The Oakland City Council voted to reject two members of the Oakland Police Commission in a move that could complicate the city’s search for a new police chief.
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.
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.
“To see that there were only seven applications for something as consequential as the Police Commission is really surprising,” said Councilmember Janani Ramachandran.
Councilmember Charlene Wang said she was dismayed by the paucity of applicants.
Now that the council rejected Garcia-Acosta and Farmer, the potentially months-long process to find new applicants reverts back to the city’s Police Commission Selection Panel.
Both men are allowed to continue serving on the commission in a “hold-over” capacity so the OPC can continue to do its work.
If they choose not to, however, the nine-member commission — two of whom are alternates — will have only five commissioners, since there were already two vacant seats prior to Tuesday’s vote last week.
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.
Mayor Barbara Lee said Wednesday that the council’s vote won’t “delay or disrupt the Chief of Police selection timeline.”
While the councilmembers mainly discussed the candidate selection process prior to the vote, members of the public focused on the candidates themselves.
Several of their opponents implied that the pair represent the “status quo” 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.
Mitchell didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment,.
Brenda Grisham, an organizer in the successful recall 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 over concerns about crime, among other things.
“We have had six police chiefs in the past five years and they’re leaving because Oakland has a toxic relationship with our Police Department,” Ngo said.
Rajni Mandal said Farmer has “acted outside the Police Commission’s charter authority” and sent a letter to the city alleging misconduct.
OPC Selection Panel member Rickisha Herron said she found no evidence to support that claim or others made by Farmer’s opponents.
‘A right-wing power grab’
The police watchdog group Anti-Police Terror Project called the vote “a right-wing power grab” and said the commission’s own lawyer “confirmed in writing that every single claim in Rajni Mandal’s 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.”‘
Farmer said the “attack on my character is extremely offensive.”
“I really feel like this is some sort of political hit job,” he said, adding that he’s 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.
Garcia-Acosta acknowledged that the OPC has been “under attack.”
“There have been folks in this city who do not want to see strong civilian oversight” but that Mitchell “embraced our vision of oversight” and collaboration, he said.
“So when you all hear things in the news that we’re against the Police Department, when you hear things in the public that our efforts are hindering public safety, that’s just flat out not true,” Garcia-Acosta said.
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.
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.
“I think the previous speakers are a perfect example of the misinformation that has circulated in this city,” Cleveland said. “They 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’re simply here to oppose oversight.”
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