How Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is going about selecting a new police chief

OAKLAND, Calif. - Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao on Tuesday sat down with KTVU to explain how she's going about selecting a new police chief – a role that's been vacant for more than a year after she fired the last one in February 2023. 

"I have a binder for each one of them," Thao said of the four candidates the Oakland Police Commission forwarded to her in late February. "And so, I will read through what the binder says. I will do my own research. I will put together a panel of folks to also do private interviews with each of the candidates. I'm going to do my own one-on-one interview. I mean, for me, it's about making sure that we are picking the right candidate to be chief of Oakland."

Thao did not address that each of the candidates has their own set of flaws, and she did not indicate publicly that she would reject this list, like she did the last time, when the police commission sent her three names, including LeRonne Armstrong, whom she fired last year.

"Well, I rejected the list because I didn't think that anybody on that list would be a good candidate for the city of Oakland," she said.  "I'm looking for someone who loves the city of Oakland, cares about community and being in the community."

She said she also wants the next police chief to be able to work with the federal monitor and under the oversight of a U.S. Disrict Court judge – a situation that's lasted 20 years because of the infamous Riders police scandal. 

"And so, for me, that's incredibly important in order for us to actually move forward," Thao said.

Thao's list includes the name of one other candidate who was on the police commission's first list, as well as the current one: San Leandro Police Chief Abdul Pridgen, who left the department abruptly at the end of February for allegedly violating department policies, which have yet to be revealed. He is the only local candidate who used to be police chief in Monterey County's Seaside, after working as a police officer in Fort Worth, Texas.  

The other three candidates that Thao is now considering are: 

Louis Molina, a New York City deputy mayor who ran the city’s jail. During his speech last week before the Oakland Police Commission, Molina said his work has also exposed him to vulnerable populations in need of social services and made him appreciate the importance of not having a "police first" response to public health problems. However, the New York Times reported that Molina "failed to improve conditions" there and he was described as an "embattled" jail commissioner who was unable to prevent Rikers from sliding toward federal receivership. Molina was accused of limited reporting in-custody deaths.  Molina also allegedly tried to hide some incidents of jailhouse abuse from the federal judge who oversees the jail system.

Floyd Mitchell, the former police chief in Lubbock, Texas, who also spent 25 years working for Kansas City police in Missouri. Mitchell said he has experience working with civilian oversight bodies and has grown up in cities that resemble Oakland. During his tenure in Lubbock, the city’s 911 system was criticized for not responding adequately to emergency calls. 

Lisa Davis, a Cincinnati police leader who has worked under a major police reform program, told the commission that she experienced bad policing as a child when she watched officers throw her uncle off the second story of her parents’ home. But she later met kind police officers and became passionate about public service and community policing.  She has been with the department for over three decades. Davis was previously a finalist for the police chief role in Cincinnati, but did not get that job. She also was not picked as chief of police in Toledo, Ohio.

Thao did not go to last week's public police commission meeting, where the candidates gave speeches but were not asked any questions. 

She said she did not like the process of the forum, where police chief candidates had to make their job searches public. 

She said that two possible candidate finalists both said they wouldn't apply for the job because they didn't want their names publicly floated out there, just in case they didn't get the job. Those two finalists pulled out of the running, she said. 

"We cannot get a strong candidate if you are going out there to have a forum, which is not even required under the charter, where you are expressing to the public, to the nation, who these possible candidates are," Thao said. 

Thao also would not pinpoint a date as to when she would select the next chief. But she insisted she would do her due diligence.

"I'm going to take my time in regard to picking the right chief," she said. "But at the same time, this is a number one priority for me."