Nearly two dozen people claiming to have been abused by dozens of Antioch police officers reached a landmark settlement Friday with the city’s leaders, setting the stage for widespread reforms at one of the Bay Area’s most troubled police departments.
Attorneys for the 23 Antioch residents hailed the settlement Friday as “a complete overhaul of the department’s policies and procedures that will serve as a roadmap for constitutional policing and benefit the entire Antioch community,” according to a news release announcing the accord.
Several Antioch leaders — including the city manager, city attorney and police chief — were expected to join a press conference Friday morning detailing the agreement, before publicly signing it.
The lawsuit, filed in April 2023, named 45 officers as defendants amid explosive allegations of racist text messages shared among a vast number of officers — many of whom used racist slurs while joking about fabricating evidence and violating residents’ civil rights.
The revelations of those texts provided “certified proof of the depth of many Antioch Police Department Officers’ bigotry, racism, willingness to falsify evidence, and their celebration of their own uses of unconstitutional force,” according to the original complaint, filed by longtime civil rights attorney John Burris and other attorneys with his firm.
Burris and another attorney, Jim Chanin, led the charge in a similar lawsuit filed about 20 years ago against the city of Oakland on behalf of 119 plaintiffs — mostly Black West Oakland residents — who claimed they were brutalized and framed by Oakland officers known as the Riders. The scandal led to federal court oversight of the Oakland Police Department that continues to this day.
Several Antioch police officers have faced a slew of federal charges, which alleged fraud and a host of civil rights abuses. All of them have since either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial.
Earlier this month, Senior U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White handed down the harshest sentence so far in the scandal — seven and a half years in federal prison to officer Devon Wenger, for scheming to give other cops steroids and conspiring to violate the rights of people he was supposed to protect and serve.
Former officer Morteza Amiri also was sentenced earlier this year seven years in prison for maiming someone with his police dog, falsifying reports and involvement in a fraud scheme.
Check back for updates to this developing story.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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