“As a Mayor of Oakland I am here to run a police department, not a frat house”, Schaaf said.
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“I believe that the leadership at this time is critical in order to build confidence that the culture of this department does not tolerate unethical behavior, sexual misconduct or lying”, Schaff said when she announced Fairow’s ouster and the appointment of Paul Figueroa as interim chief. When Chief Howard Jordan resigned in May 2013, the assistant chief assigned to replace him on an interim basis served for two days before Whent took over. One of the officers under investigation in the text scandal has been placed on leave, she said.
“This is an effort to reassure the public that we are taking swift action to address every instance of misconduct”, Schaaf said in the statement released with City Administrator Sabrina Landreth.
She only said that Figueroa would take a leave of absence because he was “unable to fulfill the functions of the Acting Chief of Police”, according to CBS News.
Schaaf insisted that the new texting investigation was separate from the sex scandal and that the investigation should be completed within a week or two.
The scandal echoes one that claimed the job of San Francisco’s police chief last month after it emerged officers had been sending texts describing minorities as “barbarians” and “cockroaches”.
Newly implicated departments have said they are investigating the allegations.
An 18-year-old woman, who goes by the name of Celeste Guap, has alleged that two dozen current and former officers in five cities had sex with her while she walking the streets.
“Both the police chief and fire chief on a day-to-day basis have been reporting directly to me, so that structure does not change in this scenario going forward”, said Landreth.
A sex scandal involving a teenage prostitute that has enveloped the Oakland Police Department and spread to four other area police agencies now has reached the district attorney’s office, where an investigator was placed on leave.
“I want to assure the citizens of Oakland that we are hell-bent on rooting out this disgusting culture”, she said angrily.
The mayor would not comment on the size of the test scandal, only that is was smaller than the number of officer involved in the sex scandal.
The new investigation adds to the confusion surrounding City Hall and the Police Department as officials grapple with an internal investigation involving an underage sex worker and her suspected interactions with multiple Oakland police officers and sworn personnel from several other law enforcement agencies. “The important thing is, I’m trying to fix it and fix it quickly”, she said. O’Brien’s wife appears to have killed herself a year earlier (January 2014), though her death was initially investigated as a homicide in which O’Brien was questioned.
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Paul Figueroa was appointed acting chief on Wednesday when his predecessor Ben Fairow was sacked after six days.
