Oakland police: We had no idea CHP officers dressed as protesters

An under cover officer points his gun at the crowd while his partner subdues a protester who struck him in the back of the head, as demonstrations continue for a fifth night in Oakland, CA, on Wednesday, December 10, 2014. less An under cover officer points his gun at the crowd while his partner subdues a protester who struck him in the back of the head, as demonstrations continue for a fifth night in Oakland, CA, on Wednesday, ... more Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 19 Caption Close Oakland police: We had no idea CHP officers dressed as protesters 1 / 19 Back to Gallery

The revelation by Oakland police that they didn’t know the CHP had planted masked undercover officers in a crowd of protesters in the city — at least until those officers were attacked, and one pulled out a gun — highlights concerns about how authorities are cooperating as they deal with demonstrations that often range across city borders.

An attorney who is part of a court-ordered police reform effort in Oakland said the California Highway Patrol operation violated Oakland’s crowd-control policy. Moreover, he said it could have led to tragedy after one of the officers pointed his gun at members of the crowd, including a photographer working for The Chronicle.

“You have someone drawing a gun in an undercover operation, calling for backup,” said the lawyer and police critic, Jim Chanin. “They’re in plainclothes and here comes the Oakland police, and the first thing they see is somebody with a bandanna pointing a gun at a cameraman. (Oakland police) could have shot that officer.”

CHP officials have asserted that police commanders in Oakland knew about the two undercover officers who tailed the Dec. 10 march into the city. But an Oakland police spokeswoman, Sgt. Holly Joshi, told The Chronicle that officials have been “looking and checking” into the situation, and “we haven’t been able to find any evidence or any person who knew.”

“We knew the CHP was there,” Joshi said. “We were unable to locate anyone who knew about the undercover portion.”

CHP outed as cops

The two officers were recognized and outed as law enforcement by protesters near Lake Merritt at about 11:30 p.m. Just before the officers were identified, vandals traveling with the group had smashed the windows of a T-Mobile store in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood and made off with merchandise. A nearby Wells Fargo ATM was also damaged.

The CHP said the officers had been following the group in a car for most of the march, but got out on foot when the vandalism began in hopes of helping Oakland police identify the vandals.

According to authorities and witnesses, one of the protesters took a hat from an officer and punched him in the head, prompting the second officer to pull out a baton and then a gun, which he aimed across the crowd to keep people away from him and his partner. Photos of the encounter have drawn national attention.

Avery Browne, chief of the CHP’s Golden Gate Division, defended the officers’ actions. He said the agency has assigned plainclothes officers to demonstrations since they began Nov. 24, after a grand jury declined to indict a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager who allegedly fought with him in Ferguson, Mo.

Keeping them off freeways

Browne said undercover officers gather information in a bid to prevent protesters from entering and blocking freeways, a core tactic of the movement.

The Dec. 10 march moved from Berkeley to Oakland. Browne said Oakland was aware of the CHP’s plainclothes operations, and that the CHP had an officer in Berkeley’s emergency operations center. Berkeley police officials did not return calls for comment Thursday, and have not said if the department’s command staff knew about the CHP officers.

Chanin said the undercover officers were in violation of Oakland’s crowd-control policy, which mandates that officers from outside agencies who contribute “mutual aid” are not “assigned to front-line positions or used for crowd intervention, control or dispersal unless there is a public safety emergency.”

“Both on legal grounds in terms of the crowd-control ordinance and on common-sense grounds, you just don’t do that when you’re doing mutual aid, without telling the other agency,” Chanin said.

In 2001, an undercover narcotics officer was killed by two fellow Oakland police officers who came upon him in plainclothes with his gun drawn. The officer had been making an auto-theft arrest.

Joshi said communication between police agencies is critical, especially in the ongoing protests.

“All of us, as we move forward, need to make sure that our communications are really, really good,” she said. “We already had several meetings with the upper command staff of all the agencies involved to make sure all those checks and balances will be happening going forward.”

Police fired projectiles

The incident with the undercover officers was the latest to raise questions about police coordination during the protests. On Dec. 9, CHP officers who were protecting Highway 24 in Oakland fired projectiles designed to be less lethal than bullets into a crowd below the roadway, striking at least one person.

The CHP said the officers were defending the freeway and believed the crowd, which was within Oakland jurisdiction, was going to attempt to block freeway traffic a second time. But Oakland’s crowd-control policy states that officers should only use weapons like beanbags or rubber bullets to subdue specific threatening people — not to control crowds.

Oakland police Lt. Chris Bolton wrote on Twitter that the CHP “has freeway jurisdiction,” though the agency was firing into Oakland.

Police have also been criticized for not being able to clearly account for uses of force by outside agencies providing mutual aid. On the first night of protests, an agency deployed pepper balls — small spheres that break open to release irritants — but it is still unclear which agency was responsible for that action.

An Oakland police spokeswoman said the department does not use those projectiles, while Chief Sean Whent said in a news conference the next day that department officers only deployed one chemical agent canister that night.

The two CHP officers who infiltrated the protest are assigned to the auto-theft unit of the agency’s detective bureau. The officer who drew his weapon is still on active duty, and the officer who was attacked — and later kicked in the head by another protester while trying to make an arrest — suffered head injuries and was displaying concussion-like symptoms, officials said.

Court records show undercover Oakland officers have played key roles in numerous other protests, pointing out suspects accused of wrongdoing to uniformed officers. Joshi would not say if Oakland police had undercover officers at recent protests, but she said she believed every officer working at the demonstrations had shown “professionalism.”

She also said she is appreciative of the outside agencies that assist the Oakland force.

“They are necessary and a very important part of the equation,” Joshi said. “It’s very important for us to all communicate as these protests move from city to city. They’re very dynamic, they’re fluid, and it’s very important for us to keep up communications. I feel like we’ve done that.”

Vivian Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: vho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VivianHo