THIS IS JUST GETTING RIDICULOUS

By Bob Walsh

The mayor of Oakland, California has just discarded the city’s third Chief of Police in slightly more than one week.

Mayor Libby Schaaf said that Acting Chief Paul Figueroa stepped down after two days as the top cop in the city. At the same time she denounced loudly the department’s “macho culture” vowed to root out the department’s “bad apples” and stated she was running a police department and not a frat party.

The mayor has not appointed a new interim chief. The department command staff are reporting to City Administrator Sabrina Landreth who will be directly responsible for personnel and disciplinary decisions. (I didn’t even know that a modern P.D. could legally function without a chief of some sort, even if in name only.)

The mayor is also quoted as saying yesterday, “This is the appropriate time to install civilian oversight in this police department. I want to assure the citizens of Oakland that we are hell bent on rooting out this disgusting culture.” The department is already under federal oversight.

Allegedly the mayor is looking for a new chief from outside the department with the following MQs for the gig:

A non-white asexual transgender with at least 20 years of experience as a police officer, at least seven years in an administrative or command position who has never had an excessive use-of-force complaint made against them, has never actually shot anybody and preferably has never fired a firearm in the line of duty.

Being a non-English speaking undocumented alien would appear to be a definite plus. With those qualifications, Mayor Libby Schaaf could rest assured that the applicant had never served on one of Mexico’s crooked, ass-kicking police departments.

Figueroa is now on a Leave of Absence. He has asked to return to the department as a Captain, not his previous rank of Assistant Chief. I am confident that there will be lots of applications to sort thru, or maybe not so many.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Shit, and here I always thought that a police department and a frat party were supposed to be one and the same.