In 8 days, city loses three police chiefs

Oakland, California has gone through three police chiefs in nine days as the city’s force suffers a maelstrom of scandals in recent weeks. The mayor at the time said she would not name a new acting chief until a permanent candidate is hired.

Schaaf said she will not immediately appoint an acting or interim chief. She also accused several officers of having sex with her when she was underage and said she had had sexual encounters with members of several other Bay Area law enforcement agencies.

She denounced the department’s “toxic, macho culture” and vowed to root out “the bad apples”.

Schaaf announced on Friday night that she is putting City Administrator Sabrina Landreth in charge of the Police Department because of a series of scandals that have rocked the department, saying the department needs civilian oversight.

Mayor Schaaf appointed Chief Figueroa June 15 after abruptly removing the interim police chief, Ben Fairow, after learning unspecified information that led her to lose confidence in his ability to lead the beleaguered department. Fairow took Sean Whent’s place after Whent resigned for allegedly mishandling the sexual misconduct case.

The department is under an investigation stemming from a suicide note an Oakland officer left past year admitting to an extramarital affair with a teenage sex worker. He replaced Ben Fairow who was sacked after five days due to reports he had an extra-marital affair over a decade ago. Well this time the allegations involve five uniformed police officers and an underage prostitute who happens to be the daughter of a police dispatcher.

The woman said she met one of the officers after she had turned to prostitution. Prosecutors in Alameda County have been asked to investigate the new criminal misconduct case, Mayor Schaaf said, June 16, in a written statement.

Brooks, along with representatives from the Oakland Alliance, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Asians 4 Black Lives, Causa Justa/Just Cause, Black Lives Matter Bay Area, Black Power Network, Oakland Rising Action and The Way Christian Center, channeled outrage over the most recent police misconduct allegations into ongoing concerns about systemic inequality, the lack of affordable housing, mental health services and meaningful job opportunities for communities of color.

“We have a systemic problem here”, she said. “And what’s frustrating is it’s much harder for her to do that than we will ever know”. This information came out as the result of an internal affairs investigation into Brendan O’Brien and his wife’s suicides.

Since 2003, the police department has been operating under federal oversight because of past misdeeds that included planting evidence and robbing residents.

But a two-year-long Stanford study, released this past week, found that African-American men in Oakland are four times more likely than white men to be searched during a traffic stop, and African-American people are more likely to be handcuffed by police than whites are.