Pubdate: Thu, 30 Nov 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Evelyn Nieves
Bookmark: Corruption http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm

POLICE CORRUPTION CHARGES REOPEN WOUNDS IN OAKLAND

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 28 — On his first day as mayor here, Jerry Brown, the 
former California governor, swore to make reducing Oakland's notorious 
crime rate a top priority. To prove his point, within three months, he had 
forced the popular police chief to resign and was pushing an aggressive 
approach to policing that would brook no tolerance for even petty crimes.

Now, after two years, Oakland's crime rate, which had already been dropping 
before Mr. Brown took office, is hovering near a 30-year low. But all is 
not rosy. So far this year, 78 people have been murdered on Oakland's 
streets, 10 more than in all of last year; by the Police Department's own 
projections, the city of 400,000 people will tally 85 murders by the end of 
2000, more than in the year before Mr. Brown became mayor. (San Francisco, 
with twice as many residents, has had 49 homicides so far this year.)

More significantly, the Oakland Police Department, which Mr. Brown has 
repeatedly praised for its assertive community policing, has been rocked by 
a corruption scandal. Four officers have been indicted on misconduct 
charges, including abusing and falsely accusing suspects — the same kinds 
of crimes that have hurt the Los Angeles Police Department.

The four officers — Matt Hornung, 29; Clarence Mabanag, 35; Jude Siapno, 
32; and Francisco Vasquez, 44 — were indicted this month on a total of more 
than 60 charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, kidnapping, 
assault, filing false police reports, filing false documents and making 
false arrests.

The four, who worked for the narcotics division on the graveyard shift in 
West Oakland, a neighborhood known for some tough streets, were 
investigated after a rookie officer, Keith Batt, 23, who worked with them 
complained about what he called misconduct over three weeks in June and 
July involving seven or eight victims. (Mr. Batt quit shortly after 
reporting on the officers.) The prosecutor's office is still investigating 
the officers' records before and after that period, and the Federal Bureau 
of Investigation is investigating the four on charges of civil rights 
violations.

Mr. Vasquez has fled the state and is believed to be in Mexico, but William 
Rapoport, a lawyer for Mr. Siapno, said he believed that the other three 
officers, who are free on bail in Oakland, will plead not guilty to all 
charges on Dec. 6.

Mayor Brown said that even if the charges are proved true, the case against 
the officers proves that the Police Department is working in Oakland. 
"These were allegations that came internally, and the Police Department 
took very prompt action and worked very closely with the district 
attorney's office," Mr. Brown said. "So the system worked."

Quoting F.B.I. statistics, the mayor said that Oakland's overall crime rate 
had dropped by double digits in two years. He added that it was unfair to 
compare the Oakland Police Department's crisis with the police scandal in 
Los Angeles, where three officers were found guilty this month of 
conspiring to obstruct justice by fabricating evidence and framing gang 
members, and a fourth officer was acquitted.

"It's apples and oranges," Mr. Brown said. "The Oakland Police Department 
is an excellent police department."

But Alan Schlosser of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco 
said that the comparisons to Los Angeles were striking and that the Oakland 
case begged further, deeper investigation. "In Oakland they are focusing on 
four police officers in a period of three weeks," Mr. Schlosser said. "And 
that raises real questions about the scope of the Oakland investigation. 
It's a little hard to believe that this surfaces in June and that it's just 
a three-week problem."

Many Oakland residents, he added, have publicly said they were aware of 
police abuses. Residents in West Oakland who were interviewed by 
investigators were not surprised about this, he said. "Some were victims of 
these four officers, and said that this was not just a problem with these 
four, that it was widely known."

Ray Keller, assistant public defender for Alameda County, said his office 
expected its investigation to broaden beyond the four officers, and 
possibly to lead to the reversal of hundreds of convictions.

"What we are concerned about is the patterns that are apparent in the 
investigations by these police officers and the similarities of those 
investigations with those investigations involving other officers," Mr. 
Keller said. He said his office was investigating 275 to 280 cases "that 
have either already resulted in convictions or are still pending pretrial, 
meaning they haven't been resolved." He added: "The large majority are 
post-conviction, meaning there's already been a trial or a plea of no 
contest and the person has been convicted. We are in the process of getting 
many of those convictions undone and set aside."

About 30 convictions have been set aside based on the investigation so far, 
he said.

The charges against the four officers, who called themselves the Riders, 
according to the prosecutor's indictment, have reopened old wounds in 
Oakland, where the Black Panther Party was founded partly as a police 
watchdog group. They have also stirred bitter passions among those who say 
they have long been warning city officials that some police officers have 
routinely gone too far in pursuit of arrests.

Members of People United for a Better Oakland, a police watchdog 
organization known as Pueblo, say that they have been complaining for 
years, to no avail, about the very types of misconduct charged against the 
four officers.

Complaints to the Citizens' Police Review Board, "have increased 
dramatically," said Mike Nisperos, the public safety liaison for the city 
manager, and member of the civilian board, which has logged 184 complaints 
through August of this year alone. He added that all four officers charged 
with corruption have had complaints lodged against them by civilians that 
are unrelated to those for which they were investigated.

The Pueblo group's leaders say such complaints have gone unheeded by the 
mayor, who they say has refused to take a strong stand against corruption.

Mayor Brown said that he has taken such a stand and spoken out and listened 
at public meetings shortly after charges against the officers' surfaced. "I 
say let the system and all its checks and balances work," he said. "What 
else am I supposed to do?"

But the atmosphere of hostility toward the police in Oakland is such that 
the defense will seek a change of venue for the trial, said Michael Rains, 
who is defending Officer Mabanag, and whose law firm is the general counsel 
to the Oakland Police Officers Association. His client and Officer Siapno 
have each received notices of termination from the Police Department, 
effective Dec. 1, he said, which the defense plans to appeal.

"One of the lawyers in the L.A. case had remarked that they had made a 
mistake by not requesting a change of venue," he said.
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