Internal Emails Show Poorly Planned DEA Raid Wasted Oakland PD Resources While 7 Killed in Nearby School Shooting

by Rich Jones

Jul 8, 2012

At 10:30AM on April 2, 2012, 100 Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents raided 6 marijuana dispensaries in Oakland, California while local Oakland PD officers contained a crowd of protesters. Meanwhile, at 10:30AM in another part of town at Oikos University, One L. Goh opened fire with a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun and murdered 7 people in the 3rd deadliest university shooting in United States history. Recently released Oakland PD internal emails clearly show that the DEA did not give the Oakland PD sufficient notice about the impending raid, nor did they sufficiently plan their exit from the scene, and that their poor planning directly resulted in overstretching of police resources which led to an understaffed response to the shooting and other high priority calls.

I obtained these documents as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request under California's Sunshine Amendment (care of MuckRock.com). There are only 3 pages, but they are extremely illustrative. I commend the city of Oakland on their swift and accurate processing of this request.

Points of Interest

In these pages, there are a few main things to notice:

The first official record of the Oakland PD's knowledge of the impending DEA raid was at 5:39 AM, less than 5 hours before the raid began. (p3)
The Lieutenant of Police in charge of that district knew in advance that he did not have enough resources to handle the raid and asked for help from other divisions.(p3)
Use of OPD forces for crowd control affected the police response to other high priority calls.
The warrant could have been served at night, to avoid use of daytime police forces. (p2)
The OPD did not have a point of contact with the federal government for coordinating the raid. (p2)
The DEA did not have an 'exit' plan for the raid, which further wasted police time and resources and exposed officers to unnecessary conflict. (p2).

These complaints were made by Oakland PD officer Lt. Kevin Wiley, who also filed them with the federal government.

Conclusions

This documents clearly show that not only do the people of Oakland disapprove of these raids on these dispensaries, which are completely legal under California law, the Oakland Police Department strongly disapprove of them as well. Although it is impossible to say exactly if an increased police presence at the scene of the Oikos University shooting would have prevented such a substantial loss of life, these documents clearly show that the OPD's own officers feel that the raids were a waste of resources which resulted in a lack of response to high-priority incidents.

I have filed another Freedom of Information Act request with the DEA although they have not responded with any documents yet. My request to the Internal Revenue Service returned no responsive documents. Hopefully, the DEA will reply with their side of the story soon enough.

In the mean time, I would encourage you to contact the DEA and voice your concerns about these raids. Please feel free refer others to this article, to reproduce this text and the documents, and to provide your own commentary.