Will OPD oversight last one more year? Judge to decide

OAKLAND, Calif. - Federal oversight over the Oakland Police Department could end on Tuesday afternoon, or, it possibly could last one more year.

Proposal for one more year

Civil rights attorneys Jim Chanin and John Burris, along with citizens who comprise the Coalition for Police Accountability, are asking U.S. District Judge William Judge Orrick not to terminate the 23-year oversight over OPD – the longest in history – at least not now. 

Orrick is expected to make a decision at what could be the last hearing in the case on Tuesday afternoon. 

"I want to extend it, but with an asterisk," Chanin told KTVU. "We would not be involved. Under my proposal, we'd stay in the case in name only because there has to be a plaintiff and a defendant."

Chanin said that in reality, however, he is proposing that the Oakland Police Commission be in charge for the next year.

"They would issue the reports to the court," Chanin said. 

Oversight longest in U.S. history

The backstory:

Chanin and Burris sued the city of Oakland in 2000 over what's known as the Riders scandal, where some Oakland police officers framed and beat up Black and brown men. 

As a result of that infamous suit, Oakland agreed to make 51 police reforms. 

Over the last two decades, they've made those reforms, often making progress and then slipping, causing the oversight to extend past its estimated 5-year deadline to 23 years. During that time period, Oakland has had a dozen police chiefs. There are nearly 1,800 court entries in the Riders case, formally known as Delphine Allen v. Oakland. 

A KTVU investigation estimated this case cost the city of Oakland about $1 million a year in legal fees to litigate and monitor the reforms. 

Last month, the federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, noted that OPD had fallen out of compliance with just one of the tasks: how fast Internal Affairs investigations are completed. During the first three months of 2026, the most recent term available, the department completed 83% of its most serious Internal Affairs investigations within the required six-month timeframe. The benchmark is 85%. 

Police commission needs more funding

What they're saying:

Coalition for Police Accountability chair Millie Cleveland and Larry White, the primary author of a measure that created the Oakland Police Commission, also wrote the judge that they don't feel that oversight should be terminated just yet.

Their main argument is that the Oakland Police Commission – a group of citizen volunteers which is set to take over the role of oversight — has not been funded adequately by the city of Oakland. If oversight ends, the pair wrote, then they wanted an agreement made that "sufficient funding will be made available for effective independent civilian oversight." 

Most everyone else says oversight should end

The other side:

Meanwhile, almost every other group involved thinks that OPD is close enough to the end goal and has made huge progress since the Riders scandal. 

Everyone from Oakland Police Chief James Beere, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, former Mayor Libby Schaaf, former police chief LeRonne Armstrong, the head of the Oakland police union, and many other community groups, including Safe Oakland, who held a news conference last week, said it's time for oversight to end. 

Former Oakland City Councilmember Loren Taylor said ending federal oversight would shift responsibility for maintaining those reforms to the city.

"Ending federal oversight is not the end of accountability. It is the beginning of Oakland owning it," Taylor said last week. 

In court filings, the city of Oakland argued they have already met the one-year compliance requirement and a 2% variance doesn't constitute "extraordinary circumstances" warranting continued oversight. 

Although Oakland fell below the 85% threshold timeliness of Internal Affairs investigations in the first quarter of 2026, both the city and the civil rights attorneys agree that this circumstance does not warrant a continuation of court supervision in the same form, the city told the judge.

And they said that even Chanin and Burris themselves acknowledge that OPD no longer resembles the department that it was at the outset of this case.

"OPD today bears virtually no resemblance to the OPD prior to 2000," the city wrote, admitting that back then, police supervisors seldom disciplined officers for excessive force and "some of them actually encouraged such activity." 

The reforms have led to "measurable, sustained" reductions in racial stops, where in 2016 16% of non-dispatch stops were for Black drivers and last year that number was 45%, for example, and the city is strengthening internal accountability to ensure fair and consistent discipline.

The city also acknowledged learning a key lesson over this time period, including: The cover-up is always worse than the mistake, data must be actively used not just collected, and civilian oversight is essential to public trust.