April 18, 2023 • 38 mins
On todays episode I have the pleasure of speaking with authors Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham about their new book titled, The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption and Cover-up in Oakland.
Their book is a meticulously researched and engaging account of a police force rotten to its core and serves as a poignant reminder that the problem with policing in America isn’t just about crooked cops. The problem is a broken system that lacks the will to reform.
During our conversation we’ll be introduced to a group of sadistic cops known as “The Riders” whose disregard for the oath they took to protect and serve is on full, tragic, and infuriating display.
We’ll also meet the wide-eyed rookie, turned whistleblower who was unwittingly partnered with the leader of the Riders.
The Riders Come Out at Night is the story of one city and the explosive scandals, and systematic corruption and brutality in its police department, but it’s also the story of American policing - and where it is headed in 2023.
The Show Notes
The Riders Come Out at Night
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Riders-Come-Out-at-Night/Ali-Winston/9781982168599
Ali Winston is an independent reporter covering criminal justice, privacy, and surveillance. His work has been rewarded with several awards, including the George Polk Award for local reporting in 2017. Ali is a graduate of the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in New York.
Darwin BondGraham has reported on gun violence for The Guardian and was an enterprise reporter for the East Bay Express. BondGraham’s work has also appeared with ProPublica and other leading national and local outlets. He holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was the co-recipient of the George Polk Award for local reporting in 2017. He lives in Oakland, California.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Hi and
Joe Cadwell (00:08):
Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the
host of the show, and on today'sepisode I have the pleasure of
speaking with authors AliWinston and Darwin BondGraham
about their new book titled TheRiders Come Out at Night;
Brutality, Corruption and CoverUp in Oakland. Their book is a
meticulously researched andengaging account of a police
force rotten to its core, andserves as a poignant reminder
(00:31):
that the problem with policingin America isn't just about
crooked cops. The problem liesin a broken system that lacks
the will to reform. During ourconversation, we'll be
introduced to a group ofsadistic cops known as the
writers whose disregard for theoath they took to protect and
serve as on full tragic andinfuriating display will also
meet the wide eyed rookie turnedwhistleblower who was
(00:52):
unwittingly partnered with aleader of the riders. The riders
come out at night as a story ofone city and the explosive
scandals and systematiccorruption and brutality and its
police department. But it's alsoa story of American policing,
and where it's heading in 2023.
After the episode be sure tocheck out the show notes to
(01:13):
learn more about this subject.
And now on to the show.
Gentlemen, welcome to GritNation.
Darwin BondGraham (01:34):
Thanks for having us .
Ali Winston (01:35):
Thanks so much.
Joe Cadwell (01:37):
Yeah, thank you so much for taking your time to be
on the show. I today. I haveOllie Winston and Darwin bond
Graham, the authors of thewriters come out at night
brutality, corruption and acover up in Oakland. Gentlemen,
I understand you're on twoseparate dens of the coast.
Darwin, you're there in OaklandAli, you're in? You're in New
York City. And what brought youto together to write this book?
Ali Winston (02:00):
Well, I actually I was in Oakland for a decade,
living out there for quite sometime. And I was reporting on the
police department. After I cameout of graduate school at UC
Berkeley, and Darwin and I bothcame at the story from different
angles. I had been working itfor radio stations and all
(02:21):
weeklies around the Bay Area.
Mostly covering law enforcement.
And we actually met becauseDarwin, when he moved up to the
Bay Area from SouthernCalifornia was writing a lot
about policing and citypolitics. And he ended up using
a photo of mine, withoutcitation, and I noticed it, I
was like, Hey, man, I like thatphoto, I love your blog, can you
(02:42):
just put my name on it? I don'tcare about credit. And then we
got to talking about issues andrealize we had similar interests
and complementary skills andstarted covering the local city
and police department together.
And that was in 2012
Joe Cadwell (03:01):
and 2012. And then over the that period of time,
you began to notice, there wassort of a trend happening and
what was the inspiration for thebook? When did you finally say,
hey, after 50 years of reported,you know, misdeeds and the
Oakland Police Department, whatwhat finally was the catalyst
for the book?
Darwin BondGraham (03:17):
Yeah, we, you know, every time we would read a
story about the Oakland PoliceDepartment, we knew, and we
would constantly be uncoveringnew bits of history and facts
that all, you know, tiedtogether to tell this really
compelling story that spanneddecades. But, you know,
journalism, daily, and likeweekly news reporting, you
(03:42):
rarely get the chance to tellthat kind of story that has that
sort of, you know, historicnarrative arc to it. And, you
know, to pitch a story that goesreally deep into like, systems
and not just like, the symptomsof what's what's happening, it
takes a ton of time to producethose kinds of stories, and you
don't always have that, youknow, as a as a, you know, City
(04:04):
Hall or, you know, criminaljustice reporter. So, over the
years, just writing these thesestories, and following these
different scandals and reformefforts, you know, we were
constantly thinking like, well,one day, we've got to get down
just like, you know, put this ina in a book so that it all
really makes sense.
Ali Winston (04:27):
Absolutely. I mean, there's, there's a way in which
day to day journalism, likeactual news coverage, it does
kind of address symptoms and notcauses. It's not, I guess it's
by design by demand of the fieldand it's not a bad thing, but
there is a limit to what theform can do even with all
weeklies and magazines, youknow, when you have a lot
(04:50):
3000 5000 words to write about astory. I mean, even that many of
our longer pieces, we wouldleave a ton of stuff on the
cutting room floor,
Joe Cadwell (04:58):
and this book is over 400 pages and again, an arc
of over 50 years. Let's see, wetalked about systems and
symptoms, why don't we startwith some of the symptoms? What
what, over that course period oftime what was going on? What
were the tangibles?
Darwin BondGraham (05:13):
Well, in the year 2000, this is the incident
that we start the book off with.
There was a something called thewriter scandal, which the
writers case which involved agroup of officers in West
Oakland who were accused ofbeating people up planting drugs
on them writing false policereports and just using brutal
(05:35):
force, killing, killing people'sdogs with like gunshots to the
head and abducting people to gasstations and bridges and beating
them. You know, in the night.
When that was exposed by arookie officer named Keith, that
(05:57):
the simple thing would have beento say that this was a group of
rogue officers, right, who, youknow, didn't represent what the
department was about. But a lotof people in Oakland knew that
this was not some one offaberration, that this was a
symptom of a, you know, a largerand more pernicious culture
(06:19):
within the police departmentthat had been facilitated by
some of the politicians who wererunning the city at the time who
were on this campaign to likeclean up Oakland and, quote
unquote, make it safer than youknow, Walnut Creek, which is
this nice suburb to the east ofOakland. So that's one symptom.
(06:41):
In the book, we you know, indifferent chapters, we jump into
a number of different caseswhere we try to make the point
about how failings withinpolicing as an institution in
the police department createdthe conditions for these kinds
of really egregious abuses ofpower. We have another case
where we talked about a youngman named Jerry amaro Latino man
(07:03):
who was beat up during a drugsting also in the year 2000. He
died a couple of weeks later ofinjuries he sustained and then
there was a cover up in thedepartment that spanned over a
decade until the secrets of thatcame out. We also show how this
these problems that are inembedded in policing harmed
(07:26):
police officers, we have a wholechapter about a very ill fated
shootout involving a criminalsuspect name live without mixin,
who ended up ended up killingtwo police officers in the
street and then killing two morepolice officers as they
(07:46):
attempted to take them intocustody in an apartment
building. The those deaths andthe whole incident perhaps could
have been avoided had the policedepartment instituted more
rigorous policies and kinds ofreforms and repaired its
relationship to the communitybetter. So we show in a way how
it's not just the community whogets beat up and suffers. Police
(08:10):
officers themselves sufferbecause the institution of
policing remains highlyunprofessional and Ill reform.
And there's
Ali Winston (08:17):
another officer just to tell one more story and
not to give too much away.
Others another officer namedWillie Wilkins, Latino officer
who is working undercover inEast Oakland in round, early
2000s, as well, he actually wasshot and killed by two uniformed
officers as he held a criminalsuspect at gunpoint. His wife
sued the city won a settlementthe two officers, both white,
(08:38):
both young, both inexperiencedwere you know, that incident
really did rip up the departmentat that point in time. And
again, this is the sort offailing that happened because
they weren't aware that Wilkinswas a cop, even though other
officers scream No, no, he's acop. He's a cop. He's on the
(08:59):
force. But they weren't madeaware that he was out there that
night, without a uniform with abadge on with a firearm in a
decoy car dressed a certain waywith his own appearance. So
again, these failures do havelethal consequences on both
sides of the fence.
