Have a bad interaction with Oakland police? Here's who to contact
OAKLAND, Calif. - At a recent meeting of about 30 Oakland teens and college-age students, one young woman said she simply wished officers would say hello when approaching her, instead of gruffly barking out: “License and registration!”
Another college student said he had no idea why a police officer followed him and demanded to see his student ID, even though he was the designated driver taking home his friends, who had been drinking. He assumed it was because he was black at a campus that is mostly white.
The group of students, mostly from Castlemont and Oakland Tech high schools, were there to tell members of the Oakland Police Commission, as well as John Alden, the head of the commission’s investigative arm, about their run-ins with police.
“If you’ve had any type of poor interaction,” Alden told the students, “I’m the person you should let know.”
No complaint is too insignificant.
“Anyone who has had a bad experience with an officer in Oakland should complain,” he said. “Sometimes a small thing turns into something bigger.”
That even means if an officer was rude.
Oakland police carry out homeless activist protesters from City Hall. They said the Housing Justice Village protesters violated city curfew. Nov. 25, 2019
“Oakland policy says officers have to be courteous,” Alden said. “We look for evidence: Did they give out their name and badge when asked? Did they use profanity? We often do look at rudeness as an indicator, because there might be a greater risk of misconduct. Discourtesy can be a gateway ramp. Courtesy goes a long way to building trust.”
Alden’s formal title is the executive director of the Community Police Review Agency, a city agency with a $4.5-million a year operating budget and which is tasked with investigating complaints against police and vested with the power of recommending whether officers should be disciplined or fired.
His office can either “sustain findings,” which is the equivalent of agreeing with the person who complained, or find the complaint to be unfounded. Depending on the offense, the officer might get a note in his or her file, receive more training, or even get fired.
Last summer, Alden's agency, which was originally called the Citizens’ Police Review Board, investigated five officers involved with killing Joshua Pawlik, a homeless man sleeping with a gun in his hand, in front of a home in 2018. The police commission, made up of seven civilians, reviewed that investigation and then decided to fire the officers.
The Oakland Police Commission, as well as Alden’s investigative agency, are now in the spotlight after commissioners unanimously voted to fire Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick last month. Kirkpatrick and the five officers, both say their terminations were unjust, and they are both suing the city.
John Alden (left) and police commissioner Henry Gage listen to youth talk about interactions with Oakland police. Feb. 29, 2020
Commissioners, as well as Alden’s investigators, are all civilians who have the unusual power over police in Oakland -- one of the few cities in the country where non-police officers get to investigate and discipline law enforcement.
The citizens of Oakland voted this police commission and Alden’s agency into existence in 2016.
While championed by many, there are indeed critics.
Michael Rains, a high-profile attorney who represents police officers, said that he has a chief concern against these type of civilian-led investigative bodies.
“On paper they look good,” he said. “And if run fairly and objectively, they have a legitimate purpose in looking at police conduct.”
But in reality, Rains said, “there are inevitably failures, fueled by people who come to their jobs with preconceived beliefs that police are bad and chronically use excessive force. The entire process is destined for failure.”
That said, Rains said if Alden does his job objectively, he believes he is “very capable of the job. I just don’t want him to be pressured into the mantra that police are bad.”
Mayor Libby Schaaf, and Oakland Police commissioners Regina Jackson and Henry Gage fired police chief Anne Kirkpatrick. Feb. 20, 2020
Alden comes from the opposite perspective.
He believes regular people should be the ones to oversee police misconduct cases. Otherwise, he said, it too often becomes a case of the fox guarding the henhouse.
“As civilians, our position differs from that of police,” he said. “We often find allegations that police don’t raise and we recommend sustaining more than police. We’re not part of police culture.“
Alden, who worked in San Francisco for much of his career, said he has watched many Internal Affairs investigators launch officer-involved shooting investigations by first checking the criminal history of the person shot, but not the prior disciplinary history of the officer who fired the gun.
Alden said the person's prior criminal history is then used to justify the officer’s decision to shoot, even when the officer had no knowledge of that history when the incident occurred.
It’s not right to do this, Alden said, mostly because someone’s prior criminal history is more often an indicator of socioeconomic status than of any kind of ingrained evil.
And poverty is disproportionately experienced by people of color, which in turn, Alden said, places minorities in a position of structural disadvantage even before the shooting occurs.
“Constitutional policing requires the opposite approach: We should instead check the officer’s prior disciplinary history, if any, first,” Alden said.
Oakland city councilman Noel Gallo, who is critical of the commission's firing of Kirkpatrik, had nothing negative to say about Alden or the citizen agency he heads.
"I think John is very professional," Gallo said, adding he was a supporter of the measure that put the commission onto the ballot.
Alden graduated from Boalt Law School at UC Berkeley, and has served as a civilian attorney in the San Francisco Police Internal Affairs Division and then was part of the executive team of the San Francisco Department of Police Accountability.
Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick
Most recently, Alden was the managing assistant of the Independent Investigations Bureau of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, where he prosecuted police officers. In the 1990s, he was a deputy district attorney in Sonoma and Marin counties.
The police unions in San Francisco or Oakland did not returns calls and emails seeking comment about Alden or what his agency does.
Alden was hired by the Oakland Police Commission in July and his 12 other investigators and administrative staff have been quietly reviewing complaints of abuse in the city, dealing with a backlog that had piled up before he took the job.
When he started, Alden said his total caseload was about 140 cases at any one time. Nearly eight months later, the caseload is down to 87, and he’d still like to reduce that. In the first three months of this year, Alden said his agency has sustained 13 cases and found 97 allegations that were unfounded out of about 192.
Those who complain will find out if their allegations were either sustained or not. If the behavior falls under a new police transparency law, SB 1421, then they and the public will find out more details. If the conduct does not fall into these categories - lying, sexual assault or shooting someone or causing great bodily injury - then by law in California, the actual investigation will be kept private.
In his new role in Oakland, Alden said he wants to take into full account that some of the people who complain about police behavior will have prior criminal histories, suffer from mental illness, and possibly present with other indicators of the chronic stress caused by being poor and living on the streets.
Alden said he is committed to listening to those in the community who are underrepresented - and making sure their concerns are heard and investigated thoroughly.
“I believe complainants from such backgrounds are more often the experts in police misconduct," he said. "Because they are subjected to it more often than anyone else in the community."
IF YOU'RE INTERESTED: To find out how to file a complaint against Oakland police, click here, call 510-238-3159 or email jrus@oaklandca.gov. You can download the complaint app here.
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Lisa Fernandez is a reporter for KTVU. Email Lisa at lisa.fernandez@foxtv.com or call her at 510-874-0139. Or follow her on Twitter @ljfernandez