"The Wandering Officer" was an event held at Kinfolx in Oakland, CA on January 22, 2026, to introduce newly public databases for police accountability, connect them to California's new law creating the possibility to decertify police who commit serious misconduct, and provide resources and support for community members who experience bad encounters with police.
Read about the event here, and watch the full length recording of the event here.
The event was co-hosted by:
- Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP)
- Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS)
- Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG)
- Community Law Enforcement Accountability Network (CLEAN)
- National Police Index (NPI)
If you have experienced a bad encounter with police and need support or someone to talk to, you can call the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP) survivor line at: 510-999-9641
A searchable database of police records made public under California's "Right to Know" laws (SB-1421 and SB-16). Includes internal investigative and other records related to internal investigations of serious misconduct and uses of force
A nation-wide database (including California) of police employment records. Can be used to track police officers who move across departments.
In Oakland, there are multiple agencies with whom you can file a complaint about the police:
There is a 24-hour Complaint Hotline: (866) 214-8834 where you can file a complaint by leaving a detailed message. For information on how to file a complaint in person or by mail, see here
The Community Police Review Agency (CPRA) is a civilian-run, community-centered police oversight agency that investigates allegations of Oakland Police Department (OPD) misconduct.
You can submit a complaint about an OPD officer to CPRA using the CPRA online form. Find more information about filing complaints through CPRA at the CPRA website
The Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission is a state-wide agency that oversees law enforcement training and standards in California. As of 2022, they accept complaints from the public about police officers for possible decertification.
POST will only investigate complaints regarding "serious" misconduct as defined under SB-2. This includes any of the following
- Abuse of Power
- Physical abuse
- Sexual assault
- Demonstrating bias
- Acts that violate the law
- Participation in a law enforcement gang
- Failure to cooperate
See this reference for definitions and examples of each type of serious misconduct.
You can submit complaints to POST through this online form, or by downloading and completing this PDF.
The ACLU guide provides detailed information on filing a complaint with POST. In particular, they advise:
You should first create a paper trail by filing a complaint to the local law enforcement or oversight agency where the offending officer is employed. You can also submit your complaint to POST so that there is a record of them receiving it. However, in most cases, POST will refer the complaint back to the local agency to conduct their initial investigation. Once the initial investigation is complete, POST will review the findings to see if the officer’s conduct warrants decertification.
This comprehensive guide from the First Amendment Coalition is specifically about making records requests for police use-of-force and officer misconduct records made public under California's SB-1421 and SB-16 ("Right to Know") laws.
This resource is designed to support activists, organizers, and social movements in filing FOIA requests to aid their ongoing campaigns and work. The resource covers all types of public records requests, including state-level and federal requests.
The Kenneth Ross, Jr. Police Decertification Act of 2021 (SB 2) established a statewide system to decertify or suspend officers who have committed serious misconduct.
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Police Decertification in California: How it Works A detailed explanation of what decertification is, what the process for decertifying an officer is, and details about how to make a complaint
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The Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) is required by law to accept complaints about police officers for possible decertification. Complaints can be submitted online at post.ca.gov/public-complaints
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Members of the public can provide public comment at POST accountability advisory board meetings. The following is quoted directly from the POST public comment instructions posted on their meeting agendas:
The primary physical meeting location for this meeting, where members of the public may physically attend the meeting, observe and hear the meeting, and participate in the meeting, is 860 Stillwater Road, West Sacramento, CA 95605. Members of the public may also hear and observe the meeting remotely, as set forth herein. Further, members of the public are allowed to provide public comment telephonically, by written comment (as set forth herein), or in person at the main teleconference location.
Public comment will be limited in time at the discretion of the Board Chair. The public comment period preceding items on the agenda will allow members of the public to comment on items not on the agenda but that are within the Board's jurisdiction. The Board cannot act on or deliberate on items not on the agenda and can discuss the matter only to the extent necessary to determine whether it should be made an agenda item at a future meeting, to respond briefly to statements or questions posed during public comment or to request clarification, or to refer the item to staff. Agenda items may be taken out of order and action (e.g., voting) may be taken on any agenda item. Public comment relating to each item on the agenda will be allowed at the time each matter is heard. Members of the public who wish to participate during public comment may do so in person by attending the meeting, or, as stated hereafter, by telephonic means or by submitting written public comment.
Written public comment is intended to allow members of the public, if unable to attend in person, an opportunity to participate to the same degree as if they attended in person; as such, written comments should be limited to no more than three pages in length and longer written comment will not be accepted or distributed to Board members. To be considered for inclusion in the meeting record, written comments by no later than 10 a.m. on the fourth business day before the scheduled meeting. Accepted written public comments will be published on POST's website under the Public Comment section under the corresponding meeting date. Written public comments can be submitted via email to posadpc@post.ca.gov. Telephonic public comment can be made by dialing +1 669 444 9171 US or +1 669 900 6833 US and entering the Webinar ID: 817 3463 0494 and Passcode: 749503
"Wandering officers" are law-enforcement officers fired by one department, sometimes for serious misconduct, who then find work at another agency . . .. We introduce a novel data set of all 98,000 full-time law-enforcement officers employed by almost 500 different agencies in the State of Florida over a thirty-year period. We report three principal findings. First, in any given year during our study, an average of just under 1,100 officers who were previously fired—three percent of all officers in the State—worked for Florida agencies. Second, officers who were fired from their last job seem to face difficulty finding work. When they do, it takes them a long time, and they tend to move to smaller agencies with fewer resources in areas with slightly larger communities of color. Interestingly, though, this pattern does not hold for officers who were fired earlier in their careers. Third, wandering officers are more likely than both officers hired as rookies and those hired as veterans who have never been fired to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a "moral character violation."
This study adopts a social network and machine learning approach to empirically investigate the presence and impact of officer crews engaging in alleged misconduct in a major U.S. city: Chicago, IL. Using data on Chicago police officers between 1971 and 2018, we identify potential crews and analyze their impact on alleged misconduct and violence. Results detected approximately 160 possible crews, comprised of less than 4% of all Chicago police officers. Officers in these crews were involved in an outsized amount of alleged and actual misconduct, accounting for approximately 25% of all use of force complaints, city payouts for civil and criminal litigations, and police-involved shootings. The detected crews also contributed to racial disparities in arrests and civilian complaints, generating nearly 18% of all complaints filed by Black Chicagoans and 14% of complaints filed by Hispanic Chicagoans.
We introduce an administrative dataset covering nearly 300,000 licensed private security officers in the State of Florida. By linking this dataset to similarly comprehensive information about public law enforcement, we have, for the first time, a nearly complete picture of the entire security labor market in one state. We report two principal findings . . . while former police make up a small share of all private security, roughly a quarter of cops who do cross over have been fired from a policing job. In fact, fired police officers are nearly as likely to land in private security as to find another policing job, and a full quarter end up in one or the other.