Joe Cadwell (09:15):
So pretty dark, pretty egregious symptoms, you
know, manifesting themselves onthe streets of Oakland and you
said there's systems in place,it seemed like political reform.
This was the Jerry Brown era.
And Jerry Brown, the formergovernor of California became
the mayor of Oakland fine.
Ali Winston (09:33):
That was his political comeback. He actually
had a pretty interesting routeback to back into politics. So
he was governor of California,late 70s. Governor moonbeam. You
know, he had a lot of esotericpolicies, really kind of out
there a little bit on ahead ofhis time on environmental
issues, certainly on socialissues as well. And then he had
a couple of failed petpresidential runs, I believe.
(09:55):
And then after that, he wentinto the wilderness a little
bit, you know, became a littlebit he got into New Age sort of
archaeology. He's had this radioshow on a local radio station
called KPFA, where he wouldexpound his guests on and kind
of set up his political projectthat kind of laid the ground for
his mayoral campaign in Oakland.
And he was elected in 1996. Ibelieve he promised to make
(10:16):
Oakland into this accomplicewhich is a Eagle policies is
like a 1970s. I ad was that 1998Right? That's when he went yeah.
But they're not he basicallypromised a you know,
environmentalist utopia inOakland, like a real kind of
left wing type city, but once hegot in power he was he ran the
(10:39):
city is Rudy Giuliani West. Youknow, this kind of zero
tolerance, pro gentrification,clean up the streets style
politician who basically wouldgo into police lineups and cheer
them on and back the pump backin your play, you know, take the
streets back from the criminalstaken back from the drug
dealers. It's worth also sayingthat Oakland did in the 80s and
1990s, Oakland experienced atremendous surge in violence and
(11:02):
crime and disorder and narcoticsusage. And that was a result of
deindustrialization, broadernational trends. But Oakland was
one of the cities that wasreally hammered by first heroin
and then the crack cocaine boom.
And by the, you know, the percapita violence in Oakland by
the early 1990s was really,really grim. So there was there
(11:23):
was a significant problem thatlaw enforcement was out there to
try and address but the methodsas in New York City where I grew
up during you know, Giulianitime in the 1990s, the methods
undertaken were just wildlyinappropriate is I think, late
term.
Joe Cadwell (11:40):
Sure. And in again, we talked about a few bad apples
but it you know, the problemsobviously a lot deeper than a
few bad apples, but one of theworst of the bad apples was a
fella named Clarence, Chuck, mybong, MacDonagh. They pronounce
that last name. That's more orless right,
Darwin BondGraham (11:56):
man. Yeah.
And,
Joe Cadwell (11:57):
and what what was his story? Where did he come
from? Where did he end up at?
Darwin BondGraham (12:02):
He Yeah, checking the van Dijk is a
really interesting figure in theOakland Police Department. He
was a very well respected, veryhard working officer who became
just kind of famous within thedepartment as a really good
training officer for a lot ofthe rookies who were coming
(12:24):
through. So in the 1990s, latelate 90s, he's training a lot of
the a lot of the young officerscoming out of the police
academy. Miranda is known as oneof the productive officers in
the department. So he's he's notthere's, at the time, they had a
term in the OPD for officers whowere unproductive, they call
(12:45):
them slugs. These are the guyswho just kind of sit in their
car and you know, maybe takecalls from dispatch and we'll go
somewhere and then write up apolice report. The productive
quote unquote, productiveofficers are the ones who would
go out looking for trouble. Somy banig and a few of the other
officers who ended up becomingthe writers, they take it upon
(13:06):
themselves to do this drug drugdealing suppression, narcotics
suppression work in WestOakland, they're driving around
and unmarked vans, hopping outand getting into foot chases,
and pursuing pursuing suspectsinto backyards and other areas
and tackling them and, you know,making all these red, they're
making a ton of narcoticsarrests, serving warrants, on
(13:27):
houses and other places. And somy Banik is kind of at the
center of all of that. And he'she's the training officer for
the, for Keith fat, who's arookie, who is the rookie who
ends up blowing the whistle onwhat the riders are doing in
2000. My banig ends up becominga deeply divisive figure within
(13:48):
policing because many peoplewithin the Oakland Police
Department and the Bay AreaNorthern California police
community at large, they viewhim as someone who was unfairly
prosecuted who was unfairlypainted as having engaged in
these activities. And you know,it the fact that there were two
(14:11):
criminal trials where my banigand other members of the writers
to to the other writers were puton trial, they were acquitted of
some of the charges. And thenmost of the charges, ended up
with a hung jury. So they werenever actually convicted in the
criminal courts. And so for alot of people, a lot of police
(14:32):
officers and people in lawenforcement, they view that they
can't they came to view theriders as a fake scandal. And
you view the banig and others asbeing kind of scapegoated for
the decisions of thesepoliticians like Jerry Brown who
wanted to clean up the city, butdidn't want to own that. They
didn't want to own the hard,aggressive policing when it
(14:55):
became a political scandal.
Ali Winston (14:57):
And they never paid any political price for it
either. I mean, Brown then whenthey'd be out, went on to win
elections to become the AttorneyGeneral of California and then
again, governor of Californiafor two more terms.
Joe Cadwell (15:09):
Right. And what happened with with Chuck about
it,
Ali Winston (15:13):
he actually stayed in law enforcement. He was fired
from his job at OPD, along withtwo other the other writers,
Matt Hornung and Jude SIAC. No,the third the fourth writer,
Frank Vasquez actually fled thecountry in 2000. Right before
the initial charges wereannounced and is still a
fugitive from justice. He'spresumed to be in Mexico,
(15:33):
there's never been any anythingto firm that up beyond the
initial reports. And Babadagactually got a job at first at a
in a city in the Inland Empirein Southern California named
Indio. And then later on, heactually transferred up to the
Sacramento area where he workedas a cop at a local community
college. He's still in extensivecontact with many current and
(15:57):
former members of the OaklandPolice Department. Their social
media profiles indicate as muchand he's not these guys are not
him in the ride at him. Hornak,who was also married to she
might have be retired now, buthis wife has it was an Oakland
cop for years. And Jude snapnote, they were very much still
in the circles, the socialcircles of the Oakland Police
Department.
Darwin BondGraham (16:15):
Yeah, and it's worth pointing out that the
writers officers are stillfriends with and associated with
a lot of current and formerofficers, the rookie, Keith bat,
who in 2000, blew the whistle ontheir behavior and brought about
this reform effort within thedepartment that's now going on
20 years. He was he became apariah. In many ways, a lot of a
(16:38):
lot of people in lawenforcement, shun him harass
him, gave him the cold shoulderfor many years. Still do.
Joe Cadwell (16:47):
Yeah, and, and then there was another name in there
and I believe Keith Bhatt workedwith Delphine Allen, and
Delphine was one of those peoplethat stepped up to to represent
some of the atrocities that werebeing laid upon the people on
the streets of Oakland
Ali Winston (17:03):
back as well. Their items, Delphine was one of the
victims. Yeah, he was beatenvery severely, and testified in,
I believe, both criminal trialsagainst the riders. That's
really grim what happened and wehave a picture in the physical
copy of the book of Delphi Allenwith his just a burst blood
vessel and one of his eyes, it'sall blood red. After he was
(17:26):
taken in,
Joe Cadwell (17:27):
and Keith, that was part of that situation. And
Keith was kind of given some,some advice to be a little more
heavy handed, you know, in inroughing up the suspects, and
that kind of I think he wantedto put in a resignation after
that didn't.
Darwin BondGraham (17:41):
It's interesting that, you know, his
training officer chuchmah banig,according to key Yes, said like,
you know, hey, why didn't youget in there, you know, and
like, put your hands a littlemore on this suspect as we were
taking him into custody. Mybanig in the so we got a lot of
old police reports and othermaterials through a lawsuit. And
(18:04):
other means to really kind ofunderstand what was going on at
the time in this case. Andlibanais, in his own words, was
was saying, you know, to keepbad that, you know, Oakland is
so dangerous, that if you're notan aggressive cop, they're going
to the people on the streets aregoing to take advantage of you
and they're going to kill you.
