Oakland loses 3rd police chief amid scandals

This July 16, 2013 photo shows Oakland Police Assistant Chief Paul Figueroa during a city council meeting in Oakland, Calif.

On the heels of a widening controversy surrounding the alleged sexual exploitation of an underage girl by numerous officers, the Oakland mayor, Libby Schaaf, announced on Friday evening that Paul Figueroa, the acting police chief who took the position on Wednesday, was stepping down and that the city was also “on the verge of closing an investigation that centers on racist text messages sent by police officers”.

“As the mayor of Oakland, I am here to run a Police Department, not a frat house”, Schaaf said in a statement posted to Facebook.

Schaaf previously ordered that any allegation involving on- or off-duty criminal misconduct by an employee of the police department must be immediately reported to prosecutors. It is unclear how many were involved in the communications that “depict images of the Ku Klux Klan and use the N-word”, according to NBC.

Ben Fairow, deputy police chief of San Francisco’s transit system, BART, was tapped by Schaaf as interim police chief.

The sordid saga began with the suicide of Oakland Police Officer Brendan O’Brien last September.

She said the texting incident wasn’t as widespread as the sex scandal. Ben Farrow followed Whent as interim police chief but Mayor Schaaf said she discovered information about Farrow that would not allow him to continue as chief.

“We have a systemic problem here”, she said. Two officers have resigned and three were placed on administrative leave, city officials said.

In less than two weeks, three different Oakland Police Department chiefs have either resigned or been fired amid multiple scandals.

The woman has said she slept with the officers to avoid going to jail, and that she was a minor when she had sex with some of the officers. The only reason Whent gave for resigning from the position was that it was a “personal choice”.

KRON 4 reports that the now 18-year-old dispatcher’s daughter being referred to in the press as Celeste Guap claims to have had sex with “like 2 [officers] from SF”, one of whom was a former OPD officer, though in both cases after she came of age.

RAW VIDEO: Oakland Mayor Addresses Alleged Police Racist Texts, Losing Another ChiefOakland Mayor Libby Schaaf on Friday held a news conference to address alleged police racist texts and losing another police chief.

Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan has expressed concern about the police department’s ability to investigate its own.

The news comes just days after the release of a Stanford University study on the department, which found that African American men were four times more likely to be searched during police traffic stops than whites and were more likely to be handcuffed even if they were not arrested.

Some of the officers being investigated were “engaging in hate speech”, and others were “tolerating it” by receiving offensive messages and not reporting them, Schaaf said.