‘Help me out with this’: Woman claims Oakland officer Phong Tran used jailed son as bargaining chip

An Oakland police officer accused of bribing the star witness in a 2011 murder case allegedly made similar overtures to another witness — even using a woman’s jailed son as a bargaining chip, the mother claimed in court Tuesday.

The alleged bid by Phong Tran, 45, to “clean things up” in the North Oakland homicide case highlighted the final day of testimony in the officer’s preliminary hearing, which began on Friday. Tran faces five felony charges, including two counts of perjury, as well as charges of bribery of a witness, attempted bribery of a witness and subornation of perjury under oath.

Closing arguments are expected Wednesday, after which Alameda County Superior Court Judge Clifford Blakely is expected to issue a ruling on whether the case will proceed to trial. Tran has pleaded not guilty and remains free on $95,000 bail.

All of the charges center on Tran’s work investigating the 2011 killing of Charles Butler Jr., 23, who was gunned down while arguing over a parking spot near his North Oakland home.

Prosecutors allege Tran paid an unhoused mother of two children, Aisha Weber, thousands of dollars for coming forward nearly two years to testify that she saw the killing and knew both the gunman and getaway driver. That included a $5,000 payment cash payment Tran allegedly made barely a half-hour after Weber finished testifying at the 2016 murder trial, according to testimony last week.

Two men, Giovonte Douglas, 31, and Cartier Hunter, 34, were arrested and convicted in the killing. However, prosecutors quietly dismissed their charges after Weber recanted her statement in 2021. They have since been released from prison and have filed a lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department.

Prosecutors on Tuesday zeroed in on the lone felony charge not related to Weber’s testimony — a single count of attempted bribery of a witness, involving a woman who saw one man fleeing the scene of Butler’s death.

Theresa Anderson Downs testified Tuesday that Tran twice appeared at her Oakland house asking if she could help identify Butler’s killers. The first time, Anderson Downs recalled Tran saying he wanted to touch base and “kind of clean things up” with her initial, vague statement to police.

When Tran returned later in 2012, Anderson Downs reiterated that she didn’t clearly see the fleeing man’s face. That’s when Tran replied: “If you could help me out with this, I’d appreciate it. I understand your son is in custody and he has a robbery (case). We could help you with that, if you help me with this. Because we can overlook a robbery, but we cannot overlook a murder,” according to Anderson Downs’ testimony.

She added that Tran’s intent appeared clear as he displayed a picture of the suspect: “I feel like he wanted me to say that the person in the photo was the person that I saw.”

Still, Anderson Downs refused to help.

“It made me feel really angry, because I’m a mother, and my son was already in jail,” she testified. “It told him that’s another mother’s son — that I cannot send another mother’s son to jail over something I did not see.”

Tran’s attorney, Andrew Ganz, questioned why Anderson Downs never came forward to report the interaction when it happened more than a decade ago. She said she didn’t know who to report that information to.

Later in the day, Ganz declined to call any witnesses of his own — opting instead to show a video of Weber’s interview with Tran after she came forward claiming to know Butler’s killers.

Seated in a small room inside the Oakland Police Department’s downtown headquarters, Weber offered a meticulous recounting of the killing — providing a level of detail that, Ganz has suggested, would be difficult for anyone who had just been fed the information moments earlier.

In the video of Weber, Tran specifically asked the woman: “Has anybody offered you anything for your assistance? Anybody paying you anything?”

“No, none,” Weber answered.

The dueling narratives came after an investigator with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office raised the possibility Tuesday — for the first time in open court — that Tran had made a habit of convincing people to falsely testify at murder trials, in order to obtain convictions on cases he investigated.

The investigator, Andrew Koltuniak, testified that Tran twice offered money in exchange for false testimony — even offering to “be a little ATM” for a strung-out drug user. Neither claim was specifically related to any of the five felony charges against Tran. Rather, they were allowed under an evidentiary motion by prosecutors that was approved by Judge Blakely.

The case against Tran has spurred a massive re-examination of criminal cases handled by the longtime Oakland homicide detective. The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office plans to review at least 125 cases that Tran investigated. And the Alameda County Public Defender’s Office has already identified three other homicide cases where Tran’s ethics have raised concerns.

A video aired in court Tuesday offered a window into Tran’s handling of yet another homicide case, this time in 2017.

In the video, Tran railed at a man who appeared reluctant to cooperate — telling him that “in the game of homicide, there’s only one objective: It’s justice.” Repeatedly, Tran also warned the man that “hearsay is (expletive),” which would never be allowed in court.

“We’ve been real restrained,” Tran told the man in video. “You have to understand how restrained we’ve been. And if we find out somebody may be involved, we just usually snatch them up. We snatch them up hard style.”

“You still don’t want to talk, we’ll put a case on you,” Tran added, because that’s “how the game is played.”

Tran’s colleague, fellow Oakland police officer Michael Jaeger, later denied that Tran ever tried to get the suspect to lie during the interrogation. Under cross examination from Tran’s attorney, Jaeger lamented the difficulty that officers often have in getting witnesses to cooperate.

“People don’t want to be involved, meaning they don’t want to come to court, they don’t want to be labeled a snitch,” Jaeger testified. “It’s difficult for certain in people in our community to come forward when they are witnesses to crime.”