Infighting boils over as accusations fly within Oakland Police Commission
On Thursday night, the commission selected a firm that will conduct a nationwide search for the department's new chief -- a position that has been left vacant for four months.
OAKLAND — The powerful oversight body responsible for finding Oakland’s next police chief is caught in a messy internal fight over its own leader’s job performance.
With tensions ratcheting up even further this week, the deepening divisions in the Oakland Police Commission raise questions about whether the civilian-led group can effectively oversee reform of a police department seeking an end to federal oversight.
On Thursday night, the commission selected a firm that will conduct a nationwide search for the department’s new chief — a position that has been vacant for four months.
But at the same meeting, the group’s chair, Tyfahra Milele, took the growing conflict a step further, suggesting that the calls from other commissioners for her to step down stem not from a political disagreement but a venting of personal issues.
“My scholarly work was on trauma, and now it’s common knowledge that trauma is most often caused by the traumatized,” Milele said in a pre-written statement at the meeting. “I know there are deep wounds behind your actions … It’s understandable, but it’s not acceptable behavior.”
Milele seemed to be addressing Rashidah Grinage, whose husband and son were killed by Oakland police in the early 1990s and who is a member of the activist group Coalition for Police Accountability, which days earlier led a rally at City Hall seeking Milele’s removal as chair.
The statement was met with a new wave of backlash from both Grinage and Cathy Leonard, another member of the coalition.
“Community engagement means listening to the people that you particularly don’t want to listen to,” Grinage said at the meeting. “It doesn’t mean attacking anyone who questions.”
Among the criticisms of Milele is that she has fostered a “toxic work environment” by haranguing city staff members and, in general, being an ineffective leader.
The more corrosive divide, though, comes from Milele’s vocal support for the previous chief, LeRonne Armstrong, who was fired by Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao in February over a misconduct scandal involving the cover-up of an officer’s hit-and-run collision.
On multiple occasions, Milele has echoed an argument Armstrong has repeatedly presented in public: that he was unduly targeted by Robert Warshaw, a federal monitor appointed to oversee the Oakland police’s affairs.
“Oaklanders are starting to piece together the big picture, because all this artificial chaos is confusing them,” Milele read from her statement on Thursday. “Why do scandals always appear when OPD gets close to exiting (federal oversight)? Ten chiefs in ten years?”
The implication is that Warshaw wants to continue making $1 million annually from Oakland’s coffers, though the claim has been dismissed as a baseless conspiracy theory by those involved with the legal settlement that first brought OPD under federal oversight 20 years ago.
When Milele again advanced this theory on Thursday, it appeared to be the last straw for another commissioner, Karely Ordaz, who urged the chair to cut the monologue short and allow the meeting to begin.
The proceedings remained testy afterward, even as the commission hired the Brett Byers Group — a Black-led firm based in Southern California — to conduct the search for a new police chief.
Since its formation in 2016, the commission has held more power than most other entities of its kind in the country, with voters overwhelmingly handing it power to both fire the police chief and present the mayor with final candidates to fill the job.
As a show of full independence, the commission is comprised entirely of volunteers who are Oakland residents.
The selection panel for commissioners is headed by Jim Chanin, an attorney who represented victims in the infamous Riders brutality cases that brought OPD under federal oversight.
“I really don’t like the way they bicker with each other,” Chanin said of the commissioners in an interview. “I was on the police review board 50 years ago in Berkeley, I’ve lived in Oakland 43 years, and we obviously had disagreements — but you can disagree without being disagreeable.”
A past police chief, Anne Kirkpatrick, was fired jointly by the commission and former mayor in 2020 after she repeatedly clashed in public with Regina Jackson, a commissioner who was serving as chair at the time.
On Feb. 15, when it appeared the commission was not going to discipline Armstrong for his handling of the cover-up scandal, Thao abruptly stepped in and fired him instead.
The moment highlighted an awkward balance of power in the city, especially after the commission later that day released a statement largely praising Armstrong.
Tensions between Milele and the Coalition for Police Accountability had built up over the ensuing months and on Thursday boiled over into an outright spat.
“The crusade for a reform has become a revenge mission and an all-out assault on Black reformers,” Milele, who is Black, said Thursday in reference to Grinage, who is White, and her past family tragedy. “When racism and bias are unconscious, it’s easy to slip into racist tropes and go after uppity Negroes who dare to lead.”
Leonard rebuked Milele for making the dispute personal, noting that the activist group in recent weeks had sent multiple letters to the commission detailing criticisms of the chair’s leadership.
“We have not received one response from any of you,” Leonard said. “What we got in return was attacks — digging up people’s pasts, which has absolutely nothing to do with what is at hand.”
With the commission in crisis, it’s unclear if Oakland will have a full-time police chief by September when a federal court judge will again consider the future of OPD’s longstanding oversight.