And Keith didn't quite see itthat way. He understood that it
(18:25):
was very dangerous out there.
But with Delphine Allen, what hesaw and what the reports reflect
and what subsequent testimonyand other evidence that was in
the criminal trial and the civilrights lawsuit lawsuits showed
is that Delphine was just a guywalking down the street, you
know, late at night with maybe acan of beer in his hand who
(18:48):
happened to be in the wrongplace, and he got spotted by the
writers who were cruising aroundin their undercover van and they
decided to jump out on him.
chase him down. Frank Vasquezprobably tried to plant crack on
him that night. Yeah, and thenthey kid and then see Jude Seop
No. And Frank Vasquez allegedlykidnapped him, drove him under a
(19:11):
bridge and just brutally beathim. And that was after he had
already been physicallyrestrained and struck a few
times by chuchmah, banig. AndKeith, that and other officers
who were on scene,
Joe Cadwell (19:26):
not quite true to the oath of servant protect,
tell the exact opposite. Yeah.
And reminiscent obviously, ofthe Rodney King scandal down in
LA.
Darwin BondGraham (19:37):
Yeah, the backdrop to the rider scandal
was a lot of what was happeningin Los Angeles at the time, the
of course, you know, the, theRodney King beating had, you
know, really the entire nationwas aware of that for a decade
almost. And then you know, thenwhat's going on later is the
Rampart scandal in Los Angeles,which, in many ways As a
(20:00):
corollary, but in somewhat inquite a few ways was quite worse
than what the riders did inOakland.
Ali Winston (20:07):
Yeah, it was far it the investigation went wider
than the investigation inOakland for a number of reasons.
One, it broke earlier, when theClinton administration was not
about to be out of office.
That's a big reason why theDepartment of Justice at the
time was not really interestedin the writers case. It was kind
of when they were just aboutgetting ready to segue into the
first administration of GeorgeW. Bush. And for those who do
(20:30):
not remember the to administerto terms that he served were a
very dark era for. For policeaccountability work, just
nothing happened in the JusticeDepartment's Civil Rights
Division. The LA rampartsdivision scandal happened a
little bit earlier, the JusticeDepartment got enough evidence
in their investigation to fileand win a pattern plaque
(20:53):
practice lawsuit against theLAPD and establish a formal
consent decree that they wereinvolved in consent decrees for
your listeners, because this isalso one of the big things in my
book. It's about police reformconsent decrees are the
mechanism that we have in thiscountry is a legalistic method
mechanism done through thecourts. That sets out a reform
program by which an institutionbe at a hospital, a mental
(21:15):
institution, a jail system, aprison system, a police
department, sheriff's departmenthas to go through a reform
program that's overseen by ajudge. And there's a time limit
on it. There's a monitoring teamthat's brought in from the
outside to determine whether ornot reforms have been
accomplished and help theinstitution find a path towards
a better towards complying withthe law and respecting people's
(21:40):
civil rights. And with policedepartments. They've been able
the Justice Department and thenstate agencies have been able to
do this since the mid 1990s.
LAPD is one of the biggestconsent decrees that the that
have had that has happened inthis country because of the size
of the department, thevisibility, the egregiousness of
the problems there in Oakland isalso under consent decree that
(22:02):
started in 2003. As a directresult of the riders case,
however, the case was notbrought by the Justice
Department. It was brought bytwo civil rights attorneys, Jim
Burris, John Burroughs and JimShannon, who we know very well
and are featured all throughoutthis book. And it was brought on
behalf of 119 victims allegedvictims of the riders, because
(22:25):
the Justice Department and theState of California would not
bring an action against theOakland Police Department. The
fact that the feds also passedon prosecuting the riders as
well, Robert Mueller of you knowwho they ran the FBI and was
very involved in some of theinvestigations of, of Donald
Trump as when he was presidentwas the US Attorney in San
(22:47):
Francisco at the time, and hedid not he refused to take on a
case against the riders becausetheir victims had thick rap
sheets. Because their wordstanding their word up against
people who were very wellrespected in the police
department, Chuck Mabbott, I wasconsidered the officer of the
year at one point. It justwouldn't fly.
Joe Cadwell (23:07):
Right? So they had 100. And would you say 119
plaintiffs in this class actionlawsuit and these two lawyers
brought it and where did thatend up? How did that all?
Darwin BondGraham (23:16):
Yeah, so that lawsuit, the city when when chin
and numbers filed that lawsuit,the city quickly realized that
they were facing a potentially100 million dollar plus, you
know, jury verdict if it went totrial. That's because they were
looking again, the backdrop hereis Los Angeles and the Rampart
(23:36):
scandal. And I don't have thenumber in front of me, but the
Rampart scandal costs the cityof Los Angeles some enormous sum
of money. And so the leadershipin Oakland was saying, how do we
make this go away in a form thatdoesn't bankrupt the city, and
Chan and embarrass on the otherhand, we're coming at it from an
angle of they had already suedthe Oakland Police Department,
(23:59):
like, you know, probably 100times for different people. And
so they had already gotten hugemonetary settlements over and
over and over. And they werekind of tired of it. It was like
an assembly line thing for them.
And they were just kind of like,you know, we want we want to try
to reform the police department.
So they weren't coming at itfrom like, a, you know, an
(24:20):
incentive of making a ton ofmoney. So they thought, well,
let's propose the negotiatedsettlement agreement or the
consent decree. So that's whyOakland that's why the city of
Oakland leadership agreed tothis really rigorous reform
effort, which is like thismassive document with 5052 or
whatever individual tasks, eachtask has like multiple sub task,
(24:41):
the task being like these verytechnical ways of reforming your
internal affairs division orthese very technical means of
ensuring that investigations arefairly conducted or like
assembling an early warningsystem to flag potential problem
behavior by some officers. Sothe city agreed to this thing in
(25:02):
the year 2003. Because so thelawsuit is filed in 2000.
They're sort of negotiatingwhether it's going to go to
trial or not. And they decide itwon't go to trial. So like in
January 2003, they sign off onthe negotiated settlement
agreement.
Joe Cadwell (25:19):
So 20. So that was the result of that
Darwin BondGraham (25:23):
clause 20 years ago to Yeah, 20 years ago
this month, essentially, theysigned off on this humongous
reform agreement. I'll justthrow in one little weird thing.
Literally the moment OaklandSinai this two months later,
there was an anti wardemonstration at the Port of
Oakland. A bunch of protestersThis is when the Iraq War, the
(25:45):
second Iraq war is about tohappen. The United States is
about to invade Iraq for thesecond time, the Bay Area is
filled with protests, a bunch ofprotesters go to the Port of
Oakland because there are somechips there that are supplying
the US military and they'regoing to do a direct action to
like stop the Longshore workersfrom entering the port. Long
story short, the Oakland policeshow up and shoot everyone with
(26:08):
rubber bullets and beat everyoneup and run them over with
motorcycles including theLongshore workers. So the ink
the ink wasn't even dry yet onthe negotiated settlement
agreement and the police wentand do this crazy, violent, you
know, suppression of a protest?
Joe Cadwell (26:39):
Crazy, two decades later, where's Oakland at now?
Darwin, you're living there withthe what's the status? Yeah,
Darwin BondGraham (26:46):
you know, the so the negotiated settlement
agreement is possibly going towrap up this year. The
department has made enormousstrides reforming itself.
There's a lot of progress, allthe convention. Some of the
Progress I'll just the one thingI'll mention here is officer
involved shootings are way downin Oakland, and they have been
(27:08):
since about 2014 2015. It usedto be that the Oakland Police
Department shot and killed, youknow, seven to 15 people a year
and like a handful of thosecases, the people would be
unarmed and it would be verycontroversial. Now it's actually
quite rare for the OaklandPolice Department shoot people
because of the pot, the reformpolicies, they've put in place
(27:28):
that disincentivize creatingthose kinds of dangerous
situations. For a number ofyears, the Oakland Police
Department in the city ofOakland also saw a significant
reduction in the rate offirearms assaults and homicides.
