Oakland, CA

The Oakland Police Department (OPD) has paid $74 million across 417 lawsuits from 2003 to 2022, according to public records compiled by Prison Activist and the Oakland City Attorney's Office. The dataset is anchored by the 'Riders' scandal - one of the most consequential police misconduct cases in California history - and shaped by 22 years of federal court oversight that has simultaneously constrained the department's worst practices and generated a continuous stream of civil liability.

The Riders scandal began in 2000 when 119 plaintiffs filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that four veteran Oakland officers - Clarence Mabanag, Matthew Hornung, Jude Siapno, and Frank Vazquez - had systematically beaten, robbed, planted evidence on, and falsely arrested residents over a period of years. The case, Allen v. City of Oakland, resulted in a $10.9 million settlement in 2003 and, more significantly, a Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA) requiring OPD to implement 52 reforms and submit to federal court supervision. As of 2026, OPD remains under the NSA - making it the longest-running police oversight agreement in the United States at 22+ years, supervised by US District Judge William Orrick.

The NSA has had a measurable effect on settlement volumes. KTVU reported in March 2024 that Oakland police payouts for wrongful death, use-of-force, and chase cases plummeted from historical levels to roughly $1.7 million between 2018 and 2023 - a 90%+ reduction from the peak years. However, the Oakland City Attorney's Annual Report for FY2020-21 recorded $17.96 million in total payouts that year, suggesting that non-use-of-force categories (property, employment, civil rights) continue to generate significant liability.

Other notable cases include a $2 million settlement with Officer Richard Valerga, who groped 16 Asian women while on duty, and a $989,000 settlement in 2017 with Jasmine Abuslin (known as Celeste Guap), a teenager at the center of a sex scandal involving officers from multiple Bay Area departments who exploited her while she was a minor. The original civil lawsuit sought $66 million; the final settlement was $989,000.

For insurance underwriters, the Oakland dataset presents a unique actuarial profile: a department with a documented 22-year history of federal oversight, declining use-of-force settlements, but persistent civil liability across employment, civil rights, and officer-conduct categories. The NSA's continued existence signals that full compliance has not been achieved, and the department's inability to exit federal oversight after two decades represents a structural risk factor that standard actuarial models may underweight.