Oakland has a new, permanent police chief. Mayor Barbara Lee recently named James Beere to the job, after he’d already spent seven months running the department as interim chief.
I talked with our public safety reporter, Roselyn Romero, about who Beere is, how he landed one of the hardest jobs in Oakland city government, and why it’s been so difficult for any OPD chief to hold onto that job for long.
We also got into what Beere is walking into right now: a department on the verge of finally exiting 23 years of federal oversight, but still short-staffed, still working through an overtime crisis, and currently negotiating a new police union contract…