What Next - Can 20 Years of Oversight Reform a Police Department?
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 June 2022
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the early 2000s, following a civil lawsuit with over 100 plaintiffs against a group of Oakland police officers known as “the Riders,” the Oakland PD was put under federal oversight. Now after nearly two decades of reforms, backslides into scandals, and close watch from activists and the feds, Oakland can enter a probationary period. But has the culture of the department really changed?
Guest: Darwin BondGraham, News Editor of the Oaklandside and co-author of a forthcoming book about the Oakland police department. He and his partner Ali Winston have been covering the OPD for almost two decades.
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Transcript
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| 0:36.7 | When people write about the Oakland Police Department, they tend to use superlatives. They call |
| 0:41.4 | at the most watched police department in California or a model for the state, a dirty police force |
| 0:48.0 | that's getting clean. But these superlatives, they wouldn't apply at all if it wasn't for two men, |
| 0:54.2 | a cop named Keith Bad and a suspect named Delphine Allen. His name is a little bit sort of low-key |
| 1:04.9 | famous in Oakland. People who know a lot about the police department and police community relations, |
| 1:10.7 | they'll know Delphine Allen's name. I called up Darwin Bond Graham, who reports for the Oakland |
| 1:16.4 | side news website, and I asked him to tell me how Keith Bad and Delphine Allen stories intersect. |
| 1:22.2 | He said it all started in July of 2000. Delphine Allen was a young man who was stopped by the |
| 1:30.5 | Oakland Police in the summer of 2000 late at night. He was walking across the street, holding a |
| 1:38.3 | soda can or maybe a can of beer. He was allegedly kidnapped by two police officers, driven under |
| 1:47.0 | a freeway bridge in West Oakland, brutally beaten. There were photographs of his face shown later on. |
| 1:54.8 | His eye was bloodshot. He had bruises all over. So I mean, Allen had a nightmare experience that night. |
| 2:02.8 | Keith Bad was one of the cops who stopped Delphine Allen back in 2000. But he was a rookie, still in |
| 2:09.7 | training, just 23 years old. He kicked Allen a couple of times and then he regretted it. |
| 2:15.5 | Later on, Bats training officer sort of chastises him and says, you know, why do you hold back? You |
| 2:22.4 | should have thrown a few more blows or something like that. They had a big argument. And Bats |
... |
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