Inside a 20-Year Effort To Clean Up the Oakland Police Department

Published

2 years ago

October 31, 2023

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The Riders Come Out at Night, by Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham, Atria Books, 480 pages, $30

Oakland, California, is “the edge case in American policing,” journalists Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham declare in The Riders Come Out at Night. “More has been done to try to reform the Oakland Police Department than any other police force in the United States.”

It’s a bold claim, given the crowded field competing for the title. In Baltimore during 2016, a vice squad was essentially operating a criminal enterprise, using the police department as a front. The corruption and violence exposed in the Rampart scandal, which unfolded in the late 1990s and early 2000s, landed the Los Angeles Police Department under federal oversight for 12 years. Chicago is Chicago. But in their deeply reported and comprehensive book, Winston and BondGraham make a persuasive case that Oakland’s entrenched police corruption best demonstrates “the still-unfulfilled promise of reforming law enforcement.”

The eponymous Riders were a clique of four Oakland police officers known for terrorizing minority neighborhoods. The book opens in 2000, with an idealistic rookie, Keith Batt, being paired with a Rider for field training and quickly learning the grimy truth about urban policing. “Fuck all that shit you learned in the police academy,” one Rider tells Batt. “Fuck probable cause. We’re going to just go out and grab these motherfuckers.”

After witnessing and participating in kidnappings, beatings, cover-ups, and frame-ups, Batt blew the whistle, setting off a legal saga that is still ongoing. The Riders Come Out at Night follows the ensuing two decades of attempts to clean up the Oakland Police Department (OPD).

The local district attorney filed criminal charges against the Riders, one of whom immediately fled the country and remains a fugitive. The prosecution of the remaining three Riders ended in two mistrials. The Riders’ attorneys argued, with a fair amount of evidence, that the officers had been doing what police brass and other city officials demanded.

That was also the feeling of rank-and-file OPD officers and their union leaders, who rallied behind the Riders. As they portrayed it, this was a case of “noble cause corruption.” If you wanted these men to do the dirty work of sweeping drug dealers off the corners in the dead of night, you couldn’t cry every time they roughed someone up or fudged a report.

Although the Riders escaped criminal consequences, Oakland would not get off the hook that easily. John Burris and Jim Chanin, two Bay Area civil rights lawyers, had been routinely squeezing multimillion-dollar settlements out of Oakland on behalf of their clients. (In one case, Burris represented a member of the ’80s R&B group Tony! Toni! Ton! who had been choked by one of the Riders.) Burris and Chanin were fed up with the lack of change.

After the criminal prosecution of the Riders collapsed, the two lawyers began putting together a giant civil suit against Oakland. They eventually collected 119 plaintiffs who alleged that they had been beaten or framed by the Riders. Burris and Chanin were holding the legal and fiscal equivalent of a nuclear bomb over the city’s head. Oakland had no choice but to attempt a settlementthrough reform rather than cash payouts.

In 2003, Oakland entered into an unusual settlement agreement. It agreed to 52 specific reforms, which would be overseen by an independent monitor who reported to a federal judge. Settlements like this are called consent decrees, and usually only the U.S. Justice Department has the juice to force a city into one. They may be the most powerful tool the federal government has to force change on rotten police departments.

The settlement agreement was supposed to expire after five years, but it was repeatedly extended as reform efforts sputtered and failed. Unnecessary shootings continued. An early warning system to flag officers with high numbers of use-of-force incidents and complaints was ignored. In fact, the most violent cops received glowing reviews for their “proactive” work. Internal affairs investigators chose not to investigate obvious discrepancies in officers’ reports. In the rare instance where an officer was disciplined or fired, the punishment was usually overturned through union arbitration. The police union also clawed back power from Oakland’s civilian police oversight board.

In 2015, a teenaged girl accused dozens of OPD officers of sexually exploiting her. OPD fired four cops and disciplined 12 others over the allegations. One officer committed suicide, and the police chief was forced to resign.

***

The ins and outs of the settlement agreement and the granular details of Oakland politics may be a bit much for general readers. But for anyone interested in the Bay Area or in policing, this book offers a deeply sourced and well-researched narrative. Both authors have years of experience reporting on policing in the Bay Area.

In fact, Winston and BondGraham’s reporting became part of the story of reform in Oakland. California had been one of the most secretive states when it came to police personnel files, but the state legislature passed a bill that made those files public records beginning in 2019. Yet many police departments across the state, including Oakland’s, stonewalled and slow-rolled records requests from reporters and civil liberties groups. Winston and BondGraham were plaintiffs in a lawsuit that forced the OPD to comply with the law.

