The police department in Oakland, the northern California city across the bay from San Francisco, is the latest urban law enforcement agency in the United States to lose its top cop following a wave of scandals.
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According to Schaaf, Figueroa’s decision to leave is unrelated to the two department scandals now under investigation-at least 14 Oakland police are embroiled in a sexual misconduct case involving a teenage sex worker, and new allegation emerged Friday that officers exchanged racist text messages, including images of the KKK.
BART Police Chief Kenton Rainey offered a possible explanation: He said Fairow had disclosed an extramarital affair that had taken place a decade ago.
She said the inquiry does not involve Figueroa, the LA Times reported, but several African American officers who sent and received messages deemed “wholly inappropriate and not acceptable from anyone who wears the badge of the Oakland Police Department”.
A member of the Oakland Police Department has been has been placed on administrative leave and is subject to an investigation of alleged criminal misconduct.
Schaaf said one officer has been placed on leave for sending or receiving racist text messages.
A racist text messaging scandal could potentially further embarrass a department which is already wracked by a widening scandal concerning the alleged sexual exploitation of a teenage girl. But Kaplan expressed concern about the police department’s ability to investigate its own. She told CBS San Francisco that the officers gave her heads up on prostitution stings.
“I have informed the Mayor and City Administrator that can not fulfill the functions of the Acting Chief of Police for the City of Oakland and I am stepping aside to take leave”.
Fairow was then quickly replaced by Interim Chief Paul Figueroa, who resigned only two days after he was announced as the police chief. Another scandal in the beleaguered department involves a veteran Oakland homicide investigator. Figueroa, as acting chief, was the fifth chief in Oakland since 2013.
The department has been operating under federal oversight since 2003 because of past failures to adequately hold officers accountable for misdeeds that included planting evidence and robbing residents in predominantly black west Oakland.
Acting Police CHief Paul Figueroa stepped down from the job after two days and has taken leave.
The deputies met the woman through Facebook, but she was 18 at the time, officials said. It’s been a tumultuous eight days in the Oakland Police Department. Three of those officers, she claims, had sex with her when she was a minor, including Brendan O’Brien, the officer who committed suicide and left a note claiming he and other officers had had sex with Guap.
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A group named the Anti Police-Terror Project organized the protest and said in a statement Friday that they have demands, which include the release of the names of implicated officers, the firing of officers who were aware of the incident but did not act and the inclusion of the community in appointing the next city’s Chief of Police.
