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OAKLAND — Fired Oakland police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick said Thursday that she will file a lawsuit against the city, and has retained a prominent San Francisco law firm to represent her.
Her announcement came as the Oakland Police Department’s former federal compliance director became the latest person to publicly blast the monitor overseeing the police force.
At a news conference Thursday morning, Kirkpatrick said in her three years atop the Oakland Police Department, she took concerns about “inappropriate behavior” to various administrators within City Hall.
“I am not one who thinks you settle everything through legal routes,” Kirkpatrick said. “But I will tell you today, I have made that decision. I am going to have to go forward through legal action.”
The Oakland Police Commission and Mayor Libby Schaaf on Feb. 20 jointly fired Kirkpatrick without cause, ending months of tension between the chief and the independent citizen board. Kirkpatrick has retained Keker Van Nest & Peters of San Francisco, she said Thursday.
In interviews with this news organization after Kirkpatrick’s termination, former Oakland chiefs Howard Jordan and Sean Whent, as well as former New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, have questioned monitor Robert Warshaw’s handling of OPD’s federal oversight program, now in its 17th year. Jordan joined Kirkpatrick at her news conference Thursday.
In a stunning development, Thomas Frazier, who was Oakland’s compliance director and worked alongside Warshaw until 2014, joined in the criticism of Warshaw, saying the monitor “saw me as a threat to his million-dollar-a-year gig.”
In 2014, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson removed Frazier as compliance director and gave Warshaw the position. Warshaw was hired as monitor in 2010, but his appointment as the department’s compliance director also greatly expanded his authority over the department.
Giving Warshaw both jobs, Frazier wrote in a statement Thursday, “created a conflict of interest.” Fraizer’s statement, which is believed to be his first public comments since his 2014 ouster, was released at Chief Kirkpatrick’s news conference.
“I am absolutely confident that I could have had the Oakland Police Department in compliance,” Frazier wrote in a statement. “I was six to eight months from completing the task when my contract was not renewed, I believe, at the behest of Robert Warshaw.
“Warshaw did his best to discredit me with the federal judge, which led to my departure. Clearly, he has continued to keep Oakland from ever reaching compliance because that would eliminate his job and his paycheck.”
Councilman Noel Gallo, who last week called on the federal government to take a closer look at the department’s oversight, plans to go to Washington, D.C., to speak with those officials in person.
“This monitor’s actions have vastly affected the dedicated and courageous officers of our police department,” Gallo said. “The monitor has caused extensive demoralization of the department to the extent that our citizens’ public safety is at risk at no fault of our officers.”
As part of a 2003 settlement in the Riders case, in which officers were accused of beating and planting drugs on West Oakland residents, Oakland police leaders agreed to achieve 52 reforms. The department is still eight tasks short, five of which were brought out of compliance under Chief Kirkpatrick.
Kirkpatrick did not say when she would file suit, or who would be named as defendants. Keker Van Nest & Peters also represents the city of Oakland, Alameda County and the Coliseum Authority, most notably in the ongoing legal battle against the Golden State Warriors over a roughly $40 million debt the authority says the team owes.
Having attorney John Keker represent Kirkpatrick required a waiver from the Oakland City Attorney’s Office, which did so this week. The firm practices wrongful termination cases but is better known for representing big names, such as Google, Major League Baseball and celebrities. Keker prosecuted Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal.
