OAKLAND POLICE CHIEF FIRED OVER ALLEGED COVER-UP
Scandal threatens to keep PD under federal monitoring
The Oakland Police Department lost its seventh head of police in as many years Wednesday over the alleged cover-up of an officer’s misconduct in a scandal that threatens to extend two decades of federal oversight.
Democratic Mayor Sheng Thao said at a news conference that she was firing Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong after a probe concluded the chief and the department failed to properly investigate and discipline a sergeant who was involved in a hit-and-run with his patrol car and, in a separate incident, fired his service weapon inside an elevator at police headquarters.
Thao, who took office in January, said she wants to be confident the police chief in the city of 400,000 people will be effective “in making improvements that can be recognized by the federal monitor, the federal court and the people of Oakland.”
“I am no longer confident that Chief Armstrong can do the work needed to achieve the vision, so today I have decided to separate Chief LeRonne Armstrong from the city without cause,” she said.
The probes by the law firm of Clarence Dyer and Cohen concluded Armstrong failed to investigate and discipline Sgt. Michael Chung after he was involved in a hit-and-run with a parked car in 2021 at his apartment building in San Francisco, according to a report first obtained by KTVU-TV and made public by news site Oaklandside.
The following year, Chung fired his service weapon inside an elevator at police headquarters, got rid of evidence and did not inform his supervisors until a week later. He has been on paid administrative leave since then.
The Oakland Police Department made national news in 2000 after a rookie officer came forward to report abuse of power by a group of officers known as the Oakland “Riders.” The four officers were charged with making false arrests, planting evidence, using excessive force, falsifying police reports and assaulting people in west Oakland, a predominantly Black area.
The case resulted in the department coming under federal oversight in 2003 and being required to enact 52 reform measures and report its progress to an outside monitor and a federal judge.
Armstrong was appointed in 2021 with promises of enacting all the reforms within a year.
He said he was deeply disappointed in Thao’s decision and that once all the facts are evaluated, it will be clear he committed no misconduct and his terminations was “wrong, unjustified, and unfair.”
Federal Judge William Orrick last year put the agency on a one-year probationary period that was set to end by June and finally free it from federal oversight. But last month, he made public a portion of the law firm reports, prompting the mayor to place Armstrong on paid leave.
“The report ... demonstrates that the significant cultural problems within the department remain unaddressed,” he said during a virtual hearing in January.
Orrick ordered the city to present a plan by April 4 on how it plans to come into compliance.