Oakland has been searching for a new, permanent police chief since last February, but the process hasn’t been easy.
Last year, after Mayor Sheng Thao fired LeRonne Armstrong, the Police Commission launched a process to recruit a new chief. The search took months but in December, the commission finally delivered a list of three candidates to Thao. However, Thao rejected this list and asked the commission to return to the drawing board.
The situation has led some to call on the mayor to declare a “state of emergency”—a step Thao herself vowed to take last year. Others have blamed recent high rates of crime on the city not having a permanent leader in place at OPD.
But the current messiness infecting Oakland’s search for a new police chief isn’t new itself. A look back at how the city has landed police chiefs since the 1990s shows that the job has been a political hot potato for a long time. Mayor Jerry Brown had his city administrator sack the city’s police chief in 1999 after voters gave him that power, sparking protests by the NAACP. Chief Wayne Tucker resigned in the face of criticism about how OPD handled the Your Black Muslim Bakery Investigation. Chief Whent was appointed by Jean Quan, but it was OPD’s federal monitors who really picked him.
We looked back at three decades of Oakland police chiefs to examine patterns in how they were recruited, how they fared on the job, and why many of them departed.
Tumultuous tenures, abrupt departures, and interim placeholders
Joseph Samuels: Oakland first Black chief, crime drops, fired by Jerry Brown
Appointed Aug. 9, 1993, resigned in 1999
On June 29, 1993—roughly seven months after OPD’s longest-serving chief George Hart (1972-1992) retired—it was announced that Joseph Samuels would become Oakland’s first Black police chief. He had served as Fresno’s police chief since 1991, but he knew Oakland well. Before Fresno, Samuels worked at OPD for 17 years, rising to the rank of captain.
Then-City Manager Henry Gardner picked Samuels partly because he was a leader in community policing, a new style of law enforcement at the time that emphasized getting officers out of patrol cars and having them build relationships with neighborhood groups to solve problems more proactively. Gardner’s decision was influenced by then-mayor Elihu Harris—Oakland’s second Black mayor— Harris’s public safety advisor Mike Nisperos, and members of the City Council. These leaders wanted OPD to further diversify and address longstanding criticisms that its officers were engaged in racial profiling.
By the 1990s, the job of Oakland police chief was already considered one of the nation’s most challenging roles in law enforcement. Still, then-City Manager Gardner told the Fresno Bee that they’d been able to attract “a strong field of candidates.”
Richard Word: Narcotics officer, oversaw the Riders case, left for Vacaville
Appointed July 2, 1999, left for another job in Oct. 2004
Former and future California Gov. Jerry Brown ran for Oakland mayor in 1998 on a platform of cracking down on crime. He also campaigned for Measure X, which would change Oakland’s laws to give the mayor the power to hire and fire the City Manager, which in turn gave him the power to indirectly select a police chief.
After sweeping into office in 1999, and with the passage of Measure X, one of Brown’s first big moves was to replace Police Chief Joseph Samuels. Brown told media that although crime rates and complaints against OPD officers had fallen during Samuels tenure, these drops, particularly crime, hadn’t been steep enough. An unnamed police officer told the Oakland Tribune that Samuels wasn’t a “vocal, in your face type of guy who would lead a charge into a crowd” and that Brown and his city manager, Robert Bobb, were looking for a “charger type to lead 100 motorcycle cops into the crowd.”
The Oakland NAACP protested Brown’s decision to sack the city’s first Black police chief by filling City Council Chambers and rallying outside Brown’s Jack London District loft. “We don’t want a rise in police brutality complaints,” said then NAACP leader Shannon Reeves. “We don’t want a Daryl Gates coming to Oakland,” referring to the controversial leader of the Los Angeles police.
But Brown stuck to his decision. In July, he appointed Richard Word, an African American and 15-year department veteran who served as a narcotics officer before rising to the rank of captain overseeing operations in East Oakland. Press reports at the time noted that Oakland City Manager Robert Bobb worked with Brown to review applicants, including captains at OPD as well as candidates from police departments in “four other big cities.”
