Twelve years of federal monitors, $30M in taxpayer money to pay for them, and more than $70M in lawsuit settlement costs later, OPD is no closer to not being a rogue agency than it ever was.
Having managed to hide the video of Hernan Jaramillo being suffocated to death by its officers for years, even apparently from the family until after a lawsuit settlement was seemingly agreed to; having managed to kill Demouria Hogg after finding him asleep or unconscious in his car, unable with an entire squad of officers to figure out what else to do; having one of their officers manage to kill a mentally ill, homeless man instead of backing off and calling for assistance, the latest incident pales in comparison but is no less insane.
In an incident that was kept under wraps by OPD until Darwin BondGraham of the East Bay Express ferreted it out two and a half months later, two apparently off-duty OPD officers accosted a family for no explicable reason at 9:20 PM on the evening of December 7th, 2015. One of them, Officer Cullen Faeth, ended up tackling the woman of the house in her bathrobe and effectively leaving her naked. Neighbors and the husband eventually got the assailant off the woman and pinned him down until on-duty OPD officers arrived and arrested Faeth on suspicion of assault.
That was just the beginning. OPD then harassed the family, trying to bury the incident. According to the Mercury News the assaulted woman related
a police captain came to her home at midnight, asking her to retell the story. Another five officers, including detectives, showed up at 3 a.m. and asked [them] to recount the story and re-enact the incident. [The woman] said she felt as if they were trying to get her to change her story.
“The whole time I felt revictimized,” she said.
The family has now filed a lawsuit, with attorney John Burris representing them.
The family did not find out that they were assaulted by off-duty officers until the next day…
When police arrived at the scene, they never disclosed to Cortez that the man who had tackled her was one of their own officers…
She said she found out the men were police officers the next day, from an Oakland lieutenant who assured her that the department was conducting internal affairs and criminal investigations and said that everything was going to be OK.
To add insult to injury, an OPD official decided to tell them family the assaulting officer was just “being silly.”
@OakMorr Is Holmgren OPD's point man on drunken misbehavior after his involvement in the drunken brawl in 2010? pic.twitter.com/9tIikmsV0G
— David Colburn (@davidcolburn) February 25, 2016
And then
“I called back a month later,” she said. “Still no police report.”
Burris said: “[She] tried to get information about who these officers were. She tried to get reports. She was stonewalled all the way.”
Yes, OPD is STILL Out of Control.
The Coalition for Police Accountability is attempting to have enacted a Charter Amendment that would take power away from an inept and unwilling City Administration and put it in the hands of an independent, citizen Police Review Commission.
The Coalition for Police Accountability’s (CPA) mission is to place on the November 2016 ballot a measure that has been drafted by Oakland residents to establish a Police Commission that oversees, monitors and holds accountable its Police Department in order to conserve resources and ensure appropriate, professional and equitable Constitutional policing services to enhance public safety for Oakland residents.
Oakland’s government has made it clear that it has no interest in controlling its police force. This legislation may be, in the immortal words of Princess Leia, “Our only hope.”
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