A San Francisco judge on Tuesday lifted what has been more than two decades of federal monitoring of the Oakland Police Department, bringing an end to the longest-running oversight of a police force in U.S. history.

“I have decided to end federal court oversight of OPD,” U.S. District Judge William Orrick told a celebratory courtroom on Tuesday afternoon. “While it was important for this court, I think, to have played the role that it has over the last 23 years … now it’s important for the court to get out of the way.”

Even before Orrick’s official word on the matter, a sense of finality reverberated throughout the courtroom, with both city of Oakland and plaintiffs’ attorneys reflecting on the department’s progress throughout the saga.

The court-mandated reform effort began as part of a 2003 settlement in a federal civil-rights lawsuit rooted in an infamous Oakland police misconduct case known as the Riders scandal. Three years earlier, 119 plaintiffs had accused four officers in West Oakland of a range of abuses, including assault and planting of evidence in the largely Black neighborhood.

As part of the negotiated settlement agreement — known locally as the NSA — the city agreed to implement dozens of reforms intended to overhaul the department’s accountability mechanisms, reduce racial disparities in policing and curb officer misconduct.

But what was designed as a five- to seven-year supervisory period was prolonged as the department repeatedly struggled to meet mandated requirements. The oversight outlasted 14 permanent and interim police chiefs, with plaintiffs' attorneys describing what they saw as cultural resistance to the reform effort.

Packing the courtroom on was a wide cast of Oakland leadership, with Mayor Barbara Lee and Police Chief James Beere at the defense table and various City Council members in the spectator gallery.

Orrick, by his own account, had “not so subtly telegraphed” at the case’s last hearing that Tuesday could mark the end of the monitorship, given that the department had maintained compliance with its reform tasks.

Addressing Orrick just before his decision, Lee told the judge that the Oakland police of today does not resemble the department of decades ago."

Lee said the agency still had "a heck of a lot of work to do" to regain the community's trust, but vowed that those efforts would continue long after the oversight went away.

“Accountability is not optional," the mayor said. "It’s our obligation to the people we serve.”

Police Chief James Beere, echoed the mayor's words, calling the settlement agreement's reforms "part of the Oakland Police Department's DNA."

While the department had recently fallen just short of one of its reform tasks — completing 85% of its serious misconduct investigations within 180 days — neither the agency's longtime monitor, Robert Warshaw, nor plaintiffs' attorneys argued that the oversight should continue.

In his remarks, plaintiffs’ attorney Jim Chanin called the police department’s progress “absolutely astronomical.”

“Overall, I feel our time has come,” Chanin said. “And I’m ready to go.”

In a statement issued just after the hearing, plaintiffs’ attorney John Burris said after dedicating 26 years to this case, "I hope the commitment to the NSA puts me out of business.

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