And so violent crime wasdropping between about 2015 and
(27:51):
2019. Then the pandemichappened, and for whatever
reasons, shoot homicides,shootings and other violent
crimes have spiked in Oakland,just like they have in a lot of
other parts of the country, alot of other cities and rural
areas. So Oakland is currentlygoing through this very
difficult time in terms of likeviolent crime shootings and
(28:13):
homicides, which are primarilyharming and impacting the city's
African American community. Thereform effort may be close to
wrapping up. But there are somequestions about that, that have
been raised recently regardingsome investigations internally
in the department that may begoing a little bit off the rails
again. So Oakland's in this veryprecarious state right
Ali Winston (28:35):
now. Yeah, I'll add that. The drop actually that
violent crime drop is longer itstarted the from about 2013 is
when you started to see a minordecrease in violent and
homicides and shootings. Andreally, that's a result of the
department not only putting inplace serious efforts to try and
change the way that they weredoing. They were engaging in day
(28:56):
to day interactions with peopleon the street and gained some
trust back because they reallylike the years of 2000 I want to
say the late 2000s. Early 2010swere very difficult time in
Oakland because of a there werehuge protest movements around
police brutality and violence.
They centered on the killing ofOscar Grant, young African
American man shot unarmed on NewYear's Day 2001 2009 by transit
(29:16):
cop.
Joe Cadwell (29:20):
Is that the Fruitvale Station? Yes, correct,
Ali Winston (29:23):
even though he was killed by a very rapid transit
officer, that shooting and theprotest movement around them
that was met by again,unsurprisingly by very, very
stiff opposition from the policedepartment. continued on for a
couple of years really, it wasvery fractious and very chaotic,
and brought the issue of poorlyover policing police brutality.
(29:47):
bad practices the Oakland PoliceDepartment at the time, which
included a basically industrialscale falsification of search
warrants for narcotics cases.
Public strip searching stripsearches of stuff spects people,
especially people on parole orprobation, just I won't spoil, I
won't give it all away, but he'sgot a great time. That being
said, After that period of timein 2013, through about 2019, the
(30:11):
department actually put effortinto not only reestablishing
relationships with thecommunity, but also engaging,
trying to use thoserelationships, to get
information out who the verysmall number of people who are
committing the overwhelmingnumber of violent crimes in
Oakland, and it did work for agood period of time. But
political changes in policedepartments certain scandals
(30:33):
that again, I won't spoil, butthrew everything off the rails,
put that on its ear. Politiciansalso like to put their name and
their stamp on certain thingsand like fire to things that
work even though they maybenefit the actual citizenry. So
that's part of it as well. Butoverall, I think that you know,
the thing that Darwin's hintingat the problems with their
(30:56):
engineering Terrillinvestigations and how they
handle them, it reallyoftentimes, even though
tremendous progress has beenmade, there's such a desire in
the police department to justkind of get rid of this
Albatross and see it as a listof technical fixes that need to
be done. And oh, well, this theproblem is not us the problem?
Is the court the problem isthese lawyers the problem are
(31:18):
these people out there who arecomplaining about police
brutality and whatnot. Well,there's a reason why 2020 saw
some of the biggest proteststhis country's ever seen,
specifically around policebrutality. It's not that this is
a one off issue. It's a deeplyrooted issue in American
society. So I think that in manyways, Oakland and the story that
we tell is a microcosm of thatapplies to dozens of American
(31:40):
cities around the country,depending on regardless of the
region racial composition, whatwhat have you.
Joe Cadwell (31:48):
For sure, my guest today are ally Winston and
Darwin bond Graham, authors ofthe writers come out at night
brutality, corruption in thecover up in Oakland, gentlemen,
powerful book, after someonereads your book, what do you
hope they take away from it?
Darwin BondGraham (32:01):
Yeah, one take away. So we, we don't come
down on either side of the issueof you know, should law
enforcement or policing beabolished? Or, you know, in
terms of like, what specificreforms should happen? We're,
it's hard to take a stand onthose kinds of issues. What we
(32:24):
were trying to do is read ahistory of the department as an
institution of the city, and totake a close look at the reform
effort that has actuallyhappened. And to try to figure
out, did it work or has it notworked? And one takeaway that we
were able that we, that we feelconfident stating, is that
(32:46):
reforming the police, if by thatwe mean, making policing,
respect to the Constitution andpeople's constitutional rights
and reducing the harms thatpolicing can do this is
possible. But the way ithappened in Oakland, it wasn't
like the police department oneday woke up and said, Hey, we've
(33:08):
got to do better. It also wasn'tlike the city's political
leaders, the mayor, the citycouncil, and others, you know,
said, want, you know, one day,hey, we really gotta transform
policing here to make sure itserves everyone. And that, you
know, people aren't, you know,especially African Americans in
the city are not harmed andtheir rights aren't violated.
(33:29):
The way that it worked inOakland, was that there was a
huge social movement. There wasa lot of intense pressure over
many decades brought byprotesters by just local
residents, by civil rightsattorneys, by, you know, NGOs.
They pressured the cityconstantly to seek greater
(33:53):
transparency into the policedepartment and always try to
hold the police accountable, andalways push for some new
reforms. And that has alwaysbeen been able to achieve a
little bit of progress. The oneother observation we've made is
that anytime that that externalpressure on the police is
withdrawn, you see the cultureof the police department become
(34:18):
more insular, become moreresistant to change. And then
these problems the especiallythe secrecy and the violence
within the department andagainst the community. Those
problems reemerge again,
Ali Winston (34:30):
yeah, you gotta there's always an AR book does
actually trace back to thefounding of Oakland in the
1850s. And from the 19 centuryonwards, you really there is
always in the heart of theinstitution, a very reactionary
element. It's not to say thatevery officer is reactionaries
at heart, right, you know,Oathkeeper proud boy Klansmen,
(34:52):
John Bircher. However, they'represent throughout the
institution's history and incertain eras because of
political dine It makes itbecause of the way that, you
know, the broader socialcurrents are running, they rise,
and they fall in terms of theirinfluence over the agency. And
when that kind of levelinginfluence from the outside is
(35:13):
taken away when the police areallowed to police themselves, it
takes a very nasty turn. Andthat is one of the things that
you can, I believe, just havingreported in Oakland, New York,
Chicago, New Orleans, LosAngeles, Fresno, a lot of other
departments around the country,I've seen that it's a that is a
(35:34):
very, very constant dynamic. Andagain, that external pressure
that involved in that engagementover the years over decades,
it's not just about a summerprotest, showing up at a council
meeting, taking a photographputting on your social media
account, what have you. Itreally has to do with deep,
sustained engagement in acommunity and trying to better
that community. And because ofthe sort of place that Oakland
(35:57):
is, there are some people whohave been engaged in this work
that we know of who've beenaround who've been at it since
the 1980s 1970s 1960s. Some, ifthey're still alive, might have
been involved in that 1950investigation of op ed by the by
the California State Assembly,which is one of the first of its
kind in the country. So itreally is about kind of making
(36:19):
certain that you have skin inthe game for the long term,
because this is it's a constantof our society. And I don't
think there's any person outthere who believes that the
American criminal justice systemin our policing manner of
policing works in the currentshape and form.
Joe Cadwell (36:35):
And your book is a definitely a powerful reminder
of that. Gentleman, this hasbeen a fantastic conversation,
where can people go to find outmore about you and your upcoming
work?
Darwin BondGraham (36:45):
We're both on Twitter. So if people want to
keep up this, check us out onTwitter. I'm the news editor of
the Oakland side. It's ahyperlocal news publication
based in Oakland so people cankeep up with some of my work
there. And then of course,people can you know, order a
copy of our book, it should beavailable in bookstores, most
(37:06):
bookstores, it's availableonline.
Joe Cadwell (37:09):
All right, thank you, Darren,
Ali Winston (37:10):
my. My other line of reporting that I engage in,
aside from law enforcement isthe far right, unfortunately,
fortunately, so I've done a lotof work on them for places like
Rolling Stone, the BritishBroadcasting Corporation, some
other outlets out there, Ibelieve that you know, my I'm an
independent reporter, so I kindof cast my net far and wide, but
(37:34):
I my most recent stuff has beenin Rolling Stone and the BBC.
Joe Cadwell (37:38):
All right. Well, thank you very much Ollie
Winston and Darwin bond Grahamhas been a real pleasure to have
you on the show today.
