{"id":7407,"date":"2011-08-17T13:54:55","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T13:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/colorlines.madeostudio.com\/article\/deadly-secrets-how-california-law-shields-oakland-police-violence\/"},"modified":"2011-08-17T13:54:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T13:54:55","slug":"deadly-secrets-how-california-law-shields-oakland-police-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/colorlines.com\/article\/deadly-secrets-how-california-law-shields-oakland-police-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadly Secrets: How California Law Shields Oakland Police Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Deadly Secrets: How California Law Shields Oakland Police Violence<\/h3>\n

A dramatic rollback in transparency laws five years ago left California residents with no way to monitor police misconduct complaints--and thus prevent future violence. A Colorlines.com investigation finds Oakland is one of the cities left most vulnerable.<\/p>

\n By Ali Winston<\/span> Aug 17, 2011<\/span>\n <\/p>\n <\/div>\n

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This story was produced with the support of the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute<\/a> and the Investigative Reporting Program at UC-Berkeley.<\/i><\/p>\n

March 21, 2009, was one of the bloodiest days in the history of the Oakland Police Department and California law enforcement. <\/p>\n

It began with a trifle: Two traffic officers, Sergeant Mark Dunakin and Officer John Hege, pulled over 26-year-old parolee Lovelle Mixon for running a traffic light. After Dunakin radioed in Mixon’s driver’s license and learned it was fake, both officers approached the car with the intent of making an arrest. Mixon leaned out of his window and, according to a Board of Inquiry report, \"methodically shot each officer twice.\" As the officers lay wounded on the sidewalk, Mixon crawled out of the window of his car, stood over them and shot each in the back. <\/p>\n

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Deadly Secrets: How California Law Has Shielded Oakland Police Violence<\/b><\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A fathers side of the story.<\/a><\/p>\n

Toddler’s Murder Begs Hard Questions About Violence–and Policing<\/strong><\/a><\/font>
East Oakland has demanded more cops. They’ve also demanded less violence from the police who protect them.<\/p>\n

Related Documents<\/strong><\/a><\/font>
View a list of OPD officers involved in shooting incidents and an example of the misconduct investigations that are no longer available to the public.<\/p>\n

From the Archives:
Fresno’s Repeat Shooters<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the next two hours, roughly 200 officers from several police agencies tore through East Oakland on a manhunt. The magnitude of the response and the absence of OPD brass from the field for 90 minutes would prove critical in shaping the remarkable carnage that followed–three more people killed and two seriously wounded. The lack of senior personnel led to a situation where, as the Board of Inquiry put it, \"many responders self-assign[ed] their own activity.\" At a moment when OPD’s response needed to be orderly and focused, officers operated without supervision and on their own initiative. One of those officers was Sgt. Patrick Gonzales.<\/p>\n

Gonzales would emerge from the day’s dramatic violence as a department hero; some colleagues nicknamed him \"Audie Murphy,\" the most decorated American soldier of World War II. But to many in the black and Latino neighborhoods Gonzales polices today, he has long been known as something else: a loose cannon. During Gonzales’ 13-year career he has shot four suspects, three fatally. \"He’s left a trail of victims in his wake,\" says Cathy King, the mother of one of Gonzales’ shooting victims, \"but he’s [considered] a valued member of the police department.\"<\/p>\n

Multiple lawsuits alleging wrongful death, excessive force, illegal searches and racial profiling incidents involving Gonzales have resulted in $3.6 million paid by the city in settlement money. Law enforcement experts say he fits the profile of the \"bad apple\" minority in OPD that is responsible for most of the allegations of brutality that plague its relationship with the city’s communities of color. And the Board of Inquiry report on the bloody events of March 21, 2009, places significant blame for the carnage on Gonzales’ decisions.<\/p>\n

Yet, Gonzales has been consistently promoted and deployed into sensitive situations throughout his career, and without public outcry. That’s because few know about either his record or his promotions. His extensive personnel file is today off-limits to the public, thanks to a dramatic rollback in the transparency of law enforcement records following a California Supreme Court ruling five years ago. The 2006 decision, in Copley Press v. Superior Court of San Diego, effectively classified all records of individual law enforcement officers, even those employed by contractors.<\/p>\n

The arc of Gonzales’ career, from a patrol officer in the Eastlake neighborhood to a sergeant on the SWAT team at the heart of one of OPD’s darkest days, tells the story of a department’s broken accountability system, now pushed behind a wall of secrecy.<\/p>\n

‘A Huge Backtrack in Oversight’<\/b><\/p>\n

Copley was the climax of a decades-long battle between California law enforcement unions and civil liberties advocates. <\/p>\n

In 1974, the California Supreme Court granted defendants access to police employment files under certain circumstances. That prompted police departments to start shredding records, until, in 1977, police associations and unions won the Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights, which along with key sections of California’s penal code exempted all personnel information from laws allowing residents to access public records. In response, jurisdictions around the state created independent review boards to investigate complaints of police misconduct. These boards became the primary vehicle for communities to hold both individual officers and departments accountable for their interactions with residents.<\/p>\n

In 2003, Copley Press, which published the San Diego Union Tribune, sued the county to gain access to an appeals hearing for a sheriff’s deputy facing termination. The suit wound its way up to the state Supreme Court, which rejected the publisher’s demands. Subsequent interpretations of the ruling by cities across the state led to the wholesale redaction of identifying information for police misconduct complaints filed with watchdog agencies. According to the ruling, an officer’s disciplinary information may not be released by either the department or an independent review body, citing a police officer’s right to privacy. <\/p>\n

\"They’ve been relentless over the past 25 years to create a tool for law enforcement agencies to work without public scrutiny,\" Tom Newton, executive director of the California Newspaper Publishers Association, says of police unions. \"With Copley, they hit the jackpot.\"<\/p>\n

In a two-year long investigation involving several California police departments with varying transparency policies, Colorlines.com and the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute found that the Copley ruling had its greatest impact on cities like Oakland, where community activism and federal intervention had prompted the department to provide unique levels of transparency about individual officers. In cities like Fresno, on the other hand, where departments had long invoked the 1977 law to shield files, Copley simply gave further legal justification to keep records secret until they’re pried loose by litigation.<\/p>\n

\"It’s a huge backtrack in oversight, \" says former ACLU-Northern California police practices expert Mark Schlosberg. \"In the long term, [Copley] is going to be really detrimental.\" <\/p>\n

The bloody climax of the hunt for Lovelle Mixon offers a window into that long term. OPD found Mixon hiding at his sister’s apartment. When members of the SWAT team arrived, they cobbled together an impromptu entry team, led by Gonzales. Snipers and hostage negotiators had not made it to the scene, Mixon’s location had not been confirmed and, critically, medical support was not yet on site. But the on-site commander sent Gonzales and his team into the apartment anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The team burst through the door and lobbed several \"flash-bang\" stun grenades. The grenades had an unexpected effect: the plaster walls of the apartment caught fire, kicking up a fog of plaster and smoke that obscured the officers’ vision. Mixon opened fire from behind this screen, killing Sgt. Ervin Romans and hitting Gonzales in the shoulder. One stun grenade struck Mixon’s 16-year-old sister Reynette Mixon on the leg, melting her pajama pants to her body. <\/p>\n

Lovelle Mixon fatally shot another officer, Sgt. Dan Sakai, and again hit Gonzales before Gonzales finally shot and killed him. By that point, it had become the deadliest day for Golden State law enforcement since 1970.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

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