Shoshana Walter/The Bay Citizen

Mayor Jean Quan and Anthony Batts speak to reporters after a court hearing

In a hearing that exposed the breadth of the problems facing Oakland, a federal judge blasted the Oakland Police Department Thursday for failing to make court-ordered changes designed to reduce police misconduct and abuse.

Before a courtroom full of city leaders and police department brass, U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson highlighted a series of issues that “indicate to me the city and the department still don't get it.”

The hearing focused on a series of reforms that the court ordered in a settlement agreement for the 2003 Riders case, in which several OPD officers were accused of planting drug evidence on suspects in East Oakland. After a multitude of missed deadlines and leadership changes, the case is now in its ninth year. It costs the city about $2 million each year to pay for a team of monitors who audit the police department.

“This is no longer business as usual,” Henderson said. “I'm not interested in listening to promises about how things are going to be.”

For the first time in the case's history, Henderson, who has long complained of slow progress, told the groups that he would take a much stronger role in getting the department into compliance. He also asked the department and city to address several issues, including the frequency with which officers draw their weapons.

According to a quarterly report, reform monitors took a random sample of police reports of 80 incidents from the first three months of this year and found 215 officers had pointed their firearms. The majority of incidents were justified, the monitors said, but they found that in 28 percent of the cases, officers' use of firearms was inappropriate and unnecessary. The monitors were also concerned that none of the supervisors reading over the officers' reports raised questions about the events.

"That's astounding," Henderson said.

In addition, Henderson asked why an officer who was involved in a fatal shooting and subsequently terminated was allowed, through arbitration, to return to work. He also criticized the department for naming a summer sting operation, in which officers arrested parole and probation offenders, “Operation Tuneup.” The word “tuneup” is slang term, well-known among police, used to describe the beating of suspects.

Jim Chanin, a lawyer who brought the suit along with defense attorney John Burris, said the issues were indicative of a lack of cultural change at the department that has spurred distrust in the community.