A federal judge ruled that the Oakland Police Department has made sufficient progress to end 23 years of federal oversight stemming from a police corruption scandal.
U.S. District Judge William Orrick made the ruling yesterday.The Oaklandside reports Orrick said the OPD has met all 51 of the court-mandated reforms that were established in the wake of the Riders scandal that prompted the federal consent decree.
Orrick had overseen the fits and starts of the reform program that saw the OPD change police chiefs over a generation, but failed to satisfy all of the reforms.
In recent years, several OPD and Oakland city government leaders had pressed for an end to the decree – one of the longest in the nation’s history.
Lawyers who represented some of the victims had also lobbied for an end to federal oversight.
Several OPD officers were prosecuted as a result of the Riders scandal, where police were accused of beating, kidnapping and planting drugs on more than 100 Oakland residents – all but one of them African Americans.
The judge said he was impressed that Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and interim OPD chief James Beere were committed to constitutional policing.
