One year after firing of Oakland police chief, search for successor drags on

OAKLAND, Calif. - It's been one year since Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao fired police chief LeRonne Armstrong, and the city is still without a permanent replacement. The mayor and the city's police commission, which is tasked with selecting the candidates, have been locked in a back and forth.

In an interview with KTVU, former Oakland police chief Anne Kirkpatrick, now chief of New Orleans, said the city is suffering without a permanent chief.

"It’s extremely disruptive. It is destabilizing not only internally, but if you destabilize your police department, you destabilize your community. That’s reflected in crime," said Kirkpatrick.

Kirkpatrick said she felt that the Oakland Police Commission was largely to blame for the delays, which she said had played politics with the process, including the submission of Armstrong’s name as a candidate to the mayor in December.

Meantime, some Oakland residents said they felt both sides were to blame.

"It should not take this long to have a new police chief," said Oakland resident Giovanni Vincente. "I’ve never seen [crime] this bad. I’ve been robbed twice at gunpoint."

"My thoughts are, I don’t know why it’s taking so long," said Chuck Afflerbach. "It kind of seems to be the way things are here in Oakland, nothing gets done."

"I don’t why we can’t get a good chief of police," added Carolina Juarez. "I don’t wear a purse anymore…not feeling comfortable is not something that I ever felt before."

In September, Mayor Thao told KTVU that she would declare a state of emergency by the end if the year if the city was still without a permanent chief.  That did not happen, and Kirkpatrick says it likely should have, allowing Thao to expedite the process or name a chief herself.

"That’s what major cities do. Major cities just say I want this next person to be my chief and they do it. Oakland, I would have thought they're a major city, but they’re not acting that way," said Kirkpatrick.

Mayor Thao was unavailable for an interview on Thursday, due to a death in the family. But her office says she plans to continue to work collaboratively with the Police Commission in order to find a new chief.

KTVU reached out to the Oakland Police Commission for comment, but did not hear back in time for this story.

The commission is expected to submit three more candidates for police chief to the mayor in March.