Court monitor troubled by OPD's response to Occupy (Oakland, CA) [View all]
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
The federal court monitor tracking reforms in the Oakland police force said Monday that the effort had met "outright stagnation," and raised questions about officers' use of beanbag shotguns and other weapons during what he called a "military-type" response to Occupy demonstrations.
The court-ordered reforms, many of them focused on how the department polices its own officers, haven't progressed in six months and have gone backward in the past year, said a report by the monitor, Robert Warshaw.
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Videos of some police actions during Occupy protests "are concerning as to the manner in which non-deadly munitions were utilized," wrote Warshaw, a former police chief of Rochester, N.Y., and deputy drug czar under President Bill Clinton.
Referring to the use of beanbags as well as tear gas and flash-bang grenades intended to disperse a crowd, Warshaw said, "These recordings lead us to ask additional questions (about) the level of force that was used by OPD officers, and whether that use of force was in compliance with the department's use-of-force policies."
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/30/BAN51OB4UB.DTL
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