Ali Winston (37:44):
Thank you. Thank you so much. This has been
great.
Joe Cadwell (37:49):
Man, before we go, I just can't help but draw the
parallels. You guys are probablytoo young to remember Dirty
Harry Clint Eastwood
Ali Winston (37:54):
o n TV all the time.
Joe Cadwell (37:56):
Love Magnum Force like Magnum Force, you
Darwin BondGraham (38:00):
know Magnum, Magnum Force, the scene where
they're in the basement and theshooting range? Yeah, that's
OPD. Holy shit. They filmed theyfilmed a good portion of that
movie around the Oakland PoliceDepartment. Yep.
Hi and
Joe Cadwell (00:08):
Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the
host of the show, and on today'sepisode I have the pleasure of
speaking with authors AliWinston and Darwin BondGraham
about their new book titled TheRiders Come Out at Night;
Brutality, Corruption and CoverUp in Oakland. Their book is a
meticulously researched andengaging account of a police
force rotten to its core, andserves as a poignant reminder
(00:31):
that the problem with policingin America isn't just about
crooked cops. The problem liesin a broken system that lacks
the will to reform. During ourconversation, we'll be
introduced to a group ofsadistic cops known as the
writers whose disregard for theoath they took to protect and
serve as on full tragic andinfuriating display will also
meet the wide eyed rookie turnedwhistleblower who was
(00:52):
unwittingly partnered with aleader of the riders. The riders
come out at night as a story ofone city and the explosive
scandals and systematiccorruption and brutality and its
police department. But it's alsoa story of American policing,
and where it's heading in 2023.
After the episode be sure tocheck out the show notes to
(01:13):
learn more about this subject.
And now on to the show.
Gentlemen, welcome to GritNation.
Darwin BondGraham (01:34):
Thanks for having us .
Ali Winston (01:35):
Thanks so much.
Joe Cadwell (01:37):
Yeah, thank you so much for taking your time to be
on the show. I today. I haveOllie Winston and Darwin bond
Graham, the authors of thewriters come out at night
brutality, corruption and acover up in Oakland. Gentlemen,
I understand you're on twoseparate dens of the coast.
Darwin, you're there in OaklandAli, you're in? You're in New
York City. And what brought youto together to write this book?
Ali Winston (02:00):
Well, I actually I was in Oakland for a decade,
living out there for quite sometime. And I was reporting on the
police department. After I cameout of graduate school at UC
Berkeley, and Darwin and I bothcame at the story from different
angles. I had been working itfor radio stations and all
(02:21):
weeklies around the Bay Area.
Mostly covering law enforcement.
And we actually met becauseDarwin, when he moved up to the
Bay Area from SouthernCalifornia was writing a lot
about policing and citypolitics. And he ended up using
a photo of mine, withoutcitation, and I noticed it, I
was like, Hey, man, I like thatphoto, I love your blog, can you
(02:42):
just put my name on it? I don'tcare about credit. And then we
got to talking about issues andrealize we had similar interests
and complementary skills andstarted covering the local city
and police department together.
And that was in 2012
Joe Cadwell (03:01):
and 2012. And then over the that period of time,
you began to notice, there wassort of a trend happening and
what was the inspiration for thebook? When did you finally say,
hey, after 50 years of reported,you know, misdeeds and the
Oakland Police Department, whatwhat finally was the catalyst
for the book?
Darwin BondGraham (03:17):
Yeah, we, you know, every time we would read a
story about the Oakland PoliceDepartment, we knew, and we
would constantly be uncoveringnew bits of history and facts
that all, you know, tiedtogether to tell this really
compelling story that spanneddecades. But, you know,
journalism, daily, and likeweekly news reporting, you
(03:42):
rarely get the chance to tellthat kind of story that has that
sort of, you know, historicnarrative arc to it. And, you
know, to pitch a story that goesreally deep into like, systems
and not just like, the symptomsof what's what's happening, it
takes a ton of time to producethose kinds of stories, and you
don't always have that, youknow, as a as a, you know, City
(04:04):
Hall or, you know, criminaljustice reporter. So, over the
years, just writing these thesestories, and following these
different scandals and reformefforts, you know, we were
constantly thinking like, well,one day, we've got to get down
just like, you know, put this ina in a book so that it all
really makes sense.
Ali Winston (04:27):
Absolutely. I mean, there's, there's a way in which
day to day journalism, likeactual news coverage, it does
kind of address symptoms and notcauses. It's not, I guess it's
by design by demand of the fieldand it's not a bad thing, but
there is a limit to what theform can do even with all
weeklies and magazines, youknow, when you have a lot
(04:50):
3000 5000 words to write about astory. I mean, even that many of
our longer pieces, we wouldleave a ton of stuff on the
cutting room floor,
Joe Cadwell (04:58):
and this book is over 400 pages and again, an arc
of over 50 years. Let's see, wetalked about systems and
symptoms, why don't we startwith some of the symptoms? What
what, over that course period oftime what was going on? What
were the tangibles?
Darwin BondGraham (05:13):
Well, in the year 2000, this is the incident
that we start the book off with.
There was a something called thewriter scandal, which the
writers case which involved agroup of officers in West
Oakland who were accused ofbeating people up planting drugs
on them writing false policereports and just using brutal
(05:35):
force, killing, killing people'sdogs with like gunshots to the
head and abducting people to gasstations and bridges and beating
them. You know, in the night.
When that was exposed by arookie officer named Keith, that
(05:57):
the simple thing would have beento say that this was a group of
rogue officers, right, who, youknow, didn't represent what the
department was about. But a lotof people in Oakland knew that
this was not some one offaberration, that this was a
symptom of a, you know, a largerand more pernicious culture
(06:19):
within the police departmentthat had been facilitated by
some of the politicians who wererunning the city at the time who
were on this campaign to likeclean up Oakland and, quote
unquote, make it safer than youknow, Walnut Creek, which is
this nice suburb to the east ofOakland. So that's one symptom.
(06:41):
In the book, we you know, indifferent chapters, we jump into
a number of different caseswhere we try to make the point
about how failings withinpolicing as an institution in
the police department createdthe conditions for these kinds
of really egregious abuses ofpower. We have another case
where we talked about a youngman named Jerry amaro Latino man
(07:03):
who was beat up during a drugsting also in the year 2000. He
died a couple of weeks later ofinjuries he sustained and then
there was a cover up in thedepartment that spanned over a
decade until the secrets of thatcame out. We also show how this
these problems that are inembedded in policing harmed
(07:26):
police officers, we have a wholechapter about a very ill fated
shootout involving a criminalsuspect name live without mixin,
who ended up ended up killingtwo police officers in the
street and then killing two morepolice officers as they
(07:46):
attempted to take them intocustody in an apartment
building. The those deaths andthe whole incident perhaps could
have been avoided had the policedepartment instituted more
rigorous policies and kinds ofreforms and repaired its
relationship to the communitybetter. So we show in a way how
it's not just the community whogets beat up and suffers. Police
(08:10):
officers themselves sufferbecause the institution of
policing remains highlyunprofessional and Ill reform.
And there's
Ali Winston (08:17):
another officer just to tell one more story and
not to give too much away.
Others another officer namedWillie Wilkins, Latino officer
who is working undercover inEast Oakland in round, early
2000s, as well, he actually wasshot and killed by two uniformed
officers as he held a criminalsuspect at gunpoint. His wife
sued the city won a settlementthe two officers, both white,
(08:38):
both young, both inexperiencedwere you know, that incident
really did rip up the departmentat that point in time. And
again, this is the sort offailing that happened because
they weren't aware that Wilkinswas a cop, even though other
officers scream No, no, he's acop. He's a cop. He's on the
(08:59):
force. But they weren't madeaware that he was out there that
night, without a uniform with abadge on with a firearm in a
decoy car dressed a certain waywith his own appearance. So
again, these failures do havelethal consequences on both
sides of the fence.
Joe Cadwell (09:15):
So pretty dark, pretty egregious symptoms, you
know, manifesting themselves onthe streets of Oakland and you
said there's systems in place,it seemed like political reform.
This was the Jerry Brown era.
And Jerry Brown, the formergovernor of California became
the mayor of Oakland fine.
