In July of last year, Oakland police officers pointed their guns at a sleeping 3-year-old while delivering a search warrant for a misdemeanor probe. The incident was brought to light in a quarterly report by Robert Warshaw, Independent Monitor for the Oakland Police Department.

According to a heavily redacted copy of the police report from that day, officers were looking for drugs. This was their  justification for “immediately point[ing]” their guns at the  residents in the home they were searching. The reporting officer believes this is acceptable behavior because the neighborhood is “a well known high narcotic/violent area in the city of Oakland.”

As he and his fellow officers made their way through the house, they “noticed a small child (identified as [redacted] Approx. 3 years old) sleeping on the couch in the living room.” But not to worry, the “Officers made a quick assessment and determined that the 3 year old  was asleep” and “immediately trained our weapons away” from the child.  (Does that mean they would have continued to point their guns at the toddler had he been awake?) Then, the reporting officer reassures us that “the 3-year-old was not handcuffed,” as though not handcuffing a sleeping toddler is a brave and commendable act.

The officers went on to point their guns at a woman found in the bathroom, which was again justified as a necessary precaution “[d]ue to the inherent and elevated dangers.” Apparently, this unarmed woman was so threatening, they had to wait until she was handcuffed to put their guns down (do these guys scare easy or what?)

In the end, all they had to show for their  journey into an “inherently dangerous” black neighborhood is  “a photo with known narcotic street level traffickers.”

Now, I’d like to you to re-read the description of what took place but imagine instead that police are delivering a search warrant to a home in a white, middle class suburb. And then imagine that aggressive police behavior in this predominantly white middle class neighborhood, where swing sets and pools decorate the back yards, is routine. Imagine if police forcibly entering the homes of middle class families and pointed guns at their sleeping children, not just once in a blue moon, but all the time. Such a scenario sounds ridiculous because it would never be tolerated.

Ninety-nine percent of the drug war, and hence aggressive policing, is isolated to poor neighborhoods of color. We Americans have become so accepting of this dynamic that we barely flinch when we hear that black people in the “rough part of town” are viewed as “inherent and elevated dangers” because, you know, drugs and stuff. And this isn’t even the worst of it.

Independent Monitor, Robert Warshaw, was appointed to track OPD compliance with the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, a series of federally imposed reforms that came about because of systematic police misconduct. Warshaw notes that this is the second quarter in a row that OPD has failed to comply with “constitutional policing” practices, including “report[ing] misconduct by other officers” and “the ability of supervisors to critically evaluate the use of force by the officers they supervise.” .

Warshaw cites the incident with the toddler as just one example of Oakland police providing bullshit justifications for pointing guns in people’s faces. Another incident documented by Warshaw involved cops pointing guns at alleged sex workers, despite no evidence that criminal activity was taking place. This was among five separate police encounters where citizens were subjected to facing OPD firearms when no crime had been committed.” Keep in mind, these are only the incidents that police bothered to report.

Other instances of noncompliance involved OPD’s failure to cooperate with investigations into Occupy Oakland misconduct. Occupy Oakland was brutalized by Oakland police, who launched tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters (among other things) and beat them with batons. Iraq war veteran, Scott Olsen, was nearly killed when an OPD projectile shot at close range smashed his skull.

The East Bay Express points out that Warshaw’s findings contradict Mayor Jean Quan’s insistence that “the police department is changing.” A decade after federal reforms went into place, city residents still face police violence that, aside from bad PR from quarterly reports, continues with impunity.

Meanwhile, the Oakland City Council voted to hire a team of consultants the city develop a public safety plan. The team includes former LAPD chief and former New York City and Boston Police Commissioner, William Bratton, a staunch supporter of “stop and frisk.” Bratton says cities without “stop and frisk”—a practice that intensifies racial profiling and police brutality towards black and brown people while failing to prevent crime—are “doomed to failure.” Oakland resident are concerned Bratton will institute the practice in their neighborhoods.

Just so you understand the magnitude of race-based police harassment that accompanies  such a policy, consider this from the San Francisco Chronicle:

Jessica Hollie, a resident of Japanese and Creole ancestry, said she had cried when she found out she was pregnant with a boy for fear of how her son would be treated by Oakland police.

Oakland city resident Jay Donahue put it even more bluntly, telling the Oakland Tribune, “Bratton is the father of suppression policing. He destroys black and brown communities.”

City Councilwoman Desley Brooks, the only member to cast a “no” vote, had this to say:

Brooks…said Bratton would have little accountability under the $250,000 contract, and would be obligated to set foot in the city only three times over six months. She also said his overwhelmingly white consultant team didn’t reflect Oakland’s diversity.

“I am deeply concerned that we are feeding into the politics of fear and playing on people’s emotions on crime,” Brooks said. “It makes it seem like if we don’t pass this contract tonight that nothing gets done.”

Until we dismantle the drug war, abusive policing practices will continue to worsen in cities across the country. But that requires more people to care when a sleeping toddler in the city of Oakland is greeted by a police gun in his face