With job on the line, Oakland police chief goes on offensive: ‘This is part of the playbook’

OAKLAND — Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong demanded on Monday to be reinstated as the city’s top cop, denying any wrongdoing in an officer misconduct and cover-up scandal that led to him being placed on paid leave.

With an attorney at his side, Armstrong defended newly elected Mayor Sheng Thao, who has ordered a city investigation into the chief, as well as the Oakland police officers central to the findings of an explosive independent report that outlined “systemic deficiencies” in the department.

The chief also launched into full attack mode, suggesting the whole debacle had been orchestrated by Robert Warshaw, the federal monitor who oversees the OPD’s affairs as part of a two-decade-old court settlement.

“This to me, clearly, is a last-ditch effort to destroy the credibility of me… and to make the community believe that Oakland police is involved in some shady business,” Armstrong said, adding later that Warshaw “clearly communicated with the mayor what he would like to be done.”

And although he was careful not to say so directly, Armstrong heavily implied that Warshaw’s “playbook” is to unfairly target Oakland police chiefs whenever the department’s federal oversight is nearing its end.

The “ulterior motives” at play, the chief and his attorney strongly suggested, are for Warshaw and his team to continue being paid to oversee OPD, which had been five months away from getting out of federal oversight.

Armstrong’s statements likely will not go unnoticed by federal court Judge William Orrick, who on Tuesday is set to hear an update on OPD’s efforts to comply with the 2003 settlement of the infamous Riders brutality cases.

Among other tasks laid out by the settlement, Oakland police is expected to clean up its disciplinary processes to ensure officers do not get away with misconduct.

Armstrong’s press conference Monday marked his first public statements since the outside report — compiled by San Francisco law firm Clarence Dyer and Cohen LLP — found the chief had failed to hold his officers accountable.

In addition to hiring an attorney, Armstrong has enlisted the help of crisis PR consultant Sam Singer, well-known in the Bay Area for his representation of public figures and corporations embroiled in scandals.

Thao placed the chief on leave a day after the report’s release, though on Saturday the mayor said the move was intended to be procedural and she would not punish Armstrong until the city investigated further.

“It’s hard to say a mayor who’s been in the seat for just a couple of weeks would be able to push back against the monitor at this point,” Armstrong said at the conference, noting later that some in the city might be “intimated” by Warshaw’s team.

Armstrong, the report found, had signed off on the findings of an internal affairs probe without fully reading or discussing its details, allowing both a sergeant involved in a hit-and-run collision and the officers who watered down the findings to escape responsibility.

While the chief declined on Monday to get into the report’s details, attorney Will Edelman said it contained “many inaccuracies.”

Armstrong said the internal affairs investigation, as conducted, was “consistent with the findings that were presented to me.”

He noted that the sergeant — identified by sources as Michael Chung — was placed on leave after a separate incident where Chung fired his service weapon in an OPD elevator.

But Armstrong claimed he could not take further action because Warshaw’s team took the matter out of his hands. He denied that the department had “systemic problems.”

“These officers are human beings,” he said. “People are going to make mistakes. I think I have a proven track record of holding people accountable.”

The sergeant involved in the hit-and-run — identified by sources as Michael Chung — was placed on leave last year after a separate incident where he fired his service weapon in an OPD elevator and then tried to cover it up by tossing the shell casing over the Bay Bridge.

Wilson Lau, the internal affairs captain at OPD when Chung was initially investigated, has been placed on paid leave by the East Bay Regional Park District, where he now works for the agency’s police force, a spokesperson confirmed.

Armstrong had a “special guest” supporter in attendance at Monday’s conference: Councilmember Noel Gallo, who bemoaned having “been through 10 police chiefs” since he entered office in 2013.

The federal monitor, Gallo said, wants to “keep themselves employed, show up once every three months, hire more attorneys — and I, as a taxpayer, seem to be paying that price. We need to move on.”