Ali Winston (09:33):
That was his political comeback. He actually
had a pretty interesting routeback to back into politics. So
he was governor of California,late 70s. Governor moonbeam. You
know, he had a lot of esotericpolicies, really kind of out
there a little bit on ahead ofhis time on environmental
issues, certainly on socialissues as well. And then he had
a couple of failed petpresidential runs, I believe.
(09:55):
And then after that, he wentinto the wilderness a little
bit, you know, became a littlebit he got into New Age sort of
archaeology. He's had this radioshow on a local radio station
called KPFA, where he wouldexpound his guests on and kind
of set up his political projectthat kind of laid the ground for
his mayoral campaign in Oakland.
And he was elected in 1996. Ibelieve he promised to make
(10:16):
Oakland into this accomplicewhich is a Eagle policies is
like a 1970s. I ad was that 1998Right? That's when he went yeah.
But they're not he basicallypromised a you know,
environmentalist utopia inOakland, like a real kind of
left wing type city, but once hegot in power he was he ran the
(10:39):
city is Rudy Giuliani West. Youknow, this kind of zero
tolerance, pro gentrification,clean up the streets style
politician who basically wouldgo into police lineups and cheer
them on and back the pump backin your play, you know, take the
streets back from the criminalstaken back from the drug
dealers. It's worth also sayingthat Oakland did in the 80s and
1990s, Oakland experienced atremendous surge in violence and
(11:02):
crime and disorder and narcoticsusage. And that was a result of
deindustrialization, broadernational trends. But Oakland was
one of the cities that wasreally hammered by first heroin
and then the crack cocaine boom.
And by the, you know, the percapita violence in Oakland by
the early 1990s was really,really grim. So there was there
(11:23):
was a significant problem thatlaw enforcement was out there to
try and address but the methodsas in New York City where I grew
up during you know, Giulianitime in the 1990s, the methods
undertaken were just wildlyinappropriate is I think, late
term.
Joe Cadwell (11:40):
Sure. And in again, we talked about a few bad apples
but it you know, the problemsobviously a lot deeper than a
few bad apples, but one of theworst of the bad apples was a
fella named Clarence, Chuck, mybong, MacDonagh. They pronounce
that last name. That's more orless right,
Darwin BondGraham (11:56):
man. Yeah.
And,
Joe Cadwell (11:57):
and what what was his story? Where did he come
from? Where did he end up at?
Darwin BondGraham (12:02):
He Yeah, checking the van Dijk is a
really interesting figure in theOakland Police Department. He
was a very well respected, veryhard working officer who became
just kind of famous within thedepartment as a really good
training officer for a lot ofthe rookies who were coming
(12:24):
through. So in the 1990s, latelate 90s, he's training a lot of
the a lot of the young officerscoming out of the police
academy. Miranda is known as oneof the productive officers in
the department. So he's he's notthere's, at the time, they had a
term in the OPD for officers whowere unproductive, they call
(12:45):
them slugs. These are the guyswho just kind of sit in their
car and you know, maybe takecalls from dispatch and we'll go
somewhere and then write up apolice report. The productive
quote unquote, productiveofficers are the ones who would
go out looking for trouble. Somy banig and a few of the other
officers who ended up becomingthe writers, they take it upon
(13:06):
themselves to do this drug drugdealing suppression, narcotics
suppression work in WestOakland, they're driving around
and unmarked vans, hopping outand getting into foot chases,
and pursuing pursuing suspectsinto backyards and other areas
and tackling them and, you know,making all these red, they're
making a ton of narcoticsarrests, serving warrants, on
(13:27):
houses and other places. And somy Banik is kind of at the
center of all of that. And he'she's the training officer for
the, for Keith fat, who's arookie, who is the rookie who
ends up blowing the whistle onwhat the riders are doing in
2000. My banig ends up becominga deeply divisive figure within
(13:48):
policing because many peoplewithin the Oakland Police
Department and the Bay AreaNorthern California police
community at large, they viewhim as someone who was unfairly
prosecuted who was unfairlypainted as having engaged in
these activities. And you know,it the fact that there were two
(14:11):
criminal trials where my banigand other members of the writers
to to the other writers were puton trial, they were acquitted of
some of the charges. And thenmost of the charges, ended up
with a hung jury. So they werenever actually convicted in the
criminal courts. And so for alot of people, a lot of police
(14:32):
officers and people in lawenforcement, they view that they
can't they came to view theriders as a fake scandal. And
you view the banig and others asbeing kind of scapegoated for
the decisions of thesepoliticians like Jerry Brown who
wanted to clean up the city, butdidn't want to own that. They
didn't want to own the hard,aggressive policing when it
(14:55):
became a political scandal.
Ali Winston (14:57):
And they never paid any political price for it
either. I mean, Brown then whenthey'd be out, went on to win
elections to become the AttorneyGeneral of California and then
again, governor of Californiafor two more terms.
Joe Cadwell (15:09):
Right. And what happened with with Chuck about
it,
Ali Winston (15:13):
he actually stayed in law enforcement. He was fired
from his job at OPD, along withtwo other the other writers,
Matt Hornung and Jude SIAC. No,the third the fourth writer,
Frank Vasquez actually fled thecountry in 2000. Right before
the initial charges wereannounced and is still a
fugitive from justice. He'spresumed to be in Mexico,
(15:33):
there's never been any anythingto firm that up beyond the
initial reports. And Babadagactually got a job at first at a
in a city in the Inland Empirein Southern California named
Indio. And then later on, heactually transferred up to the
Sacramento area where he workedas a cop at a local community
college. He's still in extensivecontact with many current and
(15:57):
former members of the OaklandPolice Department. Their social
media profiles indicate as muchand he's not these guys are not
him in the ride at him. Hornak,who was also married to she
might have be retired now, buthis wife has it was an Oakland
cop for years. And Jude snapnote, they were very much still
in the circles, the socialcircles of the Oakland Police
Department.
Darwin BondGraham (16:15):
Yeah, and it's worth pointing out that the
writers officers are stillfriends with and associated with
a lot of current and formerofficers, the rookie, Keith bat,
who in 2000, blew the whistle ontheir behavior and brought about
this reform effort within thedepartment that's now going on
20 years. He was he became apariah. In many ways, a lot of a
(16:38):
lot of people in lawenforcement, shun him harass
him, gave him the cold shoulderfor many years. Still do.
Joe Cadwell (16:47):
Yeah, and, and then there was another name in there
and I believe Keith Bhatt workedwith Delphine Allen, and
Delphine was one of those peoplethat stepped up to to represent
some of the atrocities that werebeing laid upon the people on
the streets of Oakland
Ali Winston (17:03):
back as well. Their items, Delphine was one of the
victims. Yeah, he was beatenvery severely, and testified in,
I believe, both criminal trialsagainst the riders. That's
really grim what happened and wehave a picture in the physical
copy of the book of Delphi Allenwith his just a burst blood
vessel and one of his eyes, it'sall blood red. After he was
(17:26):
taken in,
Joe Cadwell (17:27):
and Keith, that was part of that situation. And
Keith was kind of given some,some advice to be a little more
heavy handed, you know, in inroughing up the suspects, and
that kind of I think he wantedto put in a resignation after
that didn't.
Darwin BondGraham (17:41):
It's interesting that, you know, his
training officer chuchmah banig,according to key Yes, said like,
you know, hey, why didn't youget in there, you know, and
like, put your hands a littlemore on this suspect as we were
taking him into custody. Mybanig in the so we got a lot of
old police reports and othermaterials through a lawsuit. And
(18:04):
other means to really kind ofunderstand what was going on at
the time in this case. Andlibanais, in his own words, was
was saying, you know, to keepbad that, you know, Oakland is
so dangerous, that if you're notan aggressive cop, they're going
to the people on the streets aregoing to take advantage of you
and they're going to kill you.
And Keith didn't quite see itthat way. He understood that it
(18:25):
was very dangerous out there.