Word pledged to cut crime by 20% during his first year. In 2000, this tough-on-crime approach was the backdrop for the Riders case, in which a squad of West Oakland cops were accused of beating up and planting drugs on Black residents. Four officers were charged with a litany of crimes, and the department’s relations with the community sunk to new lows.
In 2003, Word, Brown, and the City Council agreed to a court-ordered police reform program to settle a lawsuit brought by some of the people victimized by the Riders. This settlement agreement would eventually play a big role in the fortunes of future chiefs.
Even though Brown and Word pledged a crackdown, crime increased in the mid-2000s, with homicides and shootings rapidly rising. In October 2004, Word announced he was leaving Oakland to become Vacaville’s chief, setting off another search for a new OPD leader.
Wayne Tucker: former Assistant Sheriff, Your Black Muslim Bakery, falsified warrants
Appointed Feb. 1, 2005, resigned in face of no confidence vote Feb. 28, 2009
Mayor Brown appointed Wayne Tucker—an ex-Assistant Alameda County Sheriff—to run OPD on an interim basis in February 2005. But over the next seven months, Brown, according to the Oakland Tribune, came to believe that Tucker was doing a good job fighting crime, complying with the department’s federal reform program, and raising the morale of officers, and made Tucker full chief on Aug. 11.
Ron Dellums kept Tucker on when he took over the mayor’s office in 2007. But by then, things had changed. On Jan. 27, 2009, Tucker announced he was stepping down while facing a possible vote of no confidence from the City Council. At the time, a cascade of crises, many of OPD’s own making, were coming to light.
The department had mishandled its investigation into the Your Black Muslim Bakery, a violent cult in North Oakland whose leader and several members murdered journalist Chauncey Bailey and others. There were also allegations that over a dozen officers had falsified warrants, carrying out wrongful arrests and raids. And new information was leaked to the press about a decade-old homicide in which police beat up a young man during a drug bust. The man, Jerry Amaro, later died of his injuries. The Amaro case was covered up, and the leader of the narcotics squad went on to become the head of OPD’s internal affairs unit, which investigates police misconduct.
This pile of problems led a federal judge to extend OPD’s federal oversight program, which was supposed to end in 2008, for a few more years.
Anthony Batts: Considered a “coup” hire, left early for Harvard and Baltimore
Appointed Oct. 20, 2009, resigned Oct. 13, 2011
Mayor Dellums asked OPD Assistant Chief Howard Jordan to run OPD on an interim basis while Dellums’ team searched for a new permanent chief. To assist, Dellums and the City Council hired Robert Wasserman, a Massachusetts-based consultant who’d helped other cities recruit chiefs.
Seven-and-a-half months later, Dellums appointed Anthony Batts.
Batts, a rising star in the police profession, came from Long Beach, a city that had seen crime drop in the mid-2000s while he was chief. He pledged to attack crime and raise the morale of OPD, which had seen four officers killed in the line of duty just before his arrival.
But Batts ran up against Oakland’s budget problems, which only got worse as the city’s housing market collapsed during the Great Recession. His eagerness to impose a youth curfew and expand gang injunctions—court orders limiting the freedoms of alleged gang members—also ran into opposition from community activists and some members of the City Council.
Two years into his three-year contract, in October 2011, Batts quit. He said he’d been handed “limited control, but full accountability” for the city’s beleaguered police. Budget shortfalls had caused OPD’s officer ranks to drop from over 800 to 657 in January 2011.
Batts also had a strained relationship with Oakland’s new mayor, Jean Quan, who’d taken office on Jan. 3. Quan was critical of some of the more aggressive crime-fighting tactics Batts wanted to pursue. And Batts also left at the same time OPD’s federal monitor was becoming increasingly critical of the department’s failure to complete its reforms. The monitoring team wrote in an April 2011 report that OPD was “stagnant” in reshaping itself, and the department’s performance was “completely unacceptable.”
