All Star Member Accomplishments - Michael Haddad

OAKLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT AGREES TO SWEEPING REFORMS TO ITS CROWD CONTROL POLICIES AND PROCEDURES OAKLAND, CA (November 6, 2004)

The Oakland Police Department (OPD) has agreed to implement sweeping reforms to end the use of less lethal weapons against demonstrators and crowds, a practice that led to dozens of injuries on April 7, 2003, at an anti-war protest at the Port of Oakland. The new OPD Crowd Control Policy prohibits the indiscriminate use of wooden bullets, rubber bullets, tasers, bean bags, pepper spray, and police motorcycles to control or disperse crowds or demonstrations.

The settlement is the result of two lawsuits arising from that April 7th incident brought by a teams of private civil rights lawyers, the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU of Northern California. The cases are pending in United States District Court for the Northern District of California in front of the Honorable Thelton E. Henderson, Sri Louise Coles, et al. v. City of Oakland, et al., (No. C 03-2961 TEH) and Local 10, ILWU, et al. v. City of Oakland, et al., (C 03-2962 TEH). Pleadings from those cases are available from the Court’s PACER website at http://www.cand.uscourts.gov.

At least 58 people, were injured with large wooden bullets, sting ball grenades, leather bags filled with lead shot, and police motorcycles intentionally driven into people pursuant to a written policy of the OPD. Victims included demonstrators, bystanders, journalists, and dockworkers from Local 10, ILWU, who were just trying to go to work. This incident was one of the most violent police responses in the nation to protests against the war in Iraq.

Click here for: "Agreement Reached on Crowd-Control Tactics"

The partial settlement of these cases does not resolve claims for monetary damages by those who were injured as a result of the police action. The Court has scheduled those claims for trial in January, 2006. Among other things, the settlement agreement includes the following:

• The adoption of a new Crowd Management Policy that strictly limits the use of force, and mandates that the protection of the right to assemble and demonstrate must be a primary goal of the OPD in their planning for and management of demonstrations;
• Crowd dispersal methods that create risk of injury to crowd members and bystanders are prohibited, including skip fired wooden bullets, flexible batons or “bean bags,” stinger grenades, tasers, stun guns, motorcycle bumps, and dogs;
• Indiscriminate use of bean bags, aerosol pepper spray and batons against crowds or passive resisters is prohibited;
• The OPD’s Basic Use of Motorcycle Push (B.U.M.P.) policy instructing officers to strike people with their Harley Davidson motorcycles is rescinded and motorcycle strikes are prohibited.
• When crowd members break the law, OPD will attempt to negotiate with leaders, and will give clear and audible orders to the crowd, allowing time for individuals to comply before taking enforcement action;
• OPD will arrest individuals who refuse to follow valid police orders, rather than using weapons or other force to move them.

The legal team representing the plaintiffs in both cases includes civil rights attorneys Michael Haddad, Julia Sherwin, John Burris, James Chanin, Alan Schlosser, Rachel Lederman, Bobbie Stein, Osha Neumann and Rob Remar.

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