Oakland has a new, permanent police chief. Mayor Barbara Lee recently named James Beere to the job, after he\u2019d already spent seven months running the department as interim chief.<\/p>\n
I talked with our public safety reporter, Roselyn Romero, about who Beere is, how he landed one of the hardest jobs in Oakland city government, and why it\u2019s been so difficult for any OPD chief to hold onto that job for long. <\/p>\n
We also got into what Beere is walking into right now: a department on the verge of finally exiting 23 years of federal oversight, but still short-staffed, still working through an overtime crisis, and currently negotiating a new police union contract.<\/p>\n
\u2014 Tasneem Raja, editor-in-chief, The Oaklandside<\/p>\n
This is an edited transcript of Oaklandside 510. You can read it below or listen to the episode on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0YouTube<\/a>, or anywhere you get podcasts.<\/p>\n Tasneem: Let\u2019s start with the basics. Who is James Beere?<\/p>\n Roselyn Romero, Oaklandside public safety reporter: He\u2019s a nearly 30-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department. He started as a patrol officer back in 1997, and he\u2019s worked his way up through the ranks ever since: sergeant, commander, deputy chief, and finally assistant chief. He spent years in OPD\u2019s Special Victims Unit.<\/p>\n He\u2019s also an Oakland resident. He and his wife have lived here for about three decades, and they raised three sons who all went through Oakland public schools.<\/p>\n And he has a military background too, right?<\/p>\n He does. Before joining OPD, Beere served in the U.S. Marine Corps. He did a seven-month tour in Iraq, where he was shot in the hand. A couple of months later, he suffered a concussion and inner ear damage when a homemade bomb exploded under his vehicle. His unit was later credited with foiling an ambush. He received a Purple Heart.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a lot of history even before he put on an OPD badge.<\/p>\n Right. And once he did, he had a pretty colorful career. Early on, as a narcotics officer, he raided a West Oakland home and found a hidden bunker stocked with food and water, run by a \u201csurvivalist\u201d who also had Nazi paraphernalia.<\/p>\n Years later, while Beere was working undercover with OPD\u2019s Vice and Child Exploitation Unit, a man who was impersonating a police officer actually tried to pull Beere over on International Boulevard. Another time, Beere was trying to arrest a man accused of indecent exposure at Lake Merritt. The man punched Beere in the mouth and both of them ended up in the hospital.<\/p>\n Point being, Beere has seen a lot of different kinds of action on the street and worked with a lot of different units. He knows this department, and he knows public safety in Oakland.<\/p>\n Okay, let\u2019s get into how he became OPD\u2019s new police chief. Walk us through the timeline.<\/p>\n Beere was an assistant chief, a No. 2 to the police chief, when Mayor Barbara Lee announced that his boss, Floyd Mitchell, was leaving. Beere stepped in as interim chief soon after.<\/p>\n That announcement came during a really difficult week for Oakland. Skyline High School had just gone into lockdown after a student was shot on campus<\/a>, and Laney College\u2019s longtime football coach, John Beam, had just been shot and killed<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then, in March, Beere sat down with us and said he\u2019d applied to be the department\u2019s permanent chief. By then, he\u2019d already overseen a lot: rebuilding the fire violence prevention strategy, re-signing a ShotSpotter contract to keep gunshot detection in Oakland, extending Flock surveillance cameras in Oakland. <\/p>\n He told us he wanted the job for good.<\/p>\n And I understand from your reporting that the Police Commission ran the search. That\u2019s Oakland\u2019s civilian police oversight group.<\/p>\n They did, with help from an outside recruiting firm, Ralph Andersen and Associates. It took about six months. In early June, commissioners sent Mayor Lee a shortlist of three finalists.<\/p>\n One thing that was different this time: the commission kept the finalists\u2019 names confidential. In the past, they\u2019ve publicized candidates so the public could weigh in. But commissioners said past applicants told them they wouldn\u2019t have applied if they had known that their names would be made public, and the recruiting firm gave similar guidance.<\/p>\n So we don\u2019t know who the other two finalists were.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t. But in the end, Lee picked the person who\u2019d already been running the department for seven months \u2014 and had frankly done a lot and faced a lot in the job in that short time.<\/p>\n What did the mayor say about why she chose him?<\/p>\n She talked a lot about stability. At a press conference last week, she said Oakland has cycled through too much turnover in police leadership, and that Beere has earned the trust of both officers and community partners. <\/p>\n City Council President Kevin Jenkins was there too, and he pointed out that Beere actually lives in Jenkins\u2019 own East Oakland district. He called it a great hire.<\/p>\n And Beere himself, what\u2019s he been saying about the job?<\/p>\n He\u2019s talked a lot about the department\u2019s federal oversight program, which is finally close to wrapping up<\/a> after 23 years.