But with Delphine Allen, what hesaw and what the reports reflect
and what subsequent testimonyand other evidence that was in
the criminal trial and the civilrights lawsuit lawsuits showed
is that Delphine was just a guywalking down the street, you
know, late at night with maybe acan of beer in his hand who
(18:48):
happened to be in the wrongplace, and he got spotted by the
writers who were cruising aroundin their undercover van and they
decided to jump out on him.
chase him down. Frank Vasquezprobably tried to plant crack on
him that night. Yeah, and thenthey kid and then see Jude Seop
No. And Frank Vasquez allegedlykidnapped him, drove him under a
(19:11):
bridge and just brutally beathim. And that was after he had
already been physicallyrestrained and struck a few
times by chuchmah, banig. AndKeith, that and other officers
who were on scene,
Joe Cadwell (19:26):
not quite true to the oath of servant protect,
tell the exact opposite. Yeah.
And reminiscent obviously, ofthe Rodney King scandal down in
LA.
Darwin BondGraham (19:37):
Yeah, the backdrop to the rider scandal
was a lot of what was happeningin Los Angeles at the time, the
of course, you know, the, theRodney King beating had, you
know, really the entire nationwas aware of that for a decade
almost. And then you know, thenwhat's going on later is the
Rampart scandal in Los Angeles,which, in many ways As a
(20:00):
corollary, but in somewhat inquite a few ways was quite worse
than what the riders did inOakland.
Ali Winston (20:07):
Yeah, it was far it the investigation went wider
than the investigation inOakland for a number of reasons.
One, it broke earlier, when theClinton administration was not
about to be out of office.
That's a big reason why theDepartment of Justice at the
time was not really interestedin the writers case. It was kind
of when they were just aboutgetting ready to segue into the
first administration of GeorgeW. Bush. And for those who do
(20:30):
not remember the to administerto terms that he served were a
very dark era for. For policeaccountability work, just
nothing happened in the JusticeDepartment's Civil Rights
Division. The LA rampartsdivision scandal happened a
little bit earlier, the JusticeDepartment got enough evidence
in their investigation to fileand win a pattern plaque
(20:53):
practice lawsuit against theLAPD and establish a formal
consent decree that they wereinvolved in consent decrees for
your listeners, because this isalso one of the big things in my
book. It's about police reformconsent decrees are the
mechanism that we have in thiscountry is a legalistic method
mechanism done through thecourts. That sets out a reform
program by which an institutionbe at a hospital, a mental
(21:15):
institution, a jail system, aprison system, a police
department, sheriff's departmenthas to go through a reform
program that's overseen by ajudge. And there's a time limit
on it. There's a monitoring teamthat's brought in from the
outside to determine whether ornot reforms have been
accomplished and help theinstitution find a path towards
a better towards complying withthe law and respecting people's
(21:40):
civil rights. And with policedepartments. They've been able
the Justice Department and thenstate agencies have been able to
do this since the mid 1990s.
LAPD is one of the biggestconsent decrees that the that
have had that has happened inthis country because of the size
of the department, thevisibility, the egregiousness of
the problems there in Oakland isalso under consent decree that
(22:02):
started in 2003. As a directresult of the riders case,
however, the case was notbrought by the Justice
Department. It was brought bytwo civil rights attorneys, Jim
Burris, John Burroughs and JimShannon, who we know very well
and are featured all throughoutthis book. And it was brought on
behalf of 119 victims allegedvictims of the riders, because
(22:25):
the Justice Department and theState of California would not
bring an action against theOakland Police Department. The
fact that the feds also passedon prosecuting the riders as
well, Robert Mueller of you knowwho they ran the FBI and was
very involved in some of theinvestigations of, of Donald
Trump as when he was presidentwas the US Attorney in San
(22:47):
Francisco at the time, and hedid not he refused to take on a
case against the riders becausetheir victims had thick rap
sheets. Because their wordstanding their word up against
people who were very wellrespected in the police
department, Chuck Mabbott, I wasconsidered the officer of the
year at one point. It justwouldn't fly.
Joe Cadwell (23:07):
Right? So they had 100. And would you say 119
plaintiffs in this class actionlawsuit and these two lawyers
brought it and where did thatend up? How did that all?
Darwin BondGraham (23:16):
Yeah, so that lawsuit, the city when when chin
and numbers filed that lawsuit,the city quickly realized that
they were facing a potentially100 million dollar plus, you
know, jury verdict if it went totrial. That's because they were
looking again, the backdrop hereis Los Angeles and the Rampart
(23:36):
scandal. And I don't have thenumber in front of me, but the
Rampart scandal costs the cityof Los Angeles some enormous sum
of money. And so the leadershipin Oakland was saying, how do we
make this go away in a form thatdoesn't bankrupt the city, and
Chan and embarrass on the otherhand, we're coming at it from an
angle of they had already suedthe Oakland Police Department,
(23:59):
like, you know, probably 100times for different people. And
so they had already gotten hugemonetary settlements over and
over and over. And they werekind of tired of it. It was like
an assembly line thing for them.
And they were just kind of like,you know, we want we want to try
to reform the police department.
So they weren't coming at itfrom like, a, you know, an
(24:20):
incentive of making a ton ofmoney. So they thought, well,
let's propose the negotiatedsettlement agreement or the
consent decree. So that's whyOakland that's why the city of
Oakland leadership agreed tothis really rigorous reform
effort, which is like thismassive document with 5052 or
whatever individual tasks, eachtask has like multiple sub task,
(24:41):
the task being like these verytechnical ways of reforming your
internal affairs division orthese very technical means of
ensuring that investigations arefairly conducted or like
assembling an early warningsystem to flag potential problem
behavior by some officers. Sothe city agreed to this thing in
(25:02):
the year 2003. Because so thelawsuit is filed in 2000.
They're sort of negotiatingwhether it's going to go to
trial or not. And they decide itwon't go to trial. So like in
January 2003, they sign off onthe negotiated settlement
agreement.
Joe Cadwell (25:19):
So 20. So that was the result of that
Darwin BondGraham (25:23):
clause 20 years ago to Yeah, 20 years ago
this month, essentially, theysigned off on this humongous
reform agreement. I'll justthrow in one little weird thing.
Literally the moment OaklandSinai this two months later,
there was an anti wardemonstration at the Port of
Oakland. A bunch of protestersThis is when the Iraq War, the
(25:45):
second Iraq war is about tohappen. The United States is
about to invade Iraq for thesecond time, the Bay Area is
filled with protests, a bunch ofprotesters go to the Port of
Oakland because there are somechips there that are supplying
the US military and they'regoing to do a direct action to
like stop the Longshore workersfrom entering the port. Long
story short, the Oakland policeshow up and shoot everyone with
(26:08):
rubber bullets and beat everyoneup and run them over with
motorcycles including theLongshore workers. So the ink
the ink wasn't even dry yet onthe negotiated settlement
agreement and the police wentand do this crazy, violent, you
know, suppression of a protest?
Joe Cadwell (26:39):
Crazy, two decades later, where's Oakland at now?
Darwin, you're living there withthe what's the status? Yeah,
Darwin BondGraham (26:46):
you know, the so the negotiated settlement
agreement is possibly going towrap up this year. The
department has made enormousstrides reforming itself.
There's a lot of progress, allthe convention. Some of the
Progress I'll just the one thingI'll mention here is officer
involved shootings are way downin Oakland, and they have been
(27:08):
since about 2014 2015. It usedto be that the Oakland Police
Department shot and killed, youknow, seven to 15 people a year
and like a handful of thosecases, the people would be
unarmed and it would be verycontroversial. Now it's actually
quite rare for the OaklandPolice Department shoot people
because of the pot, the reformpolicies, they've put in place
(27:28):
that disincentivize creatingthose kinds of dangerous
situations. For a number ofyears, the Oakland Police
Department in the city ofOakland also saw a significant
reduction in the rate offirearms assaults and homicides.
And so violent crime wasdropping between about 2015 and
(27:51):
2019. Then the pandemichappened, and for whatever
reasons, shoot homicides,shootings and other violent
crimes have spiked in Oakland,just like they have in a lot of
other parts of the country, alot of other cities and rural
areas. So Oakland is currentlygoing through this very
difficult time in terms of likeviolent crime shootings and
(28:13):
homicides, which are primarilyharming and impacting the city's
African American community. Thereform effort may be close to
wrapping up. But there are somequestions about that, that have
been raised recently regardingsome investigations internally
in the department that may begoing a little bit off the rails
again. So Oakland's in this veryprecarious state right
Ali Winston (28:35):
now. Yeah, I'll add that. The drop actually that
violent crime drop is longer itstarted the from about 2013 is
when you started to see a minordecrease in violent and
homicides and shootings. Andreally, that's a result of the
department not only putting inplace serious efforts to try and
change the way that they weredoing. They were engaging in day
(28:56):
to day interactions with peopleon the street and gained some
trust back because they reallylike the years of 2000 I want to
say the late 2000s. Early 2010swere very difficult time in
Oakland because of a there werehuge protest movements around
police brutality and violence.
