Time to probe corruption in Oakland City Hall

Chip Johnson

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Whether Oakland City Administrator Deborah Edgerly leaves office quietly or fights tooth and nail to keep her job, it's time for a higher authority to take a look at operations inside Oakland City Hall during her term in office.

A police investigation dubbed Operation Nutcracker, which resulted in the arrests of 56 suspected gang members last week, also raised suspicions about Edgerly's intervention on behalf of her nephew, William Lovan, who was among those arrested.

[Related story: Edgerly at work in Oakland with no authority]

In cracking open the activities of a violent street gang, the police investigation has opened up a Pandora's box in City Hall.

The two stories converged on June 7 when Edgerly showed up at a West Oakland liquor store as police questioned Lovan, and intervened on his behalf, police say. According to a police report, Edgerly bullied officers and threatened an internal Police Department probe - presumably aimed at their actions.

This wasn't the first time that Edgerly has intervened on behalf of a co-worker, friend or family member, police sources say:

-- Two years ago, Edgerly and Assistant City Administrator Cheryl Thompson showed up and made similar threats when police arrested Thompson's son, also a city employee, for disorderly conduct outside a bar in downtown Oakland. He remains a city employee.

-- Last year, Debra Taylor-Johnson, a civilian police employee, was called into an administrative hearing by Police Department officials for vouching for a recently hired employee. The employee she endorsed was hired under an alias and had arrest warrants issued for identity theft and welfare fraud, authorities confirmed. But when officials recommended Taylor-Johnson's dismissal, Edgerly stepped in, overturned the decision and approved the expenditure to keep her friend employed.

-- Two years ago, nothing was done when allegations of illegal kickbacks were raised against District Six City Councilwoman Desley Brooks, another of Edgerly's allies, after police investigators linked bank deposits made by the mother of one of Brooks' employees to several personal checks for $1,200 written to Brooks (exactly half the employee's paycheck).

On Friday, Taylor-Johnson was among a handful of Edgerly supporters demonstrating inside Oakland City Hall after news reports that Mayor Ron Dellums had given Edgerly an ultimatum to retire, resign or be fired in the wake of her alleged actions in the gang investigation.

Brooks, too, came to Edgerly's defense Friday, notifying Dellums' office by e-mail that the mayor had no authority to take control of city agencies - if you can believe that.

Through all the smoke and mirrors surrounding the latest debacle, it's obvious to the average Oakland resident - like me - that there is something terribly wrong with the way business is conducted in Oakland City Hall.

Since former Mayor Jerry Brown appointed Edgerly four years ago, she has changed hiring policies in the Police Department to the benefit of her daughter, a then-struggling police recruit. And last year, Edgerly ordered a change in the annual Fire Department recruiting call, with disastrous results. Some candidates were hand-picked by friends in the department while solid recruits, some of whom waited in line for days, were overlooked. The city had to toss out the process and start over.

The city's finance and management division includes nearly a dozen relatives of Edgerly and Thompson. One of Edgerly's sons works for the city's Office of Information Technology.

And if you're waiting for the Oakland City Council to stand up and be heard, don't hold your breath. There hasn't been one peep from anyone on the council on this matter. Nothing. It's as if it doesn't exist. I don't know if the council's inaction is driven by apathy, fear or complacency, but they provide us with no alternatives.

This goes way beyond coincidence, and it's clear that the office of Brown, who is now California's attorney general, needs to get involved. It would also be appropriate given Brown's decision to hire Edgerly in 2004.

There are so many errors in Oakland's hiring practices that it's a wonder the bad guys haven't ended up with access to the personal information of our police officers. Before his arrest last week, Mark Candler, the purported leader of the Acorn street gang, the target of the police raids, boasted to police that he could get all the information he needed about them anytime he wanted.

And when he was arrested in a raid at a house in the 1000 block of Filbert Street in Oakland last year, he proved it. He called his mother upon his arrest and when she arrived, police were shocked to see a woman they recognized: Candler's mother was a civilian employee assigned to the department's personnel files on the building's fifth floor. She was dismissed.

Dellums clearly doesn't have the resolve to act. Edgerly was in her office Monday and it was business as usual, and the city administrator attended a staff meeting led by Dellums as if nothing was happening. The dysfunction and corruption in City Hall has spread beyond local government's ability to address it.

Oakland desperately needs some help - and quickly.


Chip Johnson's column appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays. E-mail him at chjohnson@sfchronicle.com.

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