Howard Jordan: Occupy Oakland, near takeover of OPD, retired after scathing report blasted department
Appointed interim chief Oct. 13, 2011, resigned May 8, 2013
The same day Batts quit, Jordan was sworn in as interim chief for the second time in less than three years. A 23-year OPD veteran, Jordan inherited all the other problems Batts had faced: budget cuts, police layoffs, and the possibility that a federal judge could take over OPD if it didn’t quickly prove it could make progress on its reform program. 2011 and 2012 were also violent years in which Oakland suffered 104 and 127 homicides, respectively.
Not two weeks into his tenure, Jordan and then-City Administrator Deanna Santanna authorized a raid of the Occupy Oakland protest camp in front of City Hall. That night, police beat and arrested dozens and shot a protester in the head with a bean bag from a shotgun.
After the Occupy police riot, the federal judge overseeing the department warned that he was considering taking OPD over. Instead, the judge appointed a “compliance director” who would have the power to do many things, including fire OPD’s chief. In May 2013, the compliance director, a retired Baltimore police chief, issued a scathing report that faulted OPD’s leadership for failing to ensure officers intervened and stopped, or reported unacceptable behavior, including violence like what happened during the Occupy protests. The compliance director wrote that police misconduct investigations “fail to thoroughly and impartially seek the truth.”
According to the Oakland Tribune, OPD’s compliance director was about to fire Jordan, but on May 8, Jordan abruptly stepped down, taking a medical retirement.
Anthony Toribio: Didn’t want the job
Appointed acting chief May 8, 2013, stepped down May 10, 2013
Mayor Quan said she was “sad” to see Jordan go. She immediately appointed Deputy Chief Anthony Toribio to lead OPD in an “acting” capacity. Toribio served just two days before he took a voluntary demotion to the rank of captain. He reportedly didn’t want the chief’s job.
The rapid-fire loss of OPD’s chief and interim chief caused concern among city leaders. “I’ll tell you one thing, the thugs on the street are more organized than we are,” District 5 Councilmember Noel Gallo told the media.
Sean Whent: Got OPD reforms back on track, quit suddenly as police sex trafficking case came to light
Appointed interim chief May 10, 2013, resigned June 8, 2016
According to media reports at the time, Sean Whent was the person that OPD’s federal monitor and compliance director really wanted to run the department. He joined OPD in 1996 and, in 2009, became a captain overseeing the internal affairs division, the part of the department responsible for investigating police misconduct. He was known as a tough investigator who didn’t make excuses for police misconduct and a reformer who took federal oversight seriously.
Quan appointed him as interim chief the same day Toribio stepped down, and she made his appointment permanent on May 14, 2014.
Under Whent, the department started to make progress on the reform program. Fatal police shootings of armed and unarmed people became less common. Reported uses of force by officers and complaints of police brutality also declined. OPD changed its policies around police stops to reduce racial profiling, and it took on a new approach to policing protests that emphasized people’s safety instead of protecting property.
By 2015, the turnaround was so dramatic that the Obama administration cited OPD as a model department. Crime was also falling, including homicides.
But in June, Whent suddenly resigned. Then-Mayor Libby Schaaf said the chief quit for “personal reasons,” but details soon surfaced that multiple OPD officers were implicated in the criminal sex trafficking of a young woman. An outside investigation later found that OPD leaders knew of the allegations but downplayed their severity and didn’t conduct a proper investigation. “Whent sent an unmistakable signal that this case was not a priority,” the investigators wrote.
Ben Fairow: Interim chief for seven days
Appointed June 9, removed June 15, 2016.
Mayor Schaaf and City Administrator Sabrina Landreth scrambled to find a new leader for OPD. In a hastily called press conference on June 9, Schaaf announced Ben Fairow would become interim chief. Fairow was deputy chief of BART’s police department at the time.
Furrow was forced to resign just six days later after Schaaf learned that he had had an improper affair many years earlier while working for the police department, according to media reports.
