversight body meant hiring an Inspector General whose duties including conducting audits, review policing practices and procedures,” said Kaplan.

Over Landreth’s and Parker’s objections, the council last July passed an ordinance requiring all staff hired for the commission to be independent of the city administration. Such independence would be necessary for the commission to avoid undue influence by the Oakland Police Department chain of command, which includes the City Administrator as the supervisor of the Chief of Police, according to council members.

Landreth and Parker have taken the position that the ordinance violates the part of the City Charter, which says all staff are hired and supervised by the City Administrator. Because they view the ordinance as illegal, they argue they do not have to implement it.

According to Karen Getman, an outside attorney brought in by City Attorney Parker to give a legal opinion on the matter, “The City Administrator is not bound by the council’s direction in that regard.”

“The City Administrator gets to make her own decision about whether something is or isn’t consistent with the charter. The council cannot tell her she has to violate the charter,” said Getman.

In a memo, Getman argued that the councilmembers who supported the resolution in favor of the independent police commission could be criminally charged and face “forfeiture of office upon conviction.”

Underscoring the significance of the conflict between the council and the city administration over creating the Inspector General position, Police Commissioner Prather in his remarks to the Public Safety Committee said:

“This is a power grab, plain and simple…It is very clear that the City Administrator does not want this position to report to the Police Commission.”

Kaplan said she hoped the differences over the City Charter could be worked out in order for police commission to move forward. However, she indicated that the council may have to seek outside legal representation.

Ken Epstein

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Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

Published

22 hours ago

November 1, 2024

Oakland Post

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Bay Area

Evidence Appears to Show Cover-Up of Previous Charges of Discrimination Against Jewish and Black Jurors, D.A. Says

Today, District Attorney Pamela Price announced that attorneys assigned to review the office’s death penalty cases found evidence revealing that instead of investigating claims of prosecutorial misconduct—excluding Jewish and Black residents from juries — a former senior Alameda County District Attorney’s Office prosecutor who is now a sitting judge in Alameda County, Morris Jacobson, and a team of investigators appeared to have taken part in covering it up.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

A handwritten note by an employee under a previous administration appears to show plans for a cover-up of jury discrimination in a death penalty case. Courtesy image.

Special to The Post

During a press conference, Price presented a copy of a handwritten note by a former DA office employee who attended a meeting with employees from the office.

Jacobson, a deputy district attorney at the time, led the meeting in preparation for an evidentiary hearing ordered in the Fred Freeman case.

That hearing was ordered after former capital trial prosecutor Jack Quatman, the prosecutor in People v. Freeman, signed a declaration revealing that he and other capital case prosecutors routinely struck Black women and Jewish jurors in death penalty cases.

Jacobson was assigned by former district attorneys Tom Orloff and Nancy O’Malley to coordinate the ACDAO’s response during the evidentiary hearing.

In that capacity, he and others assigned to the capital case team went to great lengths to distract the courts from the substantive legal allegations by besmirching the whistleblower Quatman’s character and credibility—a strategy that succeeded.

Key sections of the note include, “left it w/ Morris saying he would give us direction. Wants to find dirt on Quatman,” and “How good are your memories? His point was he doesn’t want any documentation of what we do unless it is agreed upon???”

“This note provides the public some of the missing clues regarding who appeared to be involved during previous administrations in covering up prosecutorial misconduct at the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said Price. “The note from this meeting in 2004 gives insight into why prosecutors’ notes containing evidence of discrimination against potential Jewish and Black jurors may not have been subjected to a comprehensive review and were not disclosed to the Court in most of the cases until my office was ordered by Honorable Judge Vince Chhabria to review death penalty cases.

“What the public should know is that prosecutors have special duties as ministers of justice to uphold the Constitution, which guarantees the right to a fair trial and to be judged by a jury of one’s peers, regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation,” she said.

United States District Court Judge Chhabria determined earlier this year that there was “strong evidence that, in prior decades, prosecutors from the office were … excluding Jewish and African American jurors in death penalty cases.”

He subsequently issued an order directing ACDAO to disclose jury selection files in all Alameda County cases which resulted in a death sentence.

The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is the source of this story.

Oakland Post

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Bay Area

In the City Attorney Race, Ryan Richardson Is Better for Oakland

It’s been two years since negotiations broke down between the City of Oakland and a developer who wants to build a coal terminal here, and the issue has reappeared, quietly, in the upcoming race for Oakland City attorney. Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Members of Oaklanders Defending Democracy political action committee with Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, center. Courtesy photo.

By Margaret Rossoff

Special to The Post

OPINION

Two candidates are running for the position of Oakland City Attorney in November: current Assistant Chief City Attorney Ryan Richardson and retired judge Brenda Harbin-Forte.

Richardson has worked in the Office of the City Attorney since 2014 and is likely to continue current City Attorney Barbara Parker’s policies managing the department. He has committed not to accept campaign contributions from developers who want to store and handle coal at a proposed marine terminal in Oakland.

Retired Judge Harbin-Forte launched and has played a leading role in the campaign to recall Mayor Sheng Thao, which is also on the November ballot. She has stepped back from the recall campaign to focus on her candidacy. The East Bay Times noted, “Harbin-Forte’s decision to lead the recall campaign against a potential future client is … troubling — and is likely to undermine her ability, if she were to win, to work effectively.”

Harbin-Forte has refused to rule out accepting campaign support from coal terminal interests or their agents. Coal terminal lobbyist Greg McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committee “SOS Oakland” is backing her campaign.

In the 2022 mayor’s race, parties hoping to build a coal terminal made $600,000 in contributions to another of McConnell’s Independent Expenditure Committees.

In a recent interview, Harbin-Forte said she is open to “listening to both sides” and will be “fair.” However, the City Attorney’s job is not to judge fairly between the City and its legal opponents – it is to represent the City against its opponents.

She thought that the 2022 settlement negotiations ended because the City “rejected a ‘no coal’ settlement.” This is lobbyist McConnell’s narrative, in contrast to the report by City Attorney Barbara Parker. Parker has explained that the City continued to negotiate in good faith for a settlement with no “loopholes” that could have allowed coal to ship through Oakland – until would-be coal developer Phil Tagami broke off negotiations.

One of Harbin-Forte’s main priorities, listed on her website, is “reducing reliance on outside law firms,” and instead use the lawyers working in the City Attorney’s office.

However, sometimes this office doesn’t have the extensive expertise available that outside firms can provide in major litigation. In the ongoing, high stakes coal litigation, the City has benefited from collaborating with experienced, specialized attorneys who could take on the nationally prominent firms representing the City’s opponents.

The City will continue to need this expertise as it pursues an appeal of the judge’s decision that restored the developer’s lease and defends against a billion-dollar lawsuit brought by the hedge fund operator who holds the sublease on the property.

Harbin-Forte’s unwillingness to refuse campaign contributions from coal terminal interests, her opposition to using outside resources when needed, as well as her uncritical repetition of coal lobbyist McConnell’s claim that the City sabotaged the settlement talks of 2022 all raise serious concerns about how well she would represent the best interests of Oakland and Oaklanders if she is elected City Attorney.