Inside the corruption scandal that brought down the Oakland PD.
This was where Keith Batt found himself after having graduated from Oakland’s 146th police academy on June 2, 2000. Just twenty-three years old, Batt hailed from the small, liberal, mostly white Northern California city of Sebastopol — about as far away from the mean realities of West Oakland as could be. But he’d wanted to be a cop in a place unlike his hometown. He’d heard good things about the Oakland Police Department. It was a professional, hardworking agency in a challenging environment.
Batt’s field training officer, Clarence Mabanag, was an entirely different breed. “Chuck,” as he was known to other officers, sported a military-style buzz cut. Short, wiry, tough-talking, he had a reputation for arresting drug dealers by the dozens, often after foot chases that ended in scuffles. Although he was just a patrol officer, Mabanag was admired widely by other street cops and looked up to as a leader. How- ever, many also felt intimidated by him.
Word wasn’t particularly distinguished as an officer. In fact, virtually no one outside the agency had heard of him when Mayor Jerry Brown appointed him to lead the OPD in 1999. Even so, the new chief —at thirty- seven, the youngest in department history — was liked by many old-timers. He had his own reputation as a leathery cop’s cop, and, like Mabanag, Word had worked in the Special Duty Unit , an anti-narcotics program that, at the time, formed the core of the Oakland Police Department.
This wasn’t just Mabanag’s view but a message that field training officers throughout the department were getting from the top. New cops needed to be seasoned properly. Criminals in West Oakland were heavily armed and contemptuous of law enforcement. Cops had to be even more dangerous than the bad guys. Another message was that it was time to take back West Oakland from drug dealers.
Mabanag began by asking about the missing car, but then switched his line of questioning to the Rottweiler. “Is that dog tied up?” Before either man could answer, he provided his reason for asking: “I don’t want to have to shoot your dog if he bites me. I’ve done it before.” Mabanag, dusting himself off, ordered Batt to write the arrest report and to be sure to add that Soriano elbowed him, even though the detained man hadn’t thrown a blow at any of the four officers. Nevertheless, the trainee complied and scribbled the report. In a separate arrest report that Mabanag later wrote himself, he withheld the fact that he, Siapno, and Vazquez forcefully subdued Soriano.
A few nights later, Mabanag decided that he and Batt would accompany a group of officers to serve a search warrant on a Chestnut Street house where a drug dealer had reportedly set up shop. Frank Vazquez wrote the warrant and led the raid. He pounded on a metal security door. Then, without giving anyone inside a chance to open up, officers used “the hook,” a large pry bar–like tool, to force it open.
Batt and another rookie, Steve Hewison, were made to dispose of the dog’s carcass later that night. The officers, having discovered crack cocaine and a sawed-off .22-caliber rifle in the basement, arrested Stevenson. Frank Vazquez stole some of the crack, which he used later to pay an addict for information about another drug supplier—this, according to a conversation that Keith Batt witnessed.
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