Oakland police investigated if the officer pursued the motorist shortly before Grave crashed on International Boulevard

OAKLAND – The Oakland Police Service is investigating the question of whether one of his officers began to continue a car shortly before he entered a post early Monday morning off the Boulevard International.

Oakland police chief Floyd Mitchell said on Tuesday that the accident occurred in “a few seconds” after one of his officers had turned on the lights of their patrol cruiser behind the car. He said he is not yet clear if the officer had started to continue the vehicle before the accident, and if this prosecution would have followed the ministry’s strict policies on prosecution.

“I want everyone in this room and in our community to be assured that the Oakland police service will conduct a complete and in -depth investigation into this incident,” Mitchell said at a press conference on Tuesday evening. “All the appropriate levers have been removed by our stage supervisors and our command staff to ensure that a complete and transparent investigation will be carried out in accordance with the Ministry’s policy.”

The accident occurred around 4 am on Monday in East Oakland, after an officer spotted a motorist to the west on International Boulevard near Seminary Avenue at an “extremely high speed,” said Mitchell. The officer, who was in the tracks east of the international, turned around and turned on the lights of the vehicle just before the speeding motorist crashes in a post at the 54th avenue, said the chief. Images of the wreckage showed the vehicle rolled around the post.

The supervisory commander in service of the ministry “launched the required investigation calls” both by the Division of Criminal Investigations of the OPD and his Office of Internal Affairs, Mitchell said: “In accordance with established departmental policies and procedures”.

“We want to be mistaken on the side of caution to make sure that we examine everything from a factual base,” said Mitchell.

The officer who lowered the motorist remains in service, said the chief.

The driver was taken to the hospital in critical condition and remained “stable” on Tuesday evening, said Mitchell. We know little about this person, said Mitchell, especially why they were traveling so fast.

OPD’s policy of pursuit is strictly strict than most police services in the Bay region, with the police authorized to chase a motorist if there are reasonable suspicions that they have committed a violent crime.

Politics has become a subject of heated debate, Governor Gavin Newsom recently described the protocol “extreme aberrant value”, while campaigning so that the city relaxes its rules. Not doing it, he said in December, could spell the end of an “push” of California road patrol officers which he ordered to patrol in the region at the beginning of 2024 to fight against theft of detail, the flight of vehicles and the sides.

“We are at this point that we must see compatible support and changes with regard to police services here in Oakland in order to consider extending this state-subsidized partnership,” said Newsom at a December press conference, while she was flanked by CHP officers, a bishop and the head of the City Chamber of Commerce.

A notable prosecution in 2022 left Lolomanaia Soakai, 28, from Hayward, after being hit by a vehicle fleeing the Oakland police in an unauthorized prosecution. His death led his family to bring legal action against the city saying that two officers left the premises without alerting emergency medical services or documenting the “ghost prosecution”, which is a term for unauthorized prosecution where the police did not work the sirens or the lights of a patrol car, in order to avoid the exam.

Journalists Nate Gartrell and Shomik Mukherjee contributed to this report.