[We began by talking about Chief Armstrong’s reaction to the Police Commission including him on its list to be the new Chief—a list Thao wouldn’t even consider.]
SH: Did you know your name was on the Police Commission’s short list for Police Chief?
LA: I did not.
SH: You had no idea until the media reported it?
LA: Well, I still don’t have actual confirmation [of being on the list]. The media has reported what they’ve reported, but nothing has been sent to me in writing, nothing has been communicated directly to me about who the finalists were.
SH: Were you surprised you were on that list?
LA: No, I wasn’t surprised. I clearly know what it takes to lead this police department forward. I clearly know how to build trust in this community. I clearly have care and compassion for the people of Oakland. Any process, those things are going to come out, that I truly understand how to run this police department, and so I feel confident that I did my best in the process.
SH: Were you surprised when Thao threw out the whole list?
LA: No. I mean, it’s always surprising when you hear that things like that happen. But I really wasn’t surprised. I think she was pretty vocal through the media about how she felt about me as a candidate, which I think is completely unfair. And it continues to be retaliation. When an independent judge was hired by the city of Oakland to be the arbitrator of my appeal, and that appeal comes back where I’m exonerated of all allegations, it seems like I should be able to have a fair—you know, be treated fairly in the process. But clearly, it was continued, the same allegations, the same things were continued to be used against me. And that’s why I wasn’t selected.
SH: One of the criticisms of the Police Commission was that all three candidates were flawed in some way—
LA: Yes.
SH: Not just you, because she’d already said she wouldn’t consider you. But the other two, whatever their issues were. Do you share that criticism, that the Police Commission should have known better than to forward those three names?
LA: No. I think what’s fair in any process is, if you have a process where there are steps in that process, and the individuals competing in that process score higher than other candidates, you have to be true to the process and not say, “Oh, I don’t like this person, so I’m not going to move them forward.” If that person scores #1, and that person scored #2 and that person scored #3, those are your three top candidates.
SH: That was their job, to choose the three top candidates.
LA: That’s exactly what it requires.
SH: Not to take into consideration all these peripheral—
LA: Exactly. You take the three top candidates, right? And you do a background. All of us were given a background investigation. And if you’re doing a background with all three candidates, and none of the three candidates have any issues that would preclude you from hiring them, then there doesn’t seem to me to be a reason why you should eliminate them. So I think, in this case, if three candidates do really well in the process, they score high and they’re the highest three candidates, and the background is conducted, and there’s no issues in their background that would prevent them from being hired, then the only fair thing in the process is to move the names forward.
SH: Are you considering a lawsuit?
LA: Yes. I am. My team is preparing to file that lawsuit. I’ve continued to face retaliation, I continue to face public criticism, I continue to face misinformation being put out to the public, and I’ve been quiet, really, in most cases not responding.
SH: Yeah, you’ve been laying low.
LA: Because Oakland doesn’t deserve this. Oakland doesn’t deserve people sharing misinformation with the public, or trying to ruin people’s reputation.
SH: Give me an example of this misinformation.
LA: Well, the most recent article that came out, that suggested that Chief Armstrong wasn’t a supporter of Ceasefire. And that he, you know, wasn’t making sure that Ceasefire got the support it needed. [Editor: Chief Armstrong appears to refer to a San Francisco Chronicle article, from Jan. 12, 2024, that implies Armstrong restructured OPD’s Violent Crimes Operations Center and in the process “prioritized solving past crimes and failed to cut violence.”] That was an absolute false statement, when the record can clearly show how I’m the original officer that helped bring Ceasefire to the city of Oakland.
SH: Ceasefire ceased in 2019?
LA: It never ceased. The only thing that happened was when the pandemic took off, the entire city of Oakland’s working force was allowed to work from home. That included the entire Department of Violence Prevention [of which Ceasefire is part]. The only people that were still working everyday and showing up every day were the police officers, and we had a Ceasefire team that was working. But we didn’t have a violence prevention team that could go out into the community and meet with the individuals that were involved in violence. They couldn’t do it, because the pandemic was happening, and they couldn’t do face-to-face life coaching, like they had been doing for several years.
SH: So what is your opinion of Ceasefire?
LA: I believe Ceasefire’s a great program. And I believe it works.
SH: Are you familiar with Baltimore’s experience with Ceasefire?
LA: Yes.
SH: Even their mayor, who was boosting Ceasefire, came out and said it was a failure. The goals were not clear, the people who were selected, why were they selected? There was no followup or transparency.
LA: Well, I think other cities have tried to implement Ceasefire in a way that maybe was ineffective for them. I can tell you that we in Oakland implemented Ceasefire in a way that showed substantial decreases in violent crime and homicides.
SH: That could be attributed to Ceasefire?
