Oakland’s stumbles: State says police force must have a chief

The turmoil in Oakland’s Police Department took another twist Monday, as state officials said Mayor Libby Schaaf’s plan to have the agency function without an acting police chief violated state law.

Acting Assistant Chief David Downing is now in charge of day-to-day decisions for the department, police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said Monday.

The state agency that oversees police standards notified Oakland on Monday that Schaaf’s temporary appointment of Landreth to oversee the department ran afoul of a law that specifies that a police department has to be run by a police chief, an agency spokesman said.

“They didn’t contact us for an opinion (Friday), so we didn’t offer one,” said Ralph Brown, a spokesman for the state Peace Officers Standards and Training agency, or POST.

[...] that changed Monday when the dust settled and state officials had a chance to speak to their POST contact inside the Police Department.

Brown cited state government code Section 38630, which says a police department must be under the control of a chief of police.

The mayor wouldn’t explain Figueroa’s decision but said it had nothing to do with a scandal in which several officers are under suspicion of having sex with a teenage sex worker.