Thanks to the redoubtable Rajni Mandal and her wonderful reporting, we now know exactly what excuses the grifting “special monitor,” Robert Warshaw, is using to extend his control—now in its second decade—over the Oakland Police Department, and to continue getting his $1 million annual salary.
I’ve previously joked that Warshaw finds OPD out of compliance with his orders if some cop somewhere fails to dot an “i” on a report. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but not by much. This time around Warshaw again found OPD out of compliance on three of the fifty-something tasks he identified many years ago. Here’s a summary of those three tasks, and Warshaw’s imperious justification to extending his grip.
Task 2: This task requires OPD to complete all “internal investigations” – including review, approval, findings, and discipline--“within 180 days” of the filing of the incident. In his report, Warshaw alleges that some small percentage, ranging from 2 percent to 16 percent of investigations, depending on the nature of the complaint, were not completed within this timeline. This is one of his excuses for finding OPD out of compliance.
Keep in mind that Warshaw’s agreement with OPD specifies that in the case of “an unusual proliferation of cases and/or workload,” internal review“staffing [shall] be increased to maintain timeliness standards.” Keep in mind, also, that the City Council has consistently and deliberately underfunded OPD so that the department is hundreds of officers short of the number required to comply with Warshaw’s demands. There is simply not enough money for OPD to “increase” internal review staffing. If anyone is out of compliance with Warshaw’s dictat, it’s the City Council, not OPD. Warshaw knows this, which makes his finding even more outrageous. It’s like blaming the victims of a famine for their own starvation.
Task 5: This task involves the procedures for citizen complaints, including incarcerated persons, against cops. The general rule for such complaints, according to Warshaw himself, is for OPD to deal with them within “three hours.” If the complainant (the person making the complaint) cannot be brought in that timeline before an OPD supervisor, the penalties against OPD start kicking in. Each allegation by the complainant must quickly be determined to be either “unfounded, sustained, exonerated, not sustained, or subject to ‘administrative closure,” or dismissal. As part of this process, “Any member or employee who is a subject of an internal investigation, as well as any other member or employee on the scene of an incident at which misconduct has been alleged by a complainant,” shall be interviewed by internal staff. Warshaw, in a written diatribe of nearly 1,400 words, found OPD out of compliance with Task 5. He refuses to specify just where and how this non-compliance occurred. His key finding: “there remain…a number of issues, concerns, and developments which are not yet appropriate for public discussion. It is our hope that the City will expeditiously address these matters so that our confidence – and by extension, the community’s confidence –in the internal affairs process can be restored.”
This raises a number of serious concerns. One, why is Warshaw being so secretive about his reasons? Why are they not “appropriate for public discussion”? I can only conclude that his reasons are so spurious, so ridiculous, that he knows if he elaborated on them, he would be publicly ridiculed. He also knows that Oakland doesn’t have the guts to demand he further explain himself. Who would do that—Barbara Lee? Kevin Jenkins? As if. As for his absurd claim about “the community’s confidence,” I will say only this: the community I’m part of has complete confidence in OPD. To conflate his confidence with that of the “community” is an insult to the community, to me as a member of that community, and a lie.
Task 45: This pertains to the OPD disciplinary process. Warshaw determined that Black and Latino officers accused of wrongdoing were found guilty by OPD internal investigators at a higher rate than were White officers. Again, in his report Warshaw refuses to provide details. We don’t know what the cases were; we don’t know any of the facts; we know only the outcomes of OPD’s internal investigations. Warshaw found OPD in “partial compliance” with Task 45, whatever that means. Warshaw promises, as he did with Task 5, to provide details during an “upcoming site visit,” although we have no idea when that will be. Common sense tells me that Warshaw is implying racial bias in OPD’s disciplinary process. I don’t believe there is. The situation with discipline in OPD is the same as it is with arrests in Oakland: the disparity between arrests by skin color has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with who committed them and how often. If Black and Latino officers are being reprimanded at a higher rate than White officers in OPD, the explanation is that they’re breaking the rules more often, and more severely, than White officers.
Look, we all know that Robert Warshaw is a greedy, power-hungry and feckless disaster. No mayor who plays his dirty little game is worthy of the office. If Barbara Lee wants to get my respect and be a true leader, she will immediately announce she will no longer comply with Robert Warshaw in any way, shape, or form, and if he wishes to sue the city, she’ll see him in court.
By the way, and on a related topic, I just heard Angela Davis (yes, she’s still around) on NPR (where else?) spouting her Black Panther propaganda. She demands an America “that does not depend on racism, repression or violence.” And, as she has for decades, she still wishes to abolish all prisons.
Great idea, right? Let’s start with violence. In what community is violence a way of life? I think you know the answer: that which Davis defends. As for abolishing prisons, sure. Let’s just let all the murderers, rapists, muggers, bippers, thieves, child molesters and psychopaths go free, so they can roam our streets and predate (noun form of “predator”) upon us. Then, when the prisons are empty, we can turn them into condos, where Davis’s beloved homeless brothers and sisters can live rent-free and plot the revolution. Power to the POC!
Steve Heimoff