STATEMENT OF DARRELL WHITMAN
STATEMENT OF DARRELL WHITMAN
STATEMENT OF DARRELL WHITMAN
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<strong>STATEMENT</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>DARRELL</strong> <strong>WHITMAN</strong><br />
I am employed as a Regional Investigator for the U.S. Department of Labor/OSHA. The<br />
central part of my work requires conducting witness interviews and evaluating physical<br />
evidence to determine factual events. It also requires reviewing and analyzing<br />
investigative documents from other federal agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory<br />
Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Transportation, and<br />
the Securities and Exchange Commission.<br />
I believe the District Attorney’s Investigative Report into the death of Alan Blueford<br />
lacks professionalism and objectivity, and appears to be directed at swaying public<br />
opinion rather than establishing relevant facts.<br />
A credible investigative review of these reports would have had to: a) note and comment<br />
on the circumstances surrounding the gathering of physical evidence and witness<br />
statements, b) ensure that the witness testimony was credible to the extent that the<br />
witness statements were free of intimidation and bias by including statements signed by<br />
the witnesses rather than merely recounted by the interviewer, c) note where the official<br />
documents either failed to include relevant information, or misrepresented evidence<br />
and/or witness statements, d) thoroughly test evidence and testimony, such as officer and<br />
witness statements not acquired contemporaneously with the initial investigation, e)<br />
avoid drawing conclusions not clearly supported by the evidence and employing<br />
assumptions about the meaning of untested evidence, f) exclude language that is not<br />
descriptive of facts and analyses, and g) state questions that were not resolved by the<br />
investigation.<br />
Very little, if any, such detailed examination and analysis were done.<br />
I reviewed the following documents from the Oakland Police Department’s investigation<br />
of the shooting death of Alan Blueford and provided an analysis of their contents: the<br />
Coroner’s Report, Crime Lab Report, Crime Scene Report, Finger Print Report, Nixle<br />
Reports, and the Oakland Police Department (OPD) Crime Report. Based on this review<br />
and analysis, I conclude the following:<br />
1. The Crime Scene Report reflects a random and careless gathering of facts. In<br />
particular, 17 officers were involved in taking 21 witness statements, leaving the<br />
statements: a) without a consistent format with basic information missing, such as<br />
the time and place the interview was conducted and the specific location of the<br />
witness relative to the events, b) unresolved inconsistencies within statements that<br />
call into question the veracity of the witness, and c) no indication that the<br />
witnesses were allowed to review and make corrections to the statements<br />
attributed to them.<br />
2. The crime scene was not sufficiently secured to protect the integrity of the<br />
physical evidence: a) at least two officers handled the black gun before it was<br />
secured, b) the magazine from the black gun was removed and placed beside the<br />
gun, possibly contaminating DNA and biological evidence on the gun and<br />
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magazine; c) there was an apparent lack of organization and leadership among the<br />
OPD during the time that the physical evidence was left at the scene; d) there was<br />
no accounting for possible contamination of physical evidence by the more than<br />
30 civilians present at the crime scene; and e) OPD officers offered conflicting<br />
accounts of the time that events, such as the transportation of Alan Blueford to the<br />
hospital or Coroner’s office, occurred which create time gaps in and among the<br />
Coroner’s Report and the Crime Scene Report.<br />
3. Untested and in some cases false assumptions appeared in the Reports. For<br />
example, the Crime Scene Report, prepared within days of the incident, offered<br />
the conclusion that “Officer most likely in fear of his safety and the safety of the<br />
families in the area”, did not have any evidentiary support, and the claim that it<br />
was unknown how many shots were fired because of conflicts in the witness<br />
statements is untrue as the Report included a statement that 4 shell casings were<br />
recovered and the shot spotter confirmed that 4 shots had been fired.<br />
For the foregoing reasons, I reiterate that the District Attorney’s Investigative Report into<br />
the death of Alan Blueford lacked professionalism and objectivity; instead, it appears to<br />
be directed at swaying public opinion rather than establishing relevant facts.<br />
Darrell Whitman, Regional Investigator<br />
OSHA Region IX<br />
Prepared this day, October 15, 2012,<br />
Berkeley, California<br />
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