After Third OPD Shooting This Year, Advocates Demand Body-Cam Footage
After Oakland police shot and killed a person they said was armed last week, community leaders, advocates and impacted families gathered on Friday outside the department’s headquarters to demand greater accountability from law enforcement.
Chanting “New badge, same gang,” a coalition of restorative justice and Black-led public safety groups called on the Oakland Police Department to justify the use of deadly force on July 13.
“We want to know what the legal — based on state law — justification was for them to move from what they call less-lethal to lethal weapons. Why this man is dead,” said Cat Brooks, co-founder and executive director of the Anti Police-Terror Project.
Officers were called to the 4000 block of International Boulevard just after 2 p.m. Monday, July 13, after the California Highway Patrol requested assistance, according to OPD’s initial statement. Officers said they found an armed man who ignored their commands and “lunged at officers with a weapon,” then fired both less-lethal and lethal force, killing him at the scene.
Weapons were recovered, the department said, and no officers or bystanders were hurt. OPD has not publicly identified the man.
Organizers said they want OPD to immediately release unedited body-worn camera footage, dispatch and 911 audio, and a minute-by-minute account of the July 13 shooting.
The shooting is the third by Oakland police officers this year, and the second fatal shooting. Advocates say it points to a troubling reversal for a department on the cusp of exiting more than two decades of federal oversight.
Brooks and others questioned why the department has not publicly specified what weapon the man was holding and why CHP officers were pursuing a suspect through Oakland neighborhoods.
OPD did not respond to a request for comment beyond its initial statement.
Lawrence Cox, a policy advocate for Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, said the simultaneous use of less-lethal and lethal force demands an explanation of: “what happened, what was present, how far away the individual was, what de-escalations were attempted, and why less-lethal force was insufficient.”
Being labeled a threat, he said, “cannot become a blank check for death.”
“Where is the outrage when our local police murder? Where is the transparency?” asked George Galvis, executive director of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice.
With no weapon named and no footage released, he said, the object involved “could have been something completely benign.”
On April 27, officers fatally shot a man in the 1800 block of 89th Avenue after police said he pointed a gun at them. Less than two weeks later, officers shot and wounded a man on May 8 who they said dragged one officer and pinned another against a parked car while fleeing a traffic stop near Ninth Avenue. OPD said he survived and was in stable condition.
OPD has been under federal oversight since 2003, stemming from the Riders scandal, in which 119 plaintiffs accused a rogue group of OPD officers of false arrests, beatings, kidnapping, planting evidence, falsifying reports and racial discrimination that violated their constitutional rights.
To settle the case, the city and OPD agreed to pay nearly $11 million and to carry out 51 reforms, addressing use of force, discipline, supervision, training and internal affairs.
In a May 22 report, federal monitor Robert Warshaw found that OPD had met all 51 tasks for the first time. U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick has said he will close the case at the next court date, Sept. 29, as long as the department stays in compliance.
Organizers argue that another police killing raises doubts about whether OPD is ready to police itself.
“That is not reform. That is not progress. That is a department moving backward at the exact moment Oakland is being told OPD is ready to police itself without federal oversight,” Brooks said in a statement.
The department placed the officers who fired on paid administrative leave. OPD is reviewing the shooting through its own criminal and internal-affairs investigations, a press release said, while the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office conducts a separate, independent inquiry. The city’s civilian Community Police Review Agency has been notified of the case.
For those gathered on Seventh Street, none of that is enough without public evidence.
“The police cannot be allowed to take a life, control the evidence, shape the public narrative, and then ask the community to simply trust their conclusions,” said Saabir Lockett, deputy director of civic engagement at the East Bay Action. “We will not accept silence.”
KQED’s Paula Sibulo contributed to this report.