Paul Figueroa: Interim chief for two days
Appointed June 15, 2016, stepped down June 17, 2016
Schaaf next appointed Assistant Police Chief Paul Figueroa to the chief’s post.
But two days later, Figueroa said he could not fulfill the functions of acting police chief and would take a voluntary demotion and return to the department as captain.
Some long-time department watchers were pessimistic about OPD’s chances of finding a chief who could rebuild the department’s reputation. Attorney Jim Chanin said he and John Burris were considering asking a federal judge to intervene in the hiring and recruitment process for OPD staff.
Sabrina Landreth: Temporary civilian leader, Oakland creates police commission
Appointed June 17, 2016, stepped down Jan. 5, 2017
In need of someone to run OPD, but lacking police candidates who wanted the job or who didn’t have skeletons in their closet, Mayor Libby Schaaf appointed City Administrator Sabrina Landreth to take charge of OPD after the department lost three chiefs in just over a week.
Landreth was not a sworn officer, which made her an unusual candidate to lead the department even on an interim basis. The state’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training opined that hiring a civilian police chief who doubled as city administrator would be illegal.
Schaaf said the Commission was misinterpreting the law, and in any case, tactical and operational decisions would remain with police commanders and the acting assistant chief of police, David Downing. The mayor also emphasized that civilian oversight was necessary to address the misconduct and unethical behavior plaguing OPD.
In November 2016, Oakland voters approved Measure LL, which amended the City Charter to create a new civic body, the Oakland Police Commission. The measure changed the process for appointing police chiefs by making the commission responsible for sending candidates to the mayor, who would now make the final hiring decision instead of the City Manager. It also gave the mayor the power to fire the chief for no cause. And the commission was given the power to fire the chief also, but if acted without the mayor’s consent, the commission needed to cite reasons.
Anne Kirkpatrick: First female police chief, controversial shooting of homeless man, fired by mayor and police commission
Appointed Jan. 4, 2017, fired Feb. 20, 2020
In the wake of the sex trafficking scandal, Mayor Libby Schaaf and other city leaders recognized the importance of hiring a chief who could spearhead deep culture change in the department.
Oakland conducted a six-month search using the executive head-hunting firm, Ralph Andersen & Associates. The city also created an online survey available in multiple languages, set up an online platform and phone line to get input, and held nearly a dozen community meetings to gather feedback from community members throughout the recruitment process. Oakland received over 30 applications before selecting a small number for panel interviews. Several community members were chosen to participate in the hiring process.
In January 2017, Schaaf announced her pick: Anne Kirkpatrick, a former police chief for Spokane, Washington with 34 years of law enforcement experience. In 2016 Kirkpatrick had applied for the police chief role in Chicago. She didn’t get the job, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel asked Kirkpatrick to help reform the city’s police department. According to the East Bay Times, Kirkpatrick had also previously applied to be the Oakland Police Chief in 2013 but she was passed over for Whent.
Kirkpatrick was Oakland’s first permanent female police chief, a signal that the mayor wanted to bring in someone who could clean up OPD’s “toxic macho culture.” During Kirkpatrick’s swearing-in ceremony, Schaaf praised her character and said this was an opportunity to improve Oakland’s public safety and police reforms.
Kirkpatrick quickly came into conflict with the department’s federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, and the newly formed Oakland Police Commission over her handling of the police shooting of a 31-year-old homeless man named Joshua Pawlik in 2018.
The monitor criticized Kirkpatrick after she downgraded the discipline for officers involved in the shooting. The Oakland Police Commission wanted Kirkpatrick to fire the officers, and Warshaw later overrode the chief and ordered their termination.
Under Kirkpatrick, the department continued to pursue some reforms, including attempts to curb racial bias by pulling over fewer drivers. Research also showed that Oakland’s “Ceasefire” strategy was producing a noticeable drop in gun violence. But in 2019, Warshaw found that the department was out of compliance with a couple of critical reform tasks needed to get out from under federal oversight. Civil rights attorneys John Burris and James Chanin—who are both part of OPD’s reform program—told the federal judge overseeing OPD that the department was backsliding in an “unprecedented” way.
