The Oakland Police Department (OPD) is a law enforcement agency responsible for policing the city of Oakland, California, United States. As of May 2021, the department employed 709 sworn officers and 371 civilian employees. The department is divided into 5 geographical divisions policing Oakland's 78 square miles and population of 420,000. The OPD receives 550,000 annual calls for service, and responds to over 250,000 law enforcement incidents.
History The Oakland Police Department was formed in 1853 by Oakland founder and first mayor Horace W. Carpentier. Oakland had been incorporated as a town by the state legislature in 1852, and with its rapid expansion, Carpentier felt the need to organize a city government with a police force to provide regular law enforcement. Heretofore, vigilante justice had been the norm. On October 15, 1853, the town council appointed John McCann as the first town marshal, assisted by two deputies and operating out of a small waterfront building which also housed the police court and jail. Oakland's growth continued when it became the western terminus of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. It developed into a major port and industrial center, including the manufacture of ships and, later, automobiles. By 1872, the Alameda County Courthouse opened at 4th and Broadway and cases deemed too serious for police court were tried there. By 1874, the department was headquartered in the new city hall located at 14th and Washington. By 1886, the department had installed telephone call boxes for foot patrolmen and purchased horse-drawn wagons for patrol, which, according to the Oakland Review, were the first such conveyances used by police in California. The wagons also doubled as ambulances.
In 1900, the city had a population of 67,690 and a police force of 61 officers, and grew rapidly thereafter. Oakland PD was on the forefront of innovation under the leadership of Chief Adelbert Wilson (1906 to 1912) as it instituted advances in modern telephone communications, criminalistics, and auto and motorcycle transport. The department became the first city west of the Mississippi to utilize automobiles for police patrol when it purchased a 1906 Auto-Car. In 1907, Chief Wilson reorganized the Detective Bureau and detectives became known as Inspectors, a title borrowed from Scotland Yard. Chief Wilson concurrently created the Bureau of Identification, and Oakland became the first police department west of Chicago to maintain specialized criminal identification files using the French method of Bertillion Records along with fingerprints as a means of identification. Chief Wilson also instituted civil service status for police officers beginning in 1911, ending political patronage in the department. Formalized training was introduced with the opening of a "police school" which included instruction in department regulations, law courses taught by the District Attorney and local judges, and first aid taught by the local Red Cross. By 1914, the city had grown to 216,261 and the department employed 250 officers. Operations expanded to include station houses in the northern and eastern sectors of the city, while headquarters and the central patrol district remained in city hall. By the late 1940s, the central patrol division had moved into its own facility at 14th and Jefferson.McArdle, Phil, History of the Oakland Police Department, Arcadia Publishing, 2007, McGill, Justin, Oakland Police Department, Turner Publishing, 2005
With the national economic collapse of 1929, Oakland's growth declined and revenues fell precipitously. The police department was not exempt, as plans for a new two-way radio system were delayed for a decade and the number of patrol cars was reduced. As World War II approached, the city cooperated with the federal government on essential projects including the construction of the Oakland Army Base and the Naval Supply Center. The police department assisted the military by helping to escort convoys and training military policemen.
The department became integrated during World War II with the 1943 appointment of African American Officers Adrien C. Bridges and Leon S. Daniels. Other African American officers soon joined the ranks, and in 1949, Odell Sylvester, a World War II veteran and 1948 graduate of Cal Berkeley joined the department and rose through the ranks to become the first African American Lieutenant, Captain and Deputy Chief. He was the first African American officer to attain this rank in the state of California. He later became the first African American Chief of the Berkeley Police Department.Dave Newhouse, Oakland Tribune, March 30, 2011Nancy Valcke, San Jose Mercury News, February 10, 2014
The city's economy expanded rapidly during World War II and the immediate post-war years before beginning a long period of decline. During the war, thousands of African Americans migrated to Oakland from the South to work in the shipyards and were later relegated to the ranks of the unemployed as the post-war boom declined. In shipbuilding alone, the number of jobs dropped from over 250,000 to fewer than 12,000 by 1949. As a result, a large number of African American residents were relegated to poverty, and poor, underserved neighborhoods grew. The minority population of Oakland had risen from 5 percent in 1940 to 26 percent by 1960. Inner-city Oakland began to mirror the inner-cities of the east coast, where large swaths of poverty and neglect fostered crime. The police department recognized the city's racial divisions and had begun community relations programs in the late 1940s. By 1955, the department had greatly expanded its academy training and instituted an internal affairs division. In 1956, the department instituted a civil rights training program for all administrative and supervisory personnel, conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
