OAKLAND — James Beere, the interim police chief in this city, will serve permanently as the top cop, staying at the helm of a department that historically has faced high turnover in leadership.
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Mayor Barbara Lee announced Thursday she had hired Beere from a shortlist of four final candidates, capping a nearly eight-month search to replace the previous chief.
Beere, a 29-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department who has served as interim chief since last November, will now lead OPD full-time as it reaches the cusp of exiting two decades of oversight by a federal court.
Indeed, a key test of Beere’s tenure as chief will center around whether Judge William Orrick later this year decides to relinquish OPD from his watch — a long-anticipated milestone that the city is arguably closer than ever to surpassing.
Orrick has praised Beere, who appears to have developed a strong relationship with Lee, regularly appearing alongside the mayor at news conferences and public events.
It is a departure from the more reserved approach of former Chief Floyd Mitchell, who resigned last October after clashing with the civilian Oakland Police Commission, a volunteer body that also oversees the department and its leadership.
That the department answers to Orrick, the commission and the mayor alike has led past police chiefs to publicly rail against having so many bosses.
Beere, however, has steered clear of the city’s tangled politics, instead emphasizing in public statements and interviews his love for Oakland across three decades living here.
“My wife and I have raised three boys here, all three in the Oakland public schools,” he told this news organization in March. “This is home.”
Beere had applied for the job when it was last vacant but failed to emerge as a finalist in the recruitment that led to Mitchell’s hiring in 2024.
OPD has seen chiefs come and go in rapid succession over the past decade, including two separate times where the city cycled through three police chiefs in the span of a week. Ten people have led the department since 2015.
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Across the 21st century, meanwhile, OPD has faced a staggering number of controversies, beginning with the infamous Riders brutality cases that first led the department to be placed under federal oversight in 2003.
Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who preceded Mitchell, was fired in 2023 amid alleged failures by internal affairs investigators to discipline a cop involved in a hit-and-run.
Armstrong unsuccessfully led a public campaign to be reinstated, saying his firing had been a ploy by federal officials who oversee OPD’s affairs to remain in power.
The next year, nearly all of OPD’s remaining command staff was fired by civilian investigators who determined that the department’s higher-ups had mishandled a probe into alleged misconduct by Detective Phong Tran, who now awaits a felony trial on charges that he bribed a murder witness.
But where Armstrong and later Mitchell criticized all the scrutiny they faced amid OPD’s various scandals, Beere has taken a more diplomatic approach.
Lee, after taking office, appointed high-ranking city official Michelle Phillips to an administrative role ensuring “constitutional policing” in Oakland. Beere accepted the fresh layer of bureaucratic oversight.
Orrick, in turn, has enthusiastically praised OPD’s newfound direction, signaling he could formally end the court’s oversight as soon as this fall.
“No one can say ‘Mission accomplished,’” the judge said, in remarks at a hearing in May. “But I do congratulate the city and OPD on getting this far.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at [email protected].
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