A lawyer for the city’s police union dismissed claims that his client used confidential labor negotiations to obstruct police reform as “nonsense.”
Officers from the Oakland Police Department and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office formed a line to keep protesters away from the city’s police headquarters. (Courthouse News photo / Nicholas Iovino)
OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — The city of Oakland refuses to disclose records that could show if it’s been holding secret meetings with a police union on policy issues that are supposed to debated in public, a police accountability group claims in a new lawsuit.
The Coalition for Police Accountability and its coordinator Rashidah Grinage sued the city in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday for failing to release records on meet-and-confer sessions with Oakland’s police union last year. The meetings were being held as the city was crafting a 2020 ballot measure aimed at strengthening the powers of Oakland’s police commission, a seven-member civilian oversight board.