Oakland mayor says police chief’s firing was ‘personally difficult’ but in ‘the best interest’ of the city

OAKLAND — A day after she agreed to the citizen police commission’s firing of Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, Mayor Libby Schaaf welcomed nearly 30 police academy graduates with an explanation of why she terminated an ally she had recruited to turnaround Oakland’s troubled police department.

“I want to be perfectly honest with you, the decision yesterday was extremely personally difficult for me,” the mayor told the new officers Friday. “But I made it because I believe it was in the best interest of Oakland.”

It was another indication that Schaaf — who spoke highly of Kirkpatrick even as she joined the police commission in firing her late Thursday — did not want to remove the chief. But faced with an independent commission intent on the ouster, she apparently felt she had to.

In a city that has grown familiar with police chief firings — six people have served in the position in just the last decade — the termination of Kirkpatrick was remarkable, rattling City Hall’s power structure as the citizen commission wielded the authority it was granted by voters four years ago.

Kirkpatrick is the first chief to be fired by the citizen board — and will be the last one hired without having been pre-selected by the commission.

“Any mayor in the future will face the same question: Are you going to stand by the chief or are you going to challenge the police commission, and what kind of political firestorm would that invite?” said Joseph Tuman, a political analyst and former Oakland mayoral candidate.

Schaaf largely had stood by the chief, even as criticism of Kirkpatrick’s leadership mounted amid outrage over her handling of the police shooting of Joshua Pawlik and of the department’s reform efforts. But after months of tension between the police commission and the chief, its members emerged from a closed-session meeting last night with a unanimous vote to send Kirkpatrick packing. Because Schaaf had agreed, they did not have to state a cause.

Kirkpatrick came to Oakland from Chicago in early 2017, months after Schaaf began searching for a chief to take over a police department reeling from a scandal in which multiple officers were accused of having sex with a teenager, sometimes for money and sometimes in exchange for confidential police information about prostitution stings.

She arrived just a few months after voters overwhelmingly approved Oakland’s Measure LL, which created one of the most powerful police commissions in the country, with the power to terminate the chief with cause by a supermajority vote, and to select four candidates for the mayor to choose from to lead the police department. The ballot initiative passed with 83 percent of the vote in 2016.

Over the past year, Kirkpatrick has battled police commissions in public meetings. In one such meeting in October, the chief demanded an apology from Commissioner Ginale Harris for calling an OPD presentation on its efforts to hire more women of color “disgraceful.” The commission also voted to fire five officers involved in the fatal 2018 shooting of Pawlik, a move that contradicted the recommendation of investigators, Kirkpatrick and OPD’s Executive Force Review board.

Rasidah Grinage, who helped spearhead the police accountability measure, said the chief “was not really happy to be placed in the position of being evaluated and overseen by a group of citizens.”

“She often talked about how many bosses she had. I don’t think that was something she realized would be as challenging as it turned out to be,” Grinage said Friday.

Civil rights attorney Jim Chanin also noted the department’s backsliding on the 52 reforms the department is required to meet under a 2003 settlement with 119 West Oakland victims in the infamous “Riders” case. Under Kirkpatrick’s predecessor, Sean Whent, OPD had met all but three of the reforms. By the end of 2019, however, the department had fallen out of compliance with eight of the tasks.

In his monthly reports to the federal judge, the federal monitor appointed to oversee the agreement said OPD had been underreporting use of force incidents. Earlier this month, he noted that the department is not investigating serious officer misconduct complaints at the level it agreed to.

“Those kind of disclosures I’m sure influenced the police commission in their decision,” said Chanin, who represents the Riders patients as part of the federal monitoring program.

Geoff Collins, a former community policing advisory board member, said he had heard from multiple beat officers on Friday who expressed frustration with Kirkpatrick’s ouster.

“It’s a slap in the face to the officers and certainly to Anne Kirkpatrick, who the mayor only had praise for last night,” Collins said.

On Friday, new Acting Chief Darren Allison joined Schaaf in welcoming 28 new police officers joining the Oakland force. Schaaf is expected to announce an interim chief while the police commission conducts a search for four finalists for the permanent job.

“I’m not sure how many police chiefs will be rushing to come here to be chief,” Tuman said. “It’s not because they can’t deal with some department members — it’s the question of how do you navigate a police commission that probably starts the day being a little bit suspicious of the position.”