LA: That could be attributed to Ceasefire. Because I think it is a matter of making sure you have strong intelligence to focus on the right people. It is a matter of having the resources to be able to provide the support needed for those you’re asking to turn their lives around. And when you go through a pandemic like we went through in Oakland, and all of those things…this strategy is a stick-and-carrot approach. The two things that worked against us in the pandemic were, we didn’t have the carrot because our Department of Violence Prevention and our street outreach team couldn’t go out in the community and interact with the people involved in violence. That was the first issue. That truly undermined the strategy. The second thing we couldn’t do was hold people in the Alameda County jail because the jail had restrictions on keeping people in custody because of the virus. And so, when our officers were making arrests—individuals that were armed, individuals that were involved in certain crimes—they weren’t being held in custody like they had been before. So, when people talk about, “Yeah, did things happen in the streets?”, sure they did, because we couldn’t practice it the same way we did previously, because things didn’t work. But I think many cities across the country dealt with the fact that the COVID virus had an impact on the way that you police your community. And I think we had begun to reestablish the program in 2022. If you look at the numbers of homicides in 2021, I took over mid-year in 2021, I had to get a hold of command staff, we were still within the pandemic. I was the first executive in the city of Oakland to force all of my employees, my civilian employees, to come back to work, and no longer could they telecommute, because I needed everybody on the ground to address public safety. So there took some time for us to get this back up and running in 2021. And by 2022, we had begun again to have call-ins, and meet with people, and the strategy was beginning to mobilize.
SH: And 2022 was the Summer of Murder.
LA: 2022, it was a really bad one. And we still finished the year down 12 percent in homicides. We still finished the year down 20% in shootings. So when people are suggesting that the crime—when I left office, in early 2023, the previous year crime was declining. And now, it’s unfortunate that I have to hear that I’m responsible for crime increasing in 2023, when I wasn’t even in office. [Thao fired Armstrong on Feb. 15, 2023.] It’s ridiculous to suggest that. And the Chronicle and other media that were putting that out attributed it to me. How could they attribute it to me? I wasn’t there.
SH: Ceasefire people say there’s really only a few hundred people doing the same thing [violent crimes] over and over again. Does that go along with your experience?
LA: Yes. There is a small number of people–
SH: Does a list exist? Do you guys know who they are?
LA: Well, I won’t say we know them individually, like all 600 of them, right? Research says that one percent of your population is truly the drivers of crime. Now that would be 4,000 or 4,500 people in Oakland, but really it is not. It’s literally point .01. So 450 people might be driving that crime. Now, we know who a significant number of those people are. But also, we have challenges from people from other cities coming into our city. So one of the things that we know, even in the year 2022, we had a significant increase in the number of shootings that we attributed to San Francisco gangs. We have a number of shootings that we attributed to gangs that were outside the city of Oakland, whether it was Richmond or even some groups that had connection to Antioch. I mean, these were challenges that went beyond the norm for us. And so the suggestion that there’s a small number of people who are driving it is true.
SH: I’ve always assumed your average cop on the beat kind of knows in that neighborhood who the criminals are.
LA: Yeah.
SH: Because that’s what they do, right? If the authorities know who they are, why is it so hard to stop them?
LA: Well, knowing or believing—because I don’t think you know, because if you knew, you could do something. People have theories about who might be engaged in crime, but theories don’t lead to arrests. Evidence leads to arrests, right? And then, we also have to make sure that we don’t allow our biases to contribute to why we believe somebody’s involved in crime. And that’s why you really allow information and evidence to be the driver of who it is that you bring in and address as people involved in crime. And that’s why I think Ceasefire works, because Ceasefire is designed around intelligence gathering. So when you do have conversations with people, they’re the right people. I think you mentioned that in Baltimore they said they weren’t getting the right people in the room. But that’s one thing we have been pretty successful with in Oakland, is identifying the right people.
SH: There’s skepticism, which I share, that you take a kid, and he ends up on Ceasefire’s list, you have these interrupters, or whatever they’re called, and they sit down and have a chat, and the skepticism is, that’s not going to do anything.
LA: Well, I think the reality of what happens is that they get a dual message. They don’t just get a message from the violence interrupters, they get a message from the Ceasefire law enforcement team, too. So OPD officers can also meet with the individual and tell that individual, “Hey, I know who you are. I know where you live. I know what gang you’re in. I know what you’re engaged in.”
SH: Why would they not just laugh it off?
LA: Well, because one of the things about any criminal, anyone involved in crime, they hide under this idea of, you know, they like to go unknown. They like to be obscure from people, right? They want to commit crimes because the more that people know, the more likely you’re going to get caught. And so when they find out that police actually know who they are and where they live, they know we know where to come and serve a search warrant on you. We know where to find you, we know who your kid’s mother is, we know who your mother is, we know who your brother and sister are.
SH: We read over and over in the media that it’s almost a point of pride for some of the career criminals, it’s like, Jail or free, what the hell difference, it’s all the same to me. I don’t understand how a chat with Ceasefire people is going to—
LA: Well, the chat comes with a promise: After I’ve given you this message, you now are on a special list, which means if you step out of line and pick up a gun—because really it is about guns, it’s about reducing homicides and shootings—if you pick up a gun and you use it, we’re going to exhaust every resource we have to put you in custody.
[Tomorrow: Chief’s take on Pamela Price]
Steve Heimoff