Critics say politics is crippling Oakland police chief search as process starts over

OAKLAND — Nearly a year after the city’s last police chief was placed on leave ahead of his eventual firing, the two political forces responsible for replacing him still do not appear to be on the same page.

One of those power players, a police oversight body comprised of civilian volunteers, is once again seeking applications for the chief job instead of drawing from an existing applicant pool — effectively rebooting a search that was expected to conclude sometime around the new year but now won’t wrap up until at least March.

The reset came days after Mayor Sheng Thao, who will make the decision, outright rejected a controversial shortlist of three finalists for the job that the civilian Oakland Police Commission had presented to her office — further illustrating a strained dynamic between the two parties.

It is yet another hitch in an increasingly splintered recruitment process that is quickly approaching the same length of time it took to hire the last chief, LeRonne Armstrong, in 2021. Armstrong was fired by Thao last February over his response to a misconduct scandal within the embattled police department.

His firing was the first sign of an apparent disconnect between the new mayor and the commission, which opposed his firing.

That political divide now has expanded into a deep chasm after the commission included Armstrong on its recent shortlist of candidates for Thao’s consideration, despite her repeated public declarations that she would not consider rehiring him as chief.

“I think it’s foolish for (Armstrong) to have been submitted. That was a mistake,” said Rashidah Grinage of the Coalition for Police Accountability, a local activist group. “But I’m willing to give the new leadership of the commission a chance to do the right thing.”

That the fired ex-chief was presented alongside a former finalist for the job who is currently on administrative leave in San Leandro and an assistant chief in faraway Tucson, Arizona, has left some observers wondering if the list was even intended to be serious. Others see more room for nuance.

“I thought there was some room here for reconciliation,” said John Burris, a civil-rights attorney who led some the largest lawsuit history against Oakland police and who believes Armstrong is the right person to be chief. “If the mayor reflected on how good a job he has done, that would’ve contributed to reconsidering her position.”

Critics say the political showdown is crippling the city’s police department — especially after a year that saw alarming spikes in burglaries and robberies around the city.

“The rank-and-file are waiting with bated breath,” said Barry Donelan of the Oakland police officers’ union. “The semantics, the split hairs. … We just need a head of the department. That’s where we’re at.”

The six-member commission and its one alternate have declared a “media blackout,” denying all press requests until Oakland’s next police chief is selected. Thao’s office could not be reached for comment.

Currently, the commission is led by attorney Marsha Peterson, who has worked for the Port of Oakland and served on the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury. Another commissioner, Wilson Riles, is a former council member who won a hefty settlement from Oakland over allegations of racial discrimination by the city’s cops.

Perhaps the most public face of the commission, former chair Regina Jackson, has spoken fondly of Armstrong in past interviews.

That support stands in sharp contrast with the messaging of Thao’s office. The mayor fired the ex-chief after he publicly suggested that she is under the control of a federal police oversight official, Robert Warshaw, who Armstrong has accused of seeking to retain power over the department’s affairs.

The last leader of the commission, Tyfahra Milele, had publicized Armstrong’s name late last year on a list of 18 candidates that she and other departing commissioners sent to the mayor’s office.

The mayor’s staffers emphatically disparaged the list, saying it would not be treated as legitimate, while Thao told the news station KPIX in September that she would declare a state of emergency if she didn’t receive a proper shortlist of candidates by the year’s end.

Several observers said they were surprised that the commission’s shortlist contained no Oakland police personnel, including someone relatively high in the chain of command who had expressed interest in the chief job, according to two sources with knowledge of the search.

Regardless, the larger question for Oakland might not be who its next chief will be but rather if the city’s bureaucratic tangles can allow the police department to move forward.

“It’s unfortunate that the different organizations within the city government are so fractured that they can’t come to an agreement on what they’re looking for and who should be the police chief,” said Dan Siegel, a civil-rights attorney who sued Oakland over the police response to Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Siegel, who praised Armstrong as “definitely the best police chief Oakland had in at least 10 years,” nevertheless criticized the commission for signaling its support for the ex-chief, calling his reinstatement “politically impossible.”