By 1962, the department centralized operations at the new Police Administration Building at 455 7th St. The old Central, Northern and Eastern stations closed as the economy continued to contract. In 1963, the federal government declared Oakland to be a depressed city. With the closing of the neighborhood stations and continued staffing shortages, officers were less available for routine patrol and were often relegated to answering emergency calls for service.Albert Reis, Policing a City's Central District, the Oakland Story, National Institute of Justice, 1985
Echoing many other large U.S. cities, Oakland saw an increase in crime, poverty and increasing civil unrest throughout the 1960s. Despite community outreach programs, racial tensions increased throughout the decade as crime and declining socioeconomic status impacted the African American community the hardest. By the late 1960s, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense had formed in Oakland and a series of public confrontations with the police garnered national attention. Black Panthers wearing a uniform of black clothes, black leather jackets, and black berets would follow Oakland police patrols while openly carrying statute books and firearms. In October 1967, OPD officer John Frey was shot and killed and officer Cliff Heanes was wounded when they made a traffic stop of a car containing Black Panther co-founder Huey Newton. Newton was wounded in the shootout and was subsequently arrested and tried for murder. He was convicted by a jury of voluntary manslaughter, which was later overturned on appeal. Subsequent re-trials ended without a conviction. In his book "Shadow of the Panther", African American author Hugh Pearson alleged that not long before his death at the hands of West Oakland cocaine dealer Anthony Robinson in 1989, Newton candidly admitted to willfully killing Officer Frey.Hugh Pearson, Shadow of the Panther, Addison-Wesseley publishing, 1994 & N.Y Times, August 26, 1989 On April 6, 1968, armed Black Panther members under the direction of Eldridge Cleaver initiated an ambush of Oakland police officers in West Oakland. Cleaver initially claimed that the police had ambushed him and fellow party members, but years later admitted he had planned and led the ambush in retaliation for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis two days prior.NPR interview with Kathleen Cleaver and Charles Jones, Chair of African Studies, University of Cincinnati, April 6, 2018 The ensuing shootout lasted over 90 minutes as backup officers rushed to the scene and forced the ambushers to seek cover in the basement of a dilapidated row house near 25th and Union Streets. The shootout resulted in two officers being seriously wounded and party member Bobby Hutton killed. The circumstances of Hutton's death remain in dispute to this day, with the police stating that Hutton was shot as he emerged from a tear-gassed house with a rifle and tried to flee. Cleaver disputed the police account of Hutton's death, saying that Hutton "had his hands in the air until he died."Bill Van Niekerken, San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 2018
The tumultuous 1960s and 70s proved a particular policing challenge for the department as the city saw increased social unrest. The Police Administration Building was the scene of several bombings during this time, and the department formed its first SWAT team to counter increasingly heavily armed criminals. George T. Hart was appointed Chief in 1972 and became Oakland's longest-serving Chief of Police. His low key demeanor and insistence on strict adherence to law and departmental regulations proved a steadying influence on the department through this turbulent period. Despite the decline of the Black Panther Party due to infighting and the defection to Cuba by Huey Newton to avoid prosecution for the murder of an 18-year-old prostitute,Ken Kelley, East Bay Express, Volume 11, number 49, September 15, 1989 new unrest emerged in the form of the S.L.A. (responsible for the 1973 murder of Oakland Schools Superintendent Marcus Foster), the Hell's Angels expanding criminal empire headquartered in east Oakland, numerous anti-Vietnam War protests, and most significantly, the burgeoning drug trade and subsequent gang wars. Heroin had become the drug of choice by the 1970s, and notorious drug lords such as Felix "The Cat" Mitchell and his "69 Mob" controlled vast swaths of territory throughout Oakland's numerous housing projects. The murder rate increased steadily during the 1970s as various drug lords battled over territory, with drug-related shootings becoming a regular occurrence.Thaai Walker, San Francisco Chronicle, February 16, 1999
Despite having been among the first California police departments to initiate integration in the ranks, by 1974, Oakland PD found controversy with a statistical imbalance in minority representation. By this date, the minority population of Oakland had grown to 50 percent, while minority officers represented only 12 percent of the department. To end this disparity, the department entered into the Penn-Stump Consent decree. The resulting affirmative action program was supervised by Chief George Hart, Deputy Chief Odell Sylvester, and Captain James McArthur. The program focused on all identified minority groups within Oakland and included special provisions for the recruitment of female officers.
In 1975, the rank of policewoman was closed to further appointments, resolving an issue the department had handled inconsistently for 60 years. The rank of policewoman had been instituted in 1913 but terminated in 1919 by the office of the mayor. The rank was reintroduced in 1943 but again terminated by 1946. The rank was established again in 1949 and continued until 1975 when the department settled on a permanent policy decreeing that all women hired thereafter would be appointed to the regular rank of police officer.