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OAKLAND — The city’s police commission fired Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, who became the city’s first female chief of police three years ago, in a special meeting Thursday night.
The decision was made unanimously by the police commission and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf during a closed session.
The commission chair, Regina Jackson, said in a statement that the panel had, since its inception in 2016, “observed the Oakland Police Department’s failure to increase compliance with the court-ordered reforms” required under a federal settlement more than a decade ago.
The commission voted to request that Schaaf join the commission in firing Kirkpatrick, and the mayor agreed. Schaaf cited in a statement the voter-approved Measure LL, which allows the police commission and the mayor to jointly dismiss the chief without cause.
“The Police Commission is the community’s voice in our system of checks and balances, and I respect its authority and its role,” Schaaf said in a written statement. “In 2016, Oakland voters created the strongest and most independent Police Commission in America. Tonight, the commissioners exercised their power.
“As Mayor, it is my duty to determine when the trust between The Police Commission and the Police Chief has become irrevocably lost and prevents Oakland from moving forward,” Schaaf said in a statement.
The Oakland police union expressed disappointment over the firing.
“Chief Anne Kirkpatrick was a well-respected leader of the Oakland Police Department and was making significant progress in bringing stability to OPD,” Oakland Police Officers’ Association President Barry Donelan said in a statement. “But fighting for Oakland’s residents and Police Officers alike does not endear you to Oakland’s unelected Police Commissioners and our Mayor.”
Kirkpatrick took over the top cop job in February 2017, succeeding former Chief Sean Whent, the fourth chief of the department since 2009, and two interim chiefs who served briefly after him.
At the time, she was tasked with bringing reform and accountability to an embattled department that had been under federal oversight for more than a decade. The agency was also reeling from a sexual misconduct scandal in which officers were charged with having sex with the teenage daughter of a police dispatcher who was underage and giving her confidential police information.
But Kirkpatrick has faced sharp criticism over the discipline she handed out to officers who shot and killed a homeless man in 2018.
Records released under a new police transparency law last year showed growing tensions between the police department and federal monitor Robert Warshaw, who reports to a federal judge and has broad powers over the department.
Kirkpatrick went against recommendations of her own commanders, who found that senior officers made mistakes at the scene of the shooting of Joshua Pawlik, 31, in 2018, Warshaw found. Pawlik was shot and killed in North Oakland after police found him asleep with a gun next to him.
While the community police review agency and Kirkpatrick had cleared the officers of wrongdoing, both the federal monitor and the city Police Commission called for the firing of the five officers.
Federal oversight has dragged on for almost two decades as the department has struggled to comply with a negotiated settlement agreement reached in 2003 stemming from the Riders police misconduct case. What has mostly prevented the department complying with the federal court-ordered reform is disputes about officer use of force.
Still, Schaaf expressed gratitude for the “stability” Kirkpatrick had brought to the department.
“Under her leadership, Oakland saw one of its lowest periods of gun violence and officer-involved shootings, as well as new anti-racial profiling policies that significantly reduced discretionary stops of African Americans,” Schaaf said.
Prior to coming to Oakland, Kirkpatrick was a bureau chief at the Chicago Police Department, tasked with implementing reforms in the wake of the fatal police shooting of a teenager shot 16 times in 2014.
She started her police career in 1982 as an officer in her native Memphis, Tenn. She attended law school and moved to Washington state, where she later served as chief of police in three cities, including six years in Spokane from 2006 to 2012.
Darren Allison, assistant chief of police, will serve as acting chief until an interim leader is appointed. Kirkpatrick could not immediately be reached for comment.