They centered on the killing ofOscar Grant, young African
American man shot unarmed on NewYear's Day 2001 2009 by transit
(29:16):
cop.
Joe Cadwell (29:20):
Is that the Fruitvale Station? Yes, correct,
Ali Winston (29:23):
even though he was killed by a very rapid transit
officer, that shooting and theprotest movement around them
that was met by again,unsurprisingly by very, very
stiff opposition from the policedepartment. continued on for a
couple of years really, it wasvery fractious and very chaotic,
and brought the issue of poorlyover policing police brutality.
(29:47):
bad practices the Oakland PoliceDepartment at the time, which
included a basically industrialscale falsification of search
warrants for narcotics cases.
Public strip searching stripsearches of stuff spects people,
especially people on parole orprobation, just I won't spoil, I
won't give it all away, but he'sgot a great time. That being
said, After that period of timein 2013, through about 2019, the
(30:11):
department actually put effortinto not only reestablishing
relationships with thecommunity, but also engaging,
trying to use thoserelationships, to get
information out who the verysmall number of people who are
committing the overwhelmingnumber of violent crimes in
Oakland, and it did work for agood period of time. But
political changes in policedepartments certain scandals
(30:33):
that again, I won't spoil, butthrew everything off the rails,
put that on its ear. Politiciansalso like to put their name and
their stamp on certain thingsand like fire to things that
work even though they maybenefit the actual citizenry. So
that's part of it as well. Butoverall, I think that you know,
the thing that Darwin's hintingat the problems with their
(30:56):
engineering Terrillinvestigations and how they
handle them, it reallyoftentimes, even though
tremendous progress has beenmade, there's such a desire in
the police department to justkind of get rid of this
Albatross and see it as a listof technical fixes that need to
be done. And oh, well, this theproblem is not us the problem?
Is the court the problem isthese lawyers the problem are
(31:18):
these people out there who arecomplaining about police
brutality and whatnot. Well,there's a reason why 2020 saw
some of the biggest proteststhis country's ever seen,
specifically around policebrutality. It's not that this is
a one off issue. It's a deeplyrooted issue in American
society. So I think that in manyways, Oakland and the story that
we tell is a microcosm of thatapplies to dozens of American
(31:40):
cities around the country,depending on regardless of the
region racial composition, whatwhat have you.
Joe Cadwell (31:48):
For sure, my guest today are ally Winston and
Darwin bond Graham, authors ofthe writers come out at night
brutality, corruption in thecover up in Oakland, gentlemen,
powerful book, after someonereads your book, what do you
hope they take away from it?
Darwin BondGraham (32:01):
Yeah, one take away. So we, we don't come
down on either side of the issueof you know, should law
enforcement or policing beabolished? Or, you know, in
terms of like, what specificreforms should happen? We're,
it's hard to take a stand onthose kinds of issues. What we
(32:24):
were trying to do is read ahistory of the department as an
institution of the city, and totake a close look at the reform
effort that has actuallyhappened. And to try to figure
out, did it work or has it notworked? And one takeaway that we
were able that we, that we feelconfident stating, is that
(32:46):
reforming the police, if by thatwe mean, making policing,
respect to the Constitution andpeople's constitutional rights
and reducing the harms thatpolicing can do this is
possible. But the way ithappened in Oakland, it wasn't
like the police department oneday woke up and said, Hey, we've
(33:08):
got to do better. It also wasn'tlike the city's political
leaders, the mayor, the citycouncil, and others, you know,
said, want, you know, one day,hey, we really gotta transform
policing here to make sure itserves everyone. And that, you
know, people aren't, you know,especially African Americans in
the city are not harmed andtheir rights aren't violated.
(33:29):
The way that it worked inOakland, was that there was a
huge social movement. There wasa lot of intense pressure over
many decades brought byprotesters by just local
residents, by civil rightsattorneys, by, you know, NGOs.
They pressured the cityconstantly to seek greater
(33:53):
transparency into the policedepartment and always try to
hold the police accountable, andalways push for some new
reforms. And that has alwaysbeen been able to achieve a
little bit of progress. The oneother observation we've made is
that anytime that that externalpressure on the police is
withdrawn, you see the cultureof the police department become
(34:18):
more insular, become moreresistant to change. And then
these problems the especiallythe secrecy and the violence
within the department andagainst the community. Those
problems reemerge again,
Ali Winston (34:30):
yeah, you gotta there's always an AR book does
actually trace back to thefounding of Oakland in the
1850s. And from the 19 centuryonwards, you really there is
always in the heart of theinstitution, a very reactionary
element. It's not to say thatevery officer is reactionaries
at heart, right, you know,Oathkeeper proud boy Klansmen,
(34:52):
John Bircher. However, they'represent throughout the
institution's history and incertain eras because of
political dine It makes itbecause of the way that, you
know, the broader socialcurrents are running, they rise,
and they fall in terms of theirinfluence over the agency. And
when that kind of levelinginfluence from the outside is
(35:13):
taken away when the police areallowed to police themselves, it
takes a very nasty turn. Andthat is one of the things that
you can, I believe, just havingreported in Oakland, New York,
Chicago, New Orleans, LosAngeles, Fresno, a lot of other
departments around the country,I've seen that it's a that is a
(35:34):
very, very constant dynamic. Andagain, that external pressure
that involved in that engagementover the years over decades,
it's not just about a summerprotest, showing up at a council
meeting, taking a photographputting on your social media
account, what have you. Itreally has to do with deep,
sustained engagement in acommunity and trying to better
that community. And because ofthe sort of place that Oakland
(35:57):
is, there are some people whohave been engaged in this work
that we know of who've beenaround who've been at it since
the 1980s 1970s 1960s. Some, ifthey're still alive, might have
been involved in that 1950investigation of op ed by the by
the California State Assembly,which is one of the first of its
kind in the country. So itreally is about kind of making
(36:19):
certain that you have skin inthe game for the long term,
because this is it's a constantof our society. And I don't
think there's any person outthere who believes that the
American criminal justice systemin our policing manner of
policing works in the currentshape and form.
Joe Cadwell (36:35):
And your book is a definitely a powerful reminder
of that. Gentleman, this hasbeen a fantastic conversation,
where can people go to find outmore about you and your upcoming
work?
Darwin BondGraham (36:45):
We're both on Twitter. So if people want to
keep up this, check us out onTwitter. I'm the news editor of
the Oakland side. It's ahyperlocal news publication
based in Oakland so people cankeep up with some of my work
there. And then of course,people can you know, order a
copy of our book, it should beavailable in bookstores, most
(37:06):
bookstores, it's availableonline.
Joe Cadwell (37:09):
All right, thank you, Darren,
Ali Winston (37:10):
my. My other line of reporting that I engage in,
aside from law enforcement isthe far right, unfortunately,
fortunately, so I've done a lotof work on them for places like
Rolling Stone, the BritishBroadcasting Corporation, some
other outlets out there, Ibelieve that you know, my I'm an
independent reporter, so I kindof cast my net far and wide, but
(37:34):
I my most recent stuff has beenin Rolling Stone and the BBC.
Joe Cadwell (37:38):
All right. Well, thank you very much Ollie
Winston and Darwin bond Grahamhas been a real pleasure to have
you on the show today.
Ali Winston (37:44):
Thank you. Thank you so much. This has been
great.
Joe Cadwell (37:49):
Man, before we go, I just can't help but draw the
parallels. You guys are probablytoo young to remember Dirty
Harry Clint Eastwood
Ali Winston (37:54):
o n TV all the time.
Joe Cadwell (37:56):
Love Magnum Force like Magnum Force, you
Darwin BondGraham (38:00):
know Magnum, Magnum Force, the scene where
they're in the basement and theshooting range? Yeah, that's
OPD. Holy shit. They filmed theyfilmed a good portion of that
movie around the Oakland PoliceDepartment. Yep.
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