POLICE CORRUPTION CHARGES REOPEN WOUNDS IN OAKLAND

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 28 — On his first day as mayor here, Jerry Brown, the
former California governor, swore to make reducing Oakland's notorious
crime rate a top priority. To prove his point, within three months, he had
forced the popular police chief to resign and was pushing an aggressive
approach to policing that would brook no tolerance for even petty crimes.

Now, after two years, Oakland's crime rate, which had already been dropping
before Mr. Brown took office, is hovering near a 30-year low. But all is
not rosy. So far this year, 78 people have been murdered on Oakland's
streets, 10 more than in all of last year; by the Police Department's own
projections, the city of 400,000 people will tally 85 murders by the end of
2000, more than in the year before Mr. Brown became mayor. (San Francisco,
with twice as many residents, has had 49 homicides so far this year.)

More significantly, the Oakland Police Department, which Mr. Brown has
repeatedly praised for its assertive community policing, has been rocked by
a corruption scandal. Four officers have been indicted on misconduct
charges, including abusing and falsely accusing suspects — the same kinds
of crimes that have hurt the Los Angeles Police Department.

The four officers — Matt Hornung, 29; Clarence Mabanag, 35; Jude Siapno,
32; and Francisco Vasquez, 44 — were indicted this month on a total of more
than 60 charges, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, kidnapping,
assault, filing false police reports, filing false documents and making
false arrests.

The four, who worked for the narcotics division on the graveyard shift in
West Oakland, a neighborhood known for some tough streets, were
investigated after a rookie officer, Keith Batt, 23, who worked with them
complained about what he called misconduct over three weeks in June and
July involving seven or eight victims. (Mr. Batt quit shortly after
reporting on the officers.) The prosecutor's office is still investigating
the officers' records before and after that period, and the Federal Bureau
of Investigation is investigating the four on charges of civil rights
violations.

Mr. Vasquez has fled the state and is believed to be in Mexico, but William
Rapoport, a lawyer for Mr. Siapno, said he believed that the other three
officers, who are free on bail in Oakland, will plead not guilty to all
charges on Dec. 6.

Mayor Brown said that even if the charges are proved true, the case against
the officers proves that the Police Department is working in Oakland.
"These were allegations that came internally, and the Police Department
took very prompt action and worked very closely with the district
attorney's office," Mr. Brown said. "So the system worked."

Quoting F.B.I. statistics, the mayor said that Oakland's overall crime rate
had dropped by double digits in two years. He added that it was unfair to
compare the Oakland Police Department's crisis with the police scandal in
Los Angeles, where three officers were found guilty this month of
conspiring to obstruct justice by fabricating evidence and framing gang
members, and a fourth officer was acquitted.

"It's apples and oranges," Mr. Brown said. "The Oakland Police Department
is an excellent police department."

But Alan Schlosser of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco
said that the comparisons to Los Angeles were striking and that the Oakland
case begged further, deeper investigation. "In Oakland they are focusing on
four police officers in a period of three weeks," Mr. Schlosser said. "And
that raises real questions about the scope of the Oakland investigation.
It's a little hard to believe that this surfaces in June and that it's just
a three-week problem."

Many Oakland residents, he added, have publicly said they were aware of
police abuses. Residents in West Oakland who were interviewed by
investigators were not surprised about this, he said. "Some were victims of
these four officers, and said that this was not just a problem with these
four, that it was widely known."

Ray Keller, assistant public defender for Alameda County, said his office
expected its investigation to broaden beyond the four officers, and
possibly to lead to the reversal of hundreds of convictions.

"What we are concerned about is the patterns that are apparent in the
investigations by these police officers and the similarities of those
investigations with those investigations involving other officers," Mr.
Keller said. He said his office was investigating 275 to 280 cases "that
have either already resulted in convictions or are still pending pretrial,
meaning they haven't been resolved." He added: "The large majority are
post-conviction, meaning there's already been a trial or a plea of no
contest and the person has been convicted. We are in the process of getting
many of those convictions undone and set aside."

About 30 convictions have been set aside based on the investigation so far,
he said.

The charges against the four officers, who called themselves the Riders,
according to the prosecutor's indictment, have reopened old wounds in
Oakland, where the Black Panther Party was founded partly as a police
watchdog group. They have also stirred bitter passions among those who say
they have long been warning city officials that some police officers have
routinely gone too far in pursuit of arrests.

Members of People United for a Better Oakland, a police watchdog
organization known as Pueblo, say that they have been complaining for
years, to no avail, about the very types of misconduct charged against the
four officers.

Complaints to the Citizens' Police Review Board, "have increased
dramatically," said Mike Nisperos, the public safety liaison for the city
manager, and member of the civilian board, which has logged 184 complaints
through August of this year alone. He added that all four officers charged
with corruption have had complaints lodged against them by civilians that
are unrelated to those for which they were investigated.

The Pueblo group's leaders say such complaints have gone unheeded by the
mayor, who they say has refused to take a strong stand against corruption.

Mayor Brown said that he has taken such a stand and spoken out and listened
at public meetings shortly after charges against the officers' surfaced. "I
say let the system and all its checks and balances work," he said. "What
else am I supposed to do?"

But the atmosphere of hostility toward the police in Oakland is such that
the defense will seek a change of venue for the trial, said Michael Rains,
who is defending Officer Mabanag, and whose law firm is the general counsel
to the Oakland Police Officers Association. His client and Officer Siapno
have each received notices of termination from the Police Department,
effective Dec. 1, he said, which the defense plans to appeal.

"One of the lawyers in the L.A. case had remarked that they had made a
mistake by not requesting a change of venue," he said.