Oakland police payouts for misconduct plummet in last 5 years

OAKLAND, Calif. - Oakland police payouts for people who have sued them alleging excessive force and wrongful death have plummeted in the last five years, according to an analysis of city data by KTVU.

From 2018 to 2023, Oakland police paid out roughly $1.7 million for cases involving wrongful death, use-of-force and chases that led to injury, based on data provided by the city attorney's office – far lower than cities like Fremont and San Jose. 

In addition, none of the most recent payments exceeded $400,000, and none of the cases made huge headlines. 

As two examples:

• The son of Richard Perkins received $250,000 when police shot and killed him in 2015 because they thought his pellet gun was real.
• Retired KCBS radio journalist Tim Ryan received $400,000 after being tear-gassed and seriously injured in 2020 at the George Floyd protests.

The five-year payout amount pales in comparison with what Oakland used to fork out to settle such cases. 

And over the years, these payouts have been continually dropping over the decades. 

Case in point: Oakland paid out $35 million for police misconduct cases from January 2011 to December 2021, and before that, Oakland paid out $57 million from 2001 to 2011.

The single biggest payout at the time was in 2004, when the city paid nearly $11 million for the notorious ‘Riders’ case, where police were accused of beating up Black men and planting evidence on them. 

The Riders case spawned what's called a Negotiated Settlement Agreement, and federal oversight over the Oakland Police Department, which is still in effect today, more than 20 years later. 

Civil rights attorney Jim Chanin partially credits the declining number of police payouts to that strict oversight, where a federal monitor and judge still meet regularly to make sure that OPD meets 50 reforms it is tasked with meeting before the oversight can end. To date, the department is shy of just two or three of those reforms. 

"Well, it's extremely low compared to what it has been in the past," Chanin said on Tuesday. "I think the culture has changed. I think that there's no talk in the locker room about who you beat up today. I think if there was talk like that in the locker room, the officer who said it would be turned in, and that's a sea change." 

Chanin also credits the Oakland police officers themselves, and the overall culture at OPD for that sea change. 

"And which one is more than the other?" he asked. "I just don't care because the important thing is the result. And the result is, fewer people are being brutalized or falsely arrested or doing other things to warrant a lawsuit, than ever before." 

Michael Rains, an attorney representing Oakland police officers, does not agree that federal oversight has helped the city become any safer, and he criticized how much it costs, saying that money would be better spent on hiring more cops. 

Oakland pays about $1 million a year for that oversight, which includes attorneys fees, technology and the salary of the independent monitor, Robert Warshaw.  

Rains said that his hunch is that there are fewer excessive force payouts because of low staffing levels – and fewer interactions with people on the street who then might sue.

"Police are not confronting suspects in a lot of violent crimes, and those confrontations often result in intervention by police…and forceful encounters that produce lawsuits and payments and so forth," Rains said. "Oh, I think it's a big staffing issue. I think it's a huge staffing issue." 

Chanin also agrees with Rains that the city needs more police officers, but he said "you don't need to commit acts of brutality to have effective policing."

The police department and the police union did not respond for comment. 

A KTVU investigation in 2020 found that Bay Area law enforcement agencies engaged in long-term reform efforts -- including having independent oversight like Oakland -- are paying much less in civil penalties for injuring or killing people compared to departments left to police themselves. 

At the time, Oakland, along with San Francisco, showed stunning turnarounds after taking on some of the most comprehensive reforms in the country. 

In comparison, two Bay Area cities that have either no or minimal oversight have had much larger police payouts stemming from wrongful death and excessive force payouts.

Over the last five years, Fremont paid $7.7 million to the mother of Elena Mondragon, a 16-year-old girl who was killed while riding in a BMW driven by her boyfriend whom police shot at, but didn't harm, in 2017.  Fremont has no police oversight. 

San Jose, which has minimal police oversight in the form of an Independent Police Monitor, has paid out $23.5 million during the same time period. 

The largest amount was a nearly $12 million settlement in 2018 to Hung Lam, who was shot and paralyzed by officers four years earlier. 

Another large payout was nearly $3 million to the estate of Anthony Nunez after officers shot the teen when he was having a suicidal breakdown in front of his home in 2016. And San Jose paid another $3 million to Michael Acosta when he lost an eye after being hit by a police projectile during the George Floyd protests in 2020, as well as several other defendants in the case. 

Methodology:

KTVU requested money damages for excessive force and wrongful death from Oakland, Fremont and San Jose from 2018 to 2023. This includes jury awards in lawsuits and civil settlements. In the analysis, KTVU did not include figures from traffic accidents that were not the result of an officer using force. This means we excluded some high-dollar amounts like a $12-million payout to Terry Baker in 2021 after an off-duty Oakland officer failed to stop at an intersection and crashed into her car, causing her permanent injuries. 

Email Lisa at lisa.fernandez@foxtv.com or call her at 510-874-0139. Or follow her on Twitter @ljfernandez.