As Sheng Thao starts her second year in office, some of her staunchest critics say they are pursuing a recall campaign.
Last weekend, a group led by retired Alameda County Superior Court Judge and former member of the Police Commission Brenda Harbin-Forte, announced it had mailed the paperwork to officially start the recall process after collecting 250 signatures for an official notice. In a note explaining their concerns, the organizers accused Thao of creating a public safety crisis in Oakland by “systematically dismantling” OPD, firing former police chief LeRonne Armstrong, and failing to appoint a new police chief, among other complaints.
“Lives have been lost, property destroyed, businesses have shut down, and fear and collective trauma are daily occurrences for Oaklanders,” the recall organizers wrote in their notice.
In response to an interview request from The Oaklandside, Harbin-Forte said all press statements must go through her media coordinator, Seneca Scott. After The Oaklandside sent Scott an email requesting an interview, Scott, without directly responding to us, accused The Oaklandside on Twitter of trying to discredit recall supporters by reporting about the campaign.
Thao’s chief of staff, Leigh Hanson, said the recall effort is “led by losers.”
“I know for a fact that if Mayor Thao had lost the election, she would have conceded gracefully and found a legitimate job that contributed to moving our community forward,” Hanson said. “I have faith that Oaklanders are smarter than this, and will resist the urge to be distracted by a desperate attempt for relevance.”
Thao said in a statement she has “the best job in the world” because she gets to fight to make Oakland safer, more affordable, and more prosperous.
“I ask all Oaklanders to help me achieve that vision with hope and collaboration and push aside fear and division,” Thao said.
There are many steps supporters of a recall have to undertake before it is put to voters during a scheduled election. One major step is the recall organizers must collect signatures from at least 10% of the population, according to state rules that govern recalls in Oakland. According to Alameda County data, there are over 240,000 voters in the city, which means the recall supporters must collect roughly 24,600 signatures.
The recall organizers’ main focus: crime
At the beginning of 2023, a group of people upset with District Attorney Pamela Price’s new policies around prosecuting crime launched a recall campaign against her, arguing that her progressive stances on issues like not charging juveniles as adults and not seeking enhancements and maximum prison sentences in all cases has contributed to worse crime in Oakland. The organizers of the Thao recall are making similar claims about the mayor. They accuse Thao of “systematically dismantling” the police department, “unjustly” terminating the former police chief, and failing to uphold her promise to hire a new chief.
Last year was a bad year for crime in Oakland. There were 17,256 burglaries in 2023—a 23% increase over 2022. Commercial burglaries were up 9% compared to 2022, fueling growing discontent among business owners, some of whom have dealt with multiple break-ins. Vehicle thefts were up 45% compared to 2022, and robberies were up 38%.
Many crime trends started worsening before Thao took office as mayor. For example, in 2019, Oakland ended the year with 75 murders. In 2020, murders shot up to 102. In 2021, LeRonne Armstrong’s first year as chief, murders further increased to 123—the highest in 15 years. Murders appear to have plateaued at higher levels in 2022 and 2023, at 120 each year, according to OPD’s most recent annual crime report.
The city’s violent crime index—which tracks serious crimes, including homicide, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery—peaked at 7,984 total incidents in 2013, according to OPD data for 2009 through 2019. Then, violent crime dropped for six years. When the pandemic hit, violent crime shot up again.
The recall organizers have accused Thao of worsening public safety by tearing down OPD, but the department hasn’t seen any layoffs or major cuts in recent years, even after city leaders, including Thao, expressed an interest in diverting funds to police alternatives after the George Floyd protests in 2020. In June 2023, Thao’s first year as mayor, she and the Oakland City Council approved a city spending plan that increased OPD’s budget by roughly $40 million over what it received in the last cycle, growing it from $683 million to $722 million. Oakland leaders also funded six police academies.
However, because of rising costs due to inflation and other factors, the $40 million increase in OPD’s budget hasn’t been enough to maintain prior levels of police services. And the city’s $360 million shortfall in its general fund forced Thao and City Council to make cuts across the board to services. OPD agreed to cut its overtime budget by 15% and reduce the number of budgeted sworn officers from 726 to 710. The city also froze hiring for vacant OPD positions that it couldn’t afford to fill. OPD, like other departments, avoided layoffs. The department is currently projected to overspend its budget by $32.32 million in fiscal year 2023-2024.
