The Oakland City Council voted to reject two members of the Oakland Police Commission in a move that could complicate the city\u2019s search for a new police chief.<\/p>\n
In a 7-0 vote, with Councilmember Carroll Fife excused, the council rejected the nominations of current OPC chairperson Ricardo Garcia-Acosta and current alternate commissioner Omar Farmer.<\/p>\n
During the hearing, councilmembers had questions about the process by which the nomination and selection process was carried out and why only seven candidates applied.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see that there were only seven applications for something as consequential as the Police Commission is really surprising,\u201d said Councilmember Janani Ramachandran.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Councilmember Charlene Wang said she was dismayed by the paucity of applicants.<\/p>\n
Now that the council rejected Garcia-Acosta and Farmer, the potentially months-long process to find new applicants reverts back to the city\u2019s Police Commission Selection Panel.<\/p>\n
Both men are allowed to continue serving on the commission in a \u201chold-over\u201d capacity so the OPC can continue to do its work.<\/p>\n
If they choose not to, however, the nine-member commission \u2014 two of whom are alternates \u2014 will have only five commissioners, since there were already two vacant seats prior to Tuesday\u2019s vote last week.<\/p>\n
While five members constitute a quorum, any vacancy due to illness or other reasons would prevent the OPC from, among other things, focusing on finding a new police chief to replace Floyd Mitchell, who recently announced his departure<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mayor Barbara Lee said Wednesday that the council\u2019s vote won\u2019t \u201cdelay or disrupt the Chief of Police selection timeline.\u201d<\/p>\n While the councilmembers mainly discussed the candidate selection process prior to the vote, members of the public focused on the candidates themselves.<\/p>\n Several of their opponents implied that the pair represent the \u201cstatus quo\u201d on the commission, which in its alleged hostility toward the Oakland Police Department has imposed rules that they said make policing more difficult in the city and drove out chiefs of police, including Mitchell.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mitchell didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment,.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brenda Grisham, an organizer in the successful recall<\/a> of former Alameda County district attorney Pamela Price, said she opposed the two applicants, as did Tuan Ngo and Chris Moore, both of whom worked on the campaigns to oust Price and former Oakland mayor Sheng Thao<\/a> over concerns about crime, among other things.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have had six police chiefs in the past five years and they\u2019re leaving because Oakland has a toxic relationship with our Police Department,\u201d Ngo said.<\/p>\n Rajni Mandal said Farmer has \u201cacted outside the Police Commission\u2019s charter authority\u201d and sent a letter to the city alleging misconduct.\u00a0<\/p>\n OPC Selection Panel member Rickisha Herron said she found no evidence to support that claim or others made by Farmer\u2019s opponents.<\/p>\n \u2018A right-wing power grab\u2019<\/p>\n The police watchdog group Anti-Police Terror Project called the vote \u201ca right-wing power grab\u201d and said the commission\u2019s own lawyer \u201cconfirmed in writing that every single claim in Rajni Mandal\u2019s letter was false and unsupported by any facts. Yet Council President Jenkins chose to act on this fiction, stalling the reappointments and leading the Council into an illegal and illegitimate process.\u201d\u2018<\/p>\n Farmer said the \u201cattack on my character is extremely offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI really feel like this is some sort of political hit job,\u201d he said, adding that he\u2019s served successfully on local boards and commissions for years and has recommendations from several community leaders, including the three Alameda County supervisors who represent parts of Oakland.\u00a0<\/p>\n Garcia-Acosta acknowledged that the OPC has been \u201cunder attack.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere have been folks in this city who do not want to see strong civilian oversight\u201d but that Mitchell \u201cembraced our vision of oversight\u201d and collaboration, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo when you all hear things in the news that we\u2019re against the Police Department, when you hear things in the public that our efforts are hindering public safety, that\u2019s just flat out not true,\u201d Garcia-Acosta said.<\/p>\n Supporters of the two appointees said their detractors are unable to articulate anything that actually disqualifies them from serving on the OPC and that the people who are speaking out against them are largely just opposed to civilian oversight of the Police Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n Millie Cleveland of the Coalition for Police Accountability urged Oakland City Council members to approve the appointments, which were supported by a unanimous vote of the OPC Selection Panel.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think the previous speakers are a perfect example of the misinformation that has circulated in this city,\u201d Cleveland said. \u201cThey oppose candidates who have been thoroughly vetted by the charter-mandated Selection Panel but cannot give you one example of anything that Omar Farmer has ever done that would disqualify him. They\u2019re simply here to oppose oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oakland City Council voted to reject two members of the Oakland Police Commission in a move that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,19905,19906,15634,723,2451,734,2500,143,10000,145,144,2453,407,19907,15635,8763],"class_list":["post-26240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-alameda-county","tag-anti-police-terror-project","tag-appointments","tag-coalition-for-police-accountability","tag-crime","tag-floyd-mitchell","tag-law-enforcement","tag-leadership","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-city-hall","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-oakland-police-commission","tag-oakland-police-department","tag-pamela-price","tag-police-chief","tag-policing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}