STATEMENT OF DARRELL WHITMAN

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