It is only because of that suit that the authors were able to uncover never-before-revealed information about the long history of complaints and excessive force allegations against the Riders. Supervisors had either ignored or abetted the abuses.

Several chapters take detours into Oakland’s history, describing how the OPD was an enthusiastic participant in repressing Chinese immigrants, union agitators, communists, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The last group, formed in Oakland in the 1960s, was a response to black residents’ longstanding complaints about police beatings and harassmentcomplaints that one police chief had dismissed in 1949 as “a Communist plot to discredit and harass the OPD.”

These chapters are not totally necessary, but they can be interesting. For example, we learn that during Prohibition, “Oakland cops were skimming so much of the lucrative alcohol trade’s profits that local bootleggers formed a Bootlegger’s Protective Association to collectively resist the extortion.”

This history also shows how deep the roots of police corruption go and why it has been so hard to uproot. In 1949, an independent commission investigated complaints that Oakland police were brutalizing the city’s black population, which had swelled considerably during the previous decade. “I found it hard to describe adequately the sense of monstrous beastliness, authority clothed in nighttime garb, that our investigation disclosed,” one of the researchers wrote.

This problem is not unique to Oakland. Several police departments are currently being investigated for tolerating officer gangs and other groups of criminal cops. The nearby city of Vallejo recently was rocked by reports that a clique of police officers bent the tips of their badges to represent fatal shootings. Earlier this year, the Los Angeles County inspector general ordered more than three dozen sheriff’s deputies to appear for interviews and show any tattoos connected to two deputy gangs, the Banditos and the Executioners.

The book ends on a positive note, arguing that real reforms have been accomplished in Oakland. Shootings and other use-of-force incidents have dramatically declined, as have brutality complaints and findings of unjustified force. Last year the federal judge overseeing the settlement agreement, William Orrick, found that Oakland had achieved “substantial compliance” with its terms. He agreed to a one-year probationary period, after which he could possibly terminate the longrunning settlement.

“It’s possible to reform the police,” Winston and BondGraham argue. “That’s one lesson Oakland can offer the nation.” Bu in April, after The Riders Came Out at Night was published, Orrick declared his decision “premature.” He extended the probationary period for five more months after several new cases of internal corruption emerged.

Winston and BondGraham also concluded that “Oakland’s ultimate lesson then is about vigilance.” This was perhaps more prescient than they realized.

World

Donald Trump sending ‘top of the line’ weapons to support NATO in Ukraine war

Published

1 hour ago

July 15, 2025

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Donald Trump sending 'top of the line' weapons to support NATO in Ukraine war

Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.

Speaking with NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.

“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States, going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”

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It comes as Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he had a “very good conversation” with Mr Trump late on Monday. He thanked him for the “willingness to support Ukraine and to continue working together to stop the killings”.

Weapons being sent from to Ukraine include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which the country has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.

Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.

The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.

Mr Zelenskyy previously criticised Vladimir Putin’s “desire to drag [the war] out”, and said Kyiv was “working on major defence agreements with America”.

It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump over Mr Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.

During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call”, but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.

“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.

Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Mr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.

After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”

Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.

He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.

Environment

How one man with a hacksaw and an e-bike became a Texas flood ‘hero’

Published

1 hour ago

July 15, 2025

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How one man with a hacksaw and an e-bike became a Texas flood 'hero'

Locals call him the “Bicycle hero,” but Texas man Evan Wayne says he’s just doing what he can to help his community after it was cut off due to the recent devastating and deadly flooding tragedy.

When the local Sandy Creek flooded following torrential rains in Texas, it destroyed the only bridge into one community. Residents were cut off from access to supplies, including everything from necessities like food, water, and medicine to basic comforts.

Although the bridge was impassable to cars, volunteers who quickly organized to help the stranded residents found that the damaged bridge could still be traversed on foot. Or in the case of Evan Wayne, it could be covered by an electric bike.

Evan joined hundreds of volunteers who answered the call of grassroots organizers by working together without any official capacity. While many started by hand-pulling garden carts of supplies uphill to reach the stricken community, Evan jury-rigged a trailer to an e-bike and took on as much of the load as he could, helping shuttle much-needed food and gear into the community over hundreds of round-trip journeys.

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“This was a dog trailer 48 hours ago. I had a hacksaw, hacked the top off, grabbed some bungee cords, and here we are,” explained Evan in an interview with CBS Austin, while waiting for the next load of gear to be stacked on his trailer.

In the first two days of the operation, he made around 100 round trips each day, shuttling food and water as well as critical rescue supplies. “Right now, I’m waiting on a couple of chainsaws that I’ll bring in for a crew that’s been going at it with handsaws so far.”