<\/p>\n At the press conference, he said that even after Oakland exits federal court oversight, the underlying reforms aren\u2019t going anywhere. He put it this way: they\u2019re \u201cstitched into the fabric of this police department.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk about why keeping a police chief in that seat has been so hard historically, because this is a real pattern in Oakland, right?<\/p>\n It really is. When Mitchell resigned last fall, one longtime OPD deputy chief pointed out he was the sixteenth police chief she\u2019d seen come through during her time at the department. Go back through Oakland\u2019s history since the early \u201990s,<\/a> and there\u2019s chief after chief who got pushed out for political reasons, left in the middle of a scandal, or only lasted a matter of months.<\/p>\n Back in 2016, after then-Chief Sean Whent abruptly resigned amid a police sexual exploitation scandal, the city cycled through two more chiefs in about two weeks; one lasted six days, the other just two, before the city administrator herself had to step in and run the department. That whole crisis is actually what led voters to create Oakland\u2019s civilian Police Commission later that year.<\/p>\n Part of what makes this job so hard is all the layers of oversight. Whoever holds this job answers to three different authorities, any of whom can remove them: the mayor, the civilian Police Commission, and the federal monitor overseeing the reform program. <\/p>\n On top of that, they\u2019re managing a department that\u2019s chronically understaffed, in a city with a long, complicated history with policing.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk more about staffing, because that\u2019s been a constant headache.<\/p>\n It really has. Back in March, when Beere sat down with us, OPD was authorized for 678 officers but had only about 500 actually on the street. The department\u2019s own inspector general found OPD would need 877 officers<\/a> just to maintain its current level of service, let alone improve it. Beere told us what the city really needs, long-term, is closer to 1,200.<\/p>\n Beere pointed out that Oakland\u2019s population has grown by tens of thousands of people since OPD had officers back around 2010. The department hasn\u2019t caught up.<\/p>\n What\u2019s he doing to try to close that gap?<\/p>\n He\u2019s leaned hard on recruitment. Under his watch, OPD graduated 14 trainees from one academy class in December, had 18 more coming through in the following class, and was expecting more than 40 in the class that started in April.<\/p>\n He also brought back OPD\u2019s cadet program, which gives high schoolers a paid pathway into the department. Historically, cadets who go on to the police academy graduate at a rate of over 90%.<\/p>\n How is Beere approaching police overtime? That\u2019s been a major story of ours this year.<\/p>\n We worked with freelance investigative reporter Beck Klein on a bombshell reporting series<\/a> that we published in the spring. Beck found that one OPD officer was paid nearly half a million dollars in overtime in 2024, and the department couldn\u2019t even document almost half of those hours.<\/p>\n Shortly after that story ran, Beere issued a special order canceling<\/a> discretionary, or voluntary, overtime. Now, extra shifts need approval from his office, and commanders have to justify overtime requests with actual data. He told the City Council at the time, \u201cI live here, I\u2019m raising my kids here.\u201d He said this spending feels personal for him as a taxpayer.<\/p>\n Has it worked?<\/p>\n It\u2019s a start. But the bigger fix, a real digital scheduling and overtime tracking system, isn\u2019t expected to be up and running until at least the end of next year.<\/p>\n And right now, OPD\u2019s police union contract has just expired, and it\u2019s still being negotiated. Community advocates want that new contract to lower the overtime limit, which currently lets officers accrue up to 300 hours a year, well above the regional average of around 190 hours. <\/p>\n They also want to finally activate GPS trackers<\/a> showing where patrol cars are. These GPS trackers are already installed in OPD cars, but they haven\u2019t been turned on for over a year.<\/p>\n Sounds like Beere is stepping into the permanent job right as a lot of these fights are coming to a head.<\/p>\n He is. And just this week, we got a reminder of how fast things can move. OPD officers fatally shot<\/a> a person near Fruitvale who they say was armed \u201cwith bladed weapons.\u201d It\u2019s the third officer-involved shooting in Oakland this year.<\/p>\n Beere spoke to reporters at the scene but didn\u2019t share many details, saying the investigation is ongoing. <\/p>\n And because OPD encrypted its radios last year, we weren\u2019t able to independently confirm much about how the incident unfolded. That story is still developing; we\u2019ll keep reporting on it.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s close on this: what does it seem like Oakland actually needs from its next chief, based on everything you\u2019ve reported?<\/p>\n Trust and access, honestly. Floyd Mitchell barely spoke to reporters<\/a> his whole time here; he did one real sit-down interview in 19 months.<\/p>\n When Mayor Lee\u2019s office was asked what she wanted in the next chief, her office said building public trust requires \u201ctransparency and open communication with the public.\u201d<\/p>\n Beere, at least so far, has been more available. When he announced he was applying for the permanent job back in March, his department actually set up a press day so local outlets could each get one-on-one time with him. <\/p>\n