Professor Woods Report on Oakland Policing Survey

PUEBLO is proud to announce that Professor Tryon Woods has authored a paper that examines the findings reported by Dave Metz on policing in Oakland and the filing of complaints.

In his analysis of the survey data, Woods finds that "policing in Oakland occurs through a bifurcated system: one system for whites and a second for people of color, with blacks receiving the brunt of the negative attention." He continues to posit that "this two-tiered system of policing is systematically hidden from the official statistics" because the survey found that a mere 11% of people with a negative interaction with the police filed an official complaint.

Download Professor Woods's "Focus: Oakland Policing Survey"

Professor Woods is at Sonoma State University's Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice where he teaches courses in Criminal Justice and Public Policy, the Prison-Industrial Complex, and Comparative Criminal Justice.

The PUEBLO/City of Oakland Survey on Policing and the Filing of Complaints was completed, after a six year process of collaboration which included Professor Sam Walker, a nationally recognized expert on police practices and civilian oversight.

Based on 1000 completed interviews of Oakland residents who had interacted with the police in the past five years, some disturbing findings have emerged. Among them is the fact that only one in ten respondents who stated that their interaction with the police was negative had filed a complaint either with Internal Affairs or with the Citizens' Police Review Board (CPRB). PUEBLO believes that is the first time in the United States that the degree of underreporting police misconduct has been objectively determined.


Download the Metz study now.

Created: 10-20-2006