In addition to delivering needed supplies, Evan has often found himself moving something even more important: information. “I’ve flagged down medics. I’ve been the guy that goes between Austin EMT and STAR Flight because I’m quicker than cell phones sometimes, people don’t have signal a lot of the time.”

Evan quickly points out that he isn’t the only one helping. “I’ve got an e-bike, but other people are pulling carts. People are walking, people are carrying things. Everyone is doing what they can.” But there’s no doubt that his ability to carry more gear at higher speeds and make hundreds of round-trip journeys so far in and out of the stricken neighborhood has helped impact countless lives.

“This is all volunteers here. They’re just taking it upon themselves to get people where they need to go. I think there’s an umbrella company coming in, taking over tomorrow, but until they get here, people are just taking care of people, which is what you’ve got to do.”

E-bikes proving their worth in emergencies

While many people consider electric bicycles just another form of recreation, they’ve proven to be potent transportation alternatives after natural disasters worldwide.

Not only do their small and efficient batteries make performing hundreds of rescue trips like Evans’ possible, but recharging can be done simply and easily with a solar panel when electricity is out after a disaster. And when gas stations are out of fuel (or simply can’t pump it with the power grid down), e-bikes can keep running while gasoline-powered motorcycles or ATVs run dry.

Electric bicycle batteries have also proven to be a handy source of emergency power after hurricanes and other disasters, often helping owners keep their phones charged up for days to remain in contact with family or rescue services.

While most hope to never need theirs for emergency purposes, electric bicycles have proven their worth in countless disaster scenarios, adding benefits far beyond just alternative transportation, recreation, or fitness riding.

E-bikes can be kept running nearly indefinitely after natural disasters with access to solar recharging equipment

Image credits: CBS Austin (screenshots), used under fair use

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Business

New electric car grants of up to £3,750 aims to drive sales

Published

3 hours ago

July 15, 2025

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New electric car grants of up to £3,750 aims to drive sales

The taxpayer is to help drive the switch to non-polluting vehicles through a new grant of up to £3,750, but some of the cheapest electric cars are to be excluded.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said a £650m fund was being made available for the Electric Car Grant, which is due to get into gear from Wednesday.

Users of the scheme – the first of its kind since the last Conservative government scrapped grants for new electric vehicles three years ago – will be able to secure discounts based on the “sustainability” of the car.

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It will apply only to vehicles with a list price of £37,000 or below – with only the greenest models eligible for the highest grant.

Buyers of so-called ‘Band two’ vehicles can receive up to £1,500.

The qualification criteria includes a recognition of a vehicle’s carbon footprint from manufacture to showroom so UK-produced EVs, costing less than £37,000, would be expected to qualify for the top grant.

It is understood that Chinese-produced EVs – often the cheapest in the market – would not.

DfT said 33 new electric car models were currently available for less than £30,000.

The government has been encouraged to act as sales of new electric vehicles are struggling to keep pace with what is needed to meet emissions targets.

Challenges include the high prices for electric cars when compared to conventionally powered models.

At the same time, consumer and business budgets have been squeezed since the 2022 cost of living crisis – and households and businesses are continuing to feel the pinch to this day.

Another key concern is the state of the public charging network.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said: “This EV grant will not only allow people to keep more of their hard-earned money – it’ll help our automotive sector seize one of the biggest opportunities of the 21st century.

“And with over 82,000 public charge points now available across the UK, we’ve built the infrastructure families need to make the switch with confidence.”

The Government has pledged to ban the sale of new fully petrol or diesel cars and vans from 2030 but has allowed non-plug in hybrid sales to continue until 2025.

It is hoped the grants will enable the industry to meet and even exceed the current zero emission vehicle mandate.

Under the rules, at least 28% of new cars sold by each manufacturer in the UK this year must be zero emission.

The figure stood at 21.6% during the first half of the year.

The car industry has long complained that it has had to foot a multi-billion pound bill to woo buyers for electric cars through “unsustainable” discounting.

Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said the grants sent a “clear signal to consumers that now is the time to switch”.

He went on: “Rapid deployment and availability of this grant over the next few years will help provide the momentum that is essential to take the EV market from just one in four today, to four in five by the end of the decade.”

But the Conservatives questioned whether taxpayers should be footing the bill.

Shadow transport secretary Gareth Bacon said: “Last week, the Office for Budget Responsibility made clear the transition to EVs comes at a cost, and this scheme only adds to it.

“Make no mistake: more tax rises are coming in the autumn.”