Oakland places Chief Armstrong on depart after report cites management failure in continued police misconduct

Oakland officers acknowledged Thursday night time that Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong was placed on paid administrative depart in gentle of an investigation by a regulation agency town retained to look into allegations {that a} sergeant was not disciplined for failing to report a automobile crash and firing his gun within the Police Division’s elevator.

Town issued a information launch hours after The Oaklandside reported Armstrong’s depart, citing confidential sources.

“The choice was not taken frivolously, however we imagine that it’s vital for the security of our group that we construct belief and confidence between the Division and the general public,” learn the discharge by Mayor Sheng Thao and Metropolis Administrator Ed Reiskin. “We should have transparency and accountability to maneuver ahead as a safer and stronger Oakland.”

In a report dated Saturday, the agency Clarence Dyer & Cohen discovered “systemic deficiencies within the Division’s capacity to research misconduct of its members.” The report was filed with a courtroom order Wednesday by U.S. District Choose William H. Orrick, who’s charged with monitoring the division after widespread corruption was uncovered in 2000.

Dyer & Cohen investigators discovered that the division’s Inner Affairs Division’s choice to deflect the sergeant’s misconduct within the hit-and-run, enabled that officer to commit the extra egregious firearms offense.

“The a number of failures, at each degree, to carry this sergeant accountable, belie OPD’s said place that it could possibly police itself and maintain its members accountable for misconduct,” the report stated. For the general public’s sake, the report concluded, OPD should “decide to extra rigorously investigating misconduct to forestall the recurrence of comparable, or extra critical, occasions sooner or later.”

The report didn’t identify the sergeant on the middle of two of the investigations. It stated the hit-and-run occurred on March 25, 2021, in a San Francisco parking storage with a department-owned SUV. One other Oakland officer, whom the report says the sergeant was relationship, witnessed the collision, which ripped the entrance bumper off of a parked automobile. Although the sergeant stopped the automobile for a couple of seconds, neither acquired out or reported the crash, which was captured on surveillance video.

Whereas an Inner Affairs investigator discovered that the sergeant had violated the regulation, the report stated a captain ordered the investigator to downgrade the findings. That has prompted a 3rd investigation by Dyer & Cohen, into the division’s dealing with of the instances. The report stated these findings will probably be addressed in a separate, confidential report.

A yr after the hit-and-run, the identical sergeant fired his gun in a division freight elevator, putting the wall. On April 25, 2022, 9 days after the shot was fired, the sergeant admitted to discharging his weapon and discarding proof by throwing the shell casing off the Bay Bridge.

The report referred to as the division’s incapacity to observe the regulation and its personal insurance policies, “a failure of management.”

In a press release Friday, Metropolis Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas stated the report underscores the necessity to shift the Inner Affairs Division’s duties to the civilian Neighborhood Police Evaluation Company, as directed by the Metropolis Council in June 2021.

“OPD ought to not examine its personal officers’ misconduct,” she stated.  

Armstrong, a West Oakland native, has been with the Oakland Police Division since 1999 and in February 2021, was promoted to chief, a job with a wage vary of $239,633 – $306,555 yearly.

He adopted Anne Kirkpatrick, town’s first feminine police chief, who was employed in 2017 and fired in 2020. Kirkpatrick received a lawsuit towards town in June, claiming she was fired after elevating considerations about abuse of energy throughout the Police Fee.

In Armstrong’s absence, Assistant Chief Darren Allison will function performing chief.

The division has been underneath federal oversight since 2003, when it entered into an settlement with the federal authorities that promised reforms to handle the “riders” corruption and brutality case involving a number of officers. Greater than 100 plaintiffs had been concerned within the civil rights lawsuit towards town, which ended with an $11 million settlement.

This story was up to date with the council president’s assertion.