Oakland police detective’s felony bribery scandal further threatens department’s local control

Several high-ranking Oakland police officers hit with serious discipline in the spring are still waiting for their appeals to be heard, but the city’s police department could face consequences much sooner — even as the threat of a harsher penalty looms.

At a court hearing Wednesday, Judge William Orrick is expected to once again to extend the department’s long era of federal oversight. OPD has remained under the U.S. District Court of Northern California’s watch for over two decades following the infamous Riders brutality scandal.

The latest controversy emerged this year when top personnel in the department were hit with discipline for accusations they botched an internal investigation into Detective Phong Tran, who is now awaiting a jury trial on charges of bribing a confidential witness in a murder case.

This time, the consequences for OPD could be even more punitive. Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing, the Riders plaintiffs’ attorneys threatened to push for OPD to fall under federal receivership if the department does not take action to address internal problems.

“This massive failure after over 20 YEARS of monitoring is intolerable,” civil-rights attorneys Jim Chanin and John Burris wrote in a scathing statement about OPD’s internal investigation into Tran, who pleaded not guilty.

Receivership, a full step more severe than the department’s current oversight, would grant sweeping powers to the federal court, which could appoint someone with even greater control than the current independent monitor, Robert Warshaw, who can the department’s money, direct command staff and fire the chief.

To date, no other city in the country has seen its police department fall under a full receivership.

Chanin and Burris did credit OPD for vastly reducing the number of its brutality cases — one of the original causes for federal oversight, which proves, they wrote, that the department is “capable of significant change.”

But they also pushed for the department to present an “effective action plan” to remedy its internal affairs problems and consistency of discipline, accusing police leaders of having paid “lip service” to Judge Orrick while privately continuing a “business as usual” approach.

The senior OPD personnel facing discipline are accused of failing to hold Tran accountable, including by “obstructing the internal affairs process” and violating the department’s standards for truthfulness, according to court documents.

Capt. Kevin Kaney faces a lengthy suspension, while Lt. Hamann Nguyen was notified he could be demoted. The discipline was determined by the Community Police Review Agency, an investigative arm of Oakland’s civilian police-oversight body.

All of these officers still appear to be waiting to have their appeals heard in what are known as Skelly hearings, which usually are conducted by an outside investigator with expertise in police affairs.

Former Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who was fired last year by Mayor Sheng Thao over an entirely different internal affairs scandal and now is running for a City Council seat, also was named in the disciplinary findings and could face suspension if he ever returned to the department.

Investigators levied a two-day suspension against former Assistant Chief Darren Allison, who served as OPD’s acting top cop for over a year before Mitchell was hired.

Allison retired before his appeals process could be completed, earning a pension of nearly $23,000 per month, according to state retirement records, following a three-decade career in the department.

“Frankly, I don’t think he wants to come back to Oakland,” said Allison’s attorney, Michael Rains, in an interview. “They took this shot over the bow at him before he retired. It was pretty mean-spirited.”

Tran, the detective at the center of the mess, is awaiting trial for felony charges of perjury and bribing a confidential witness in a 2011 murder case. His next hearing date has not yet been set.

In light of the scandal, a judge last year overturned two murder convictions in the case, setting free a pair of men who had been serving life sentences.

In their statement, attorneys Chanin and Burris described the allegedly mishandled internal investigation into Tran as “extremely disappointing” and said it “echoed previous catastrophic failures.”

“It is shocking that OPD’s Internal Affairs investigators determined it was acceptable for a homicide detective to provide undocumented cash payments to witnesses,” they wrote.

Staff writer Jakob Rodgers contributed reporting. 

Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at smukherjee@bayareanewsgroup.com.