Oakland police, FBI teaming up to solve homicides

Oakland police investigate a double homicide in January. Oakland police investigate a double homicide in January. Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Oakland police, FBI teaming up to solve homicides 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

FBI agents will soon be working alongside Oakland police investigators in a bid to crack unsolved homicides in the city, to the chagrin of some privacy advocates.

The Oakland City Council approved a plan last week to build a secured room for as many as 10 FBI agents and several officers at the downtown Oakland Police Administration Building.

The space comes with reinforced doors, secure DSL service, workstations with access to confidential databases, an interview room and a break room for agents and cops — who frequently work days on end after homicides.

The agents will be dedicated to helping overworked Oakland homicide investigators put a dent in their caseload by helping to identify and arrest suspected killers, said Oakland homicide Lt. Roland Holmgren.

“This is about us having the tools and the resources to investigate homicides,” Holmgren said.

“It’s definitely a force multiplier,” especially if there’s a “compelling federal nexus” in which suspects could be charged in either state or federal court, said FBI Special Agent Brian Weber.

The plan did not come without controversy, however. Civil rights activists and privacy advocates questioned whether the collaboration would lead to officers overstepping their bounds — and whether there would be any oversight against such abuses.

They pointed to the fact that the new center will allow access to FBINet, a classified network that communicates “secret information, including investigative case files and intelligence pertaining to national security,” as it’s described in a General Accounting Office report to Congress.

Privacy concerns

Some activists were troubled that in touting the joint operation before a council committee, Holmgren said that police would be able to work with the FBI to conduct a “social network analysis,” looking at who is connected to both suspects and victims.

“It’s very disturbing, having the FBI partnering with the OPD to look at people’s social networks, inviting the FBI to do that along with a police force,” Jaime Omar Yassin, a local activist, told the council’s public safety committee last week.

“It sounds very alarming to me,” he said. “I would be very concerned about the FBI talking to people who I know, who may know somebody who may know somebody who’s an ex-felon and lives in a certain neighborhood and suddenly they’re looking at me as well.”

Holmgren said privacy advocates needn’t worry.

“No matter our partnership, we still have a constitutional responsibility to conduct lawful investigations that require me to show the nexus before I enter or utilize any sort of database toward an investigation,” he said. “I can’t arbitrarily just go out and look into people’s files, criminal histories, without having a legal purpose for doing so.

“This is not Big Brother. This is not what this is about. This is about bringing those persons responsible for murder to justice and bringing families a little bit of peace.”

The high-tech center will be in police headquarters, in a section that once housed county courts and now includes parts of the police academy. The FBI will contribute $110,000, and the police force will contribute almost $90,000.

The new center will be outfitted with video security and special safes into which computer hard drives can be placed, Bruce Stoffmacher, management assistant with the Police Department’s research and planning division, told the public safety committee.

Focus just on killings

The special DSL service will cost about $83,000, almost half the cost of the entire project.

Initially, police had hoped to work with the FBI to go after the “most violent offenders in the city of Oakland,” which included those responsible for homicides, robberies and shootings.

But after some discussion at Tuesday night’s council meeting — during which Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan cast the lone vote against the joint work space, citing past alleged FBI abuses — the council directed that the new center be used to investigate only homicides.

The FBI isn’t the first outside agency to move into police headquarters.

For the past four years, Norbert Chu, an Alameda County assistant district attorney, has had his office there, making it easier for homicide cases to be charged with his direct contributions.