The federal judge overseeing the Oakland Police Department is taking over an investigation into how the police leadership initially responded to allegations of sexual exploitation because the city's probe was failing and moving too slowly, according to one of the attorneys who brought the lawsuit leading to court oversight.
Judge Thelton Henderson ordered Oakland officials on Tuesday to provide a court-appointed attorney with records of the internal affairs investigation into charges that several officers sexually exploited Jasmine Abuslin, the teenage daughter of a police dispatcher. The revelations originating in Oakland led to a law enforcement scandal implicating officers in at least six Bay Area agencies.
Henderson's order appears to override a similar investigation initiated by Mayor Libby Schaaf in May when she hired Morin Jacob, a private attorney with the law firm Liebert Cassidy Whitmore.
The East Bay Express, which has broken several major developments in the sexual exploitation case, first reported that a court-appointed attorney was taking over the case.
City officials were most likely not cooperating with Jacob, leading to the slow pace of the investigation, said civil rights attorney Jim Chanin, who along with John Burris brought the Riders civil rights lawsuit that placed the Police Department under federal oversight in 2003.