Oakland (Calif.) Cops Point Guns at Sleeping One-Year-Old

Source: East Bay Express

Two Oakland police officers pointed their firearms at a sleeping nineteen-month-old child while investigating a misdemeanor crime, according to a new report released Thursday. The sleeping child posed no threat to the officers, and yet they pointed their guns at the one-year-old anyway.

The alarming incident was cited by Independent Monitor Robert Warshaw in his latest report on OPD misconduct. Warshaw noted that the department has had a history of overly aggressive behavior toward city residents. Warshaw also noted in his report that OPD not only failed to make any progress in living up to court-mandated reforms in the latest monitoring period, but actually lost ground for the second quarter in a row.

Warshaw’s report also comes in stark contrast to recent statements by Mayor Jean Quan. At a January 23 press conference following the approval of a contract to hire William Bratton, Quan was bullish on the future of the Oakland Police Department. “The reality is that we're making progress, this police department is changing,” she said of OPD's decade-old federal reform effort.

But according to Warshaw’s latest report, nothing could be further from the truth. Warshaw, who is responsible for auditing OPD's progress, found in the most recent quarterly report that OPD's compliance with the Negotiated Settlement Agreement reforms decreased for the second quarter in a row. In the report's executive summary, Warshaw wrote that the incomplete efforts deal with “critical supervisory and investigative tasks” which are “at the very core of Constitutional policing.”

Read more: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/92510/archives/2013/01/31/oakland-cops-point-guns-at-sleeping-one-year-old