US judge to decide fate of 23 years of oversight of Oakland police — TIME

A US federal judge is expected to decide this week whether the 23-year court oversight of the Oakland Police Department in California can finally be ended. The city’s police department has implemented court-mandated reforms during this time, TIME reports.

Federal oversight of the Oakland Police Department was introduced after information about a series of violations was made public. Activists and city residents said the police used unlawful methods, violence and discrimination that, according to them, primarily affected the Black community.

Analysis of body camera footage

Oakland police were among the early users of body cameras in the United States. Stanford researchers gained access to video recordings and developed tools for their large-scale analysis. They studied law enforcement officers’ speech during everyday interactions with civilians and looked for patterns linked to the escalation of situations.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

The analysis found differences in tone, word choice, explanations for stops and expressions of concern for driver safety during interactions with Black drivers. Researchers concluded that linguistic features of the first 27 seconds of an interaction made it possible to predict whether it might escalate.

Changes in police practices

After new rules and training were introduced, the number of stops of Black civilians in Oakland fell by 43%, while no increase in crime was recorded. Among the approaches proposed by the researchers was requiring officers to briefly document the grounds for a stop before conducting it, rather than acting solely on assumptions.

The department also introduced foot pursuit rules to avoid chasing suspects through yards and dead-end alleys. After that, the number of injuries among officers fell by 70%. The number of police-involved shootings, which had previously averaged about eight per year, fell to eight in total over five years.