The Mercury News Weekend

Top cop Meehan resigns; captain to be acting chief

- By Rick Hurd and Tom Lochner Staff writers

BERKELEY — The summer of shakiness atop Bay Area law enforcemen­t received another tremor this week when Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan announced his resignatio­n from the department.

Capt. Andrew Greenwood, a 30-year-veteran of the department, was immediatel­y appointed acting police chief. Meehan’s resignatio­n takes effect Oct. 14.

City Manager Dee Williams-Ridley announced the shake-up in a Sept. 21 statement. Meehan revealed his resignatio­n date in a post sent out to his 199 Twitter followers that attached the letter he sent to WilliamsRi­dley.

“Thank you Berkeley! It has been an honor,” Meehan wrote on Twitter. “My family and I are grateful.”

Mayor Tom Bates noted that Meehan has been in his post for seven years, and that historical­ly, most Berkeley police chiefs have not lasted that long.

“I think that Chief Meehan was an excellent public servant under trying circumstan­ces,” Bates said in a telephone interview. “I think he served the community really well.”

Bates credited Meehan with starting a fair-and-impartial policing program to reduce racial bias in law enforcemen­t, and with introducin­g crisis interventi­on training to make sure that officers can deal with mental illness.

“He (Meehan) also increased the transparen­cy of the police department by posting informatio­n about department policies, arrests, booking, calls for service, pedestrian and traffic stops,” Bates added. “They’re all on the city’s website.”

Meehan did not specify the reasons for his resignatio­n, which leaves two of the East Bay’s biggest cities without a permanent police chief.

Oakland cycled through three chiefs over nine days in June, as details of a sex abuse scandal involving police officers surfaced. City Administra­tor Sabrina Landreth is handling adminis- trative duties and Assistant Chief David Downing is in charge of day-to-day police operations, while the city conducts a national search for a permanent police chief.

Leadership changes at the top also have shaken the Hayward and San Francisco police department­s.

Meehan faced criticism over his leadership style this year from officers in his department, according to the results of an internal survey obtained by the news site Berkeleysi­de, and he also found himself at the center of several controvers­ies.

In August, records were revealed showing that Meehan employed as his real estate agent city council member Lawrence Capitelli, who had voted to give Meehan a $500,000 housing loan from public funds. Capitelli later took a commission on the chief’s purchase of the home. Both moves were fraught with conflict, according to experts on ethics.

In January 2012, Meehan used 10 officers to knock on doors of residents while searching for his teen son’s stolen cellphone.

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