OPD graduated a new academy class at the end of 2023, which should increase the number of officers to 725. For perspective, OPD staffing was at a recent high of 750 in 2019. That number plummeted during the pandemic, hitting a low of 690 in 2022, before Thao was elected mayor.
The recall organizers have also criticized Thao for firing Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, and for not yet hiring a replacement.
In January 2023, Thao placed Armstrong on administrative leave after an outside investigation faulted him for “systemic failures” in how OPD handled two misconduct cases for an OPD sergeant. She fired Armstrong the following month after he went to the press and called OPD’s federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, corrupt.
The Police Commission opened a search for a new chief, but the mayor criticized the commission after an internal power struggle spilled into public, and she promised to declare a state of emergency if the commission didn’t send her candidates before the end of the year. In September, a neutral hearing officer opined that Armstrong had not been negligent in his duties as chief, but stopped short of saying he should be reinstated. This report was seized on by Armstrong and his supporters, including members of the Oakland Police Commission, who advanced him as a finalist for the OPD chief job. Thao said she has lost trust in Armstrong and rejected him and two other candidates in December. The commission reopened the search and is expected to send new candidates to the mayor in March. In the meantime, an interim chief is running OPD, one of many times in the department’s recent history when the chief’s role has been filled by a lower-ranking officer or outsider.
Paula Hawthorn, chair of Oakland’s Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commission, spoke in her personal capacity with The Oaklandside about the recall. Hawthorn was deeply opposed to the mayor’s decision to fire Armstrong, calling him the best chief the city has had for a long time. But she believes the recall is a mistake.
“She was elected honestly,” Hawthorn said. “I regret that she was because I was very much for Loren Taylor. But that’s democracy, that’s where we are, that’s what we do. We allow people to serve out their terms.”
Hawthorn also dismissed the idea that OPD has been dismantled under Thao. She said that Darren Allison, who has been running the department since January 2023, is a “perfectly good” interim chief.
“The department is running along as well as it can and trying to figure out what to do with this horrible crime spell, which nobody understands why it’s happening or how to fix it, and that’s the bottom line,” Hawthorn said.
Who is behind the Sheng Thao recall?
Brenda Harbin-Forte served as an Alameda County Superior Court judge from 1998 until her retirement in 2019. In 2020, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf appointed her for a roughly two-year term to the Police Commission, an independent board with hiring and firing power over the city’s police chief.
Harbin-Forte’s term expired in October 2022 but she continued to serve on the commission and Thao didn’t remove her until June 2023. This followed infighting on the commission, partly over the commission’s leadership. At the time of her removal, Harbin-Forte accused the mayor of trying to ensure that OPD remains under the control of the federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, who has been overseeing the department’s reform efforts. Harbin-Forte was an ally of the former commission chair, Tyfahra Milele, who clashed with Thao over the timeline for the police chief search. In a recent SFGATE interview, Harbin-Forte said the recall campaign against Thao isn’t “petty revenge.”
Seneca Scott is a local activist who founded the group Neighbors Together, which describes its mission as holding elected officials accountable and checking the interests of special interest groups like labor unions and nonprofits. He unsuccessfully ran against Thao and nine other candidates in the 2022 mayoral election. He received 3,740 votes, coming in seventh place. During the campaign, Scott repeatedly accused Thao and her supporters of wrongdoing, including by publicizing ethics complaints made by a former staffer in Thao’s City Council office and by alleging that another Thao staffer was running a secret Twitter account while on the job.
Scott has a history of making inflammatory statements, including last summer when he accused an LGBTQ member of Thao’s staff of being a pedophile.
After the 2022 election, Scott and the NAACP pushed for a recount in hopes of overturning Thao’s win. Scott telegraphed his interest in pursuing recalls against Oakland officials he disagrees with in a June 2022 op-ed about San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, where he hinted that a similar campaign could happen in Oakland. In an August 2022 Twitter post responding to Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas, Scott said “The SF recalls were only the beginning.”