The Oakland Police Commission and Schaaf fired Kirkpatrick on Feb. 20, 2020. Officials didn’t cite a specific reason for terminating Kirkpatrick. At the time, Schaaf said the trust between Kirkpatrick and the police commission was “irrevocably broken.”
Kirkpatrick told the media that she had been hired prior to the establishment of the police commission and indicated that the commissioners wanted a local person of color for the role.
In an op-ed published shortly after her termination, Kirkpatrick argued she and the previous nine chiefs who led the department were “thwarted” by Robert Warshaw, the federal monitor. She also accused Warshaw of having a financial incentive to block OPD from completing its reforms
Darren Allison: Acting chief for two months, replaced with interim chief
Appointed Feb. 2020, replaced by permanent hire in Apr. 2020
Immediately after Kirkpatrick was fired, Mayor Schaaf appointed Deputy Chief Darren Allison to serve as acting chief until the department could find a permanent replacement.
Susan Manheimer: Pandemic, George Floyd protests, placeholder during year-long search
Appointed interim chief Apr. 2020, retired on Feb. 2021
Faced with another lengthy recruitment process for a permanent police chief, Mayor Schaaf decided to hire an interim person to run the department. In March 2020, Schaaf announced Susan Manheimer, San Mateo’s recently retired chief of police, would lead OPD starting in April. The city gave Manheimer a six-month contract that could be extended if needed.
According to media reports at the time, Schaaf made the decision to hire Manheimer after consulting with Police Commission Chair Regina Jackson, the federal court-appointed monitor Robert Warshaw, and John Burris and Jim Chanin, the plaintiff attorneys who brought the Riders’ lawsuit.
Jackson said at the time she felt like the commission was “rushed” in the process and that Schaaf had not been willing to consider interim candidates from within OPD. Chanin was also quoted saying that it would have been better if the department had hired someone more familiar with Oakland.
Manheimer, who said she had been looking forward to a retirement where she could “decompress and be a grandma,” rejoined law enforcement right as Oakland and the rest of the planet slipped into an unprecedented public health crisis, the coronavirus pandemic. Manheimer was also forced to reckon with the mass protests and violence that spilled into Oakland streets after Minnesota police killed George Floyd in May 2020. Oakland police used smoke and tear gas to disperse protesters, fueling public outrage about police brutality and generating numerous complaints from injured people.
Manheimer’s last month as interim chief was January 2021. Oakland had 15 homicides that month–Oakland’s most lethal January in two decades, according to Oakland’s police union.
Manheimer summed up her experience for the San Francisco Chronicle by saying that her time as chief was a “continuous and evolving string of challenges that built upon one another.”
LeRonne Armstrong: Homegrown, fired by the mayor, reapplies for job
Appointed Feb. 8, 2021, fired Feb. 15, 2023
While Manheimer struggled with COVID, the Black Lives Matter protests, and rising crime, Oakland conducted a thorough search for a chief. And after nearly a year, Mayor Schaaf announced the city’s new top cop: LeRonne Armstrong.
Armstrong beat out three other finalists for the job: his wife, Interim Oakland Deputy Chief Drennon Lindsey; Pittsburgh Police Commander Jason Lando; and Seaside Police Chief Abdul Pridgen.
In a break from previous recruitment practices, Schaaf and members of the Oakland Police Commission interviewed the top candidates in a public virtual forum in November 2020. Schaaf also had civil rights attorney John Burris and Stanford social psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt participate in interviews.
Armstrong was homegrown. Born and raised in West Oakland, he joined OPD as a patrol officer in 1999, just a year before the Riders case.
“He is of Oakland and for Oakland,” Schaaf said of Armstrong.
At the time of his swearing-in, Armstrong’s predecessor Anne Kirkpatrick was pursuing a lawsuit against the city alleging wrongful termination.
By the end of 2021, a little over one year into Armstrong’s tenure as chief, homicides had increased to their highest levels in Oakland since 2006. Police blamed the surge in violence on increased gang feuds and the widespread availability of firearms, including ghost guns.
In the wake of the George Floyd demonstrations, some members of the Oakland City Council had vowed to cut OPD’s funding. But when the council convened to set the biennial budget in June 2021, they voted to increase the department’s budget by $38 million. Councilmembers wouldn’t pursue the “defund” route. But they did signal their support for alternatives to policing by making strong investments in MACRO and the Department of Violence Prevention.
By the end of 2022, Armstrong and OPD claimed that an extended crime plan focused on reducing gun violence was helping to cut the number of homicides in the city. Federal Judge William Orrick also praised the department’s progress under Armstrong in meeting court-mandated reforms. Orrick allowed OPD to begin a “sustainability period” that would lead to the end of court oversight by 2023.
Progress halted in January after an outside investigation faulted Armstrong for “systematic failures” in how OPD handled two misconduct cases for an OPD sergeant who committed a hit-and-run of a parked car in a San Francisco garage and fired his gun in an elevator at OPD headquarters. Mayor Sheng Thao placed Armstrong on administrative leave shortly after the report came out.
Armstrong hired a crisis consultant and attorney and in late January attended a rally organized by a group of supporters, including the Oakland NAACP, to demand his reinstatement. Armstrong also accused OPD’s federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, of corruption. The next month, Thao fired Armstrong. A neutral hearing officer later mostly sided with Armstrong, finding he hadn’t mishandled the police discipline cases. But the same hearing officer didn’t find evidence of Armstrong’s claim that he’d been set up by OPD’s federal monitor.
Darren Allison: Second time as interim chief, leads Oakland through rough year, Police Commission struggles
Appointed interim chief on Jan. 19, 2023
Mayor Sheng Thao and City Administrator Ed Reiskin appointed Darren Allison to run OPD in an interim capacity for the second time after Armstrong’s ouster.
Allison, who has never publicly expressed interest in becoming permanent chief, led OPD through a challenging year in 2023.
Last June, the City Council cut OPD’s overtime budget and froze hiring as part of a budget that had to balance out a $360 million shortfall. The department’s budgeted sworn staffing levels hovered over 700, but as of September dozens were also out on long-term leave. Many residents and civic organizations, including the Oakland NAACP, raised concerns that there weren’t enough police to address crime, especially surging burglaries and robberies.
City leaders were also forced to find extra money to improve OPD’s 911 center after the state threatened to withhold funding from the police if Oakland didn’t improve its response time to emergency calls. The department also missed out on a big state grant to fight retail theft, in large part because police staff failed to act swiftly on the application.
And Armstrong, like former chief Kirkpatrick, filed a legal claim against the city. Armstrong accused the mayor of firing him in retaliation for criticizing the federal monitor, violating his First Amendment rights
Allison has also had to navigate OPD during a time of tragedy for the department. On December 29, Officer Tuan Le was shot and killed while responding to an alleged burglary of a cannabis facility. Several individuals have been arrested and charged in connection with the shooting.
Finding a permanent replacement for Armstrong is taking roughly the same amount of time it took to hire Armstrong. But the current search has been marked by significantly more discord, especially on the police commission.
For most of 2023, the board was split by infighting. Over the summer, some commissioners openly called for the removal of commission chair, Tyfahra Milele, and later, several boycotted meetings. Milele clashed with the mayor and sued the selection panel that appoints new commissioners. She also publicly revealed Armstrong applied for his old job, and that the commission would advance him as a “top” candidate, even though Thao said she would not consider Armstrong.
The police commission had a change of leadership in mid-October. But the commissioners still included Armstrong as a candidate on the list they sent the mayor in mid-December. The other two candidates were San Leandro Police Chief Abdul Pridgen and Tucson Assistant Police Chief Kevin Hall.
Thao rejected the candidates, forcing the commission to reopen the recruiting process. Under the new timetable, Thao will have a new slate of candidates to consider by March 1.
