Thread: CA-Edgerly out as Oakland administrator-gang related

Edgerly out as Oakland administrator
Chip Johnson

Friday, June 20, 2008

This week Oakland police and other authorities arrested 56 suspected members of a street gang linked to several homicides and some of the restaurant takeover robberies that terrorized patrons.

Now there is another casualty in the case: City Administrator Deborah Edgerly.

The city's highest-ranking nonelected official will no longer have a job come Monday, because of what police say were her attempts to protect an alleged member of the gang, city sources said Thursday.

Never mind that Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums is making cautious public comments about the matter. Edgerly is out.

The mayor issued an ultimatum at a meeting Wednesday with Edgerly and Police Chief Wayne Tucker, three high-ranking city officials confirmed: She has until Monday to resign, retire or be fired.

None of the officials would speak on the record. Edgerly was not in her office Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

Her undoing began shortly after 8 p.m. June 7. According to police, that was when she showed up at a West Oakland liquor store where police were questioning William Lovan, 27, a suspected member of the Oakland gang and whom Edgerly described to officers as her "nephew.

Lovan told police he'd accidentally locked his keys inside a minivan with the engine running, according to a police report, and one more little thing - there was a gun in the vehicle.

Using the authority of her office, Edgerly demanded to know why police were towing Lovan's vehicle and vowed to contact Oakland Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan and Tucker when the officers refused to tell her, police say. She then promised an internal affairs investigation into the whole matter - and she is right about that.

It turns out that police were watching Lovan as part of a four-month investigation, dubbed Operation Nutcracker, aimed at bringing down the Acorn gang, whose base of operations was the city's Acorn Housing complex.

In the police report that describes Edgerly's exchange with the officers, there is reference to a conversation between Lovan and Mark Candler, 34, of Castro Valley, who has been identified by authorities as the leader of the gang.

No one was angrier with Edgerly's actions than the officers who'd spent four months working to develop the case, said one officer connected with the case.

"It's pretty discouraging when you're trying to reduce the violence in West Oakland to have a city official step in and make the officers feel as if they've done something wrong," he said.

And there are some within the Police Department who are angry that such a successful effort at reclaiming lawless portions of the city is somehow marred by the scandal involving Edgerly.

So the cumulative result of Edgerly's efforts don't add up to much: She is out of a job and Lovan is in jail awaiting trial on several felony charges, including murder, armed robbery and weapons charges.

Authorities recovered guns, drugs and cash from more than 30 locations in coordinated raids with more than a dozen other local and state law enforcement agencies.

For Edgerly, the worst may be yet to come. Authorities said she could be charged in connection with the case, but declined to elaborate.

Lovan, a repairman in the city's parking enforcement division, is one of several people in her family employed by the city, and there have been allegations that some of them may have sidestepped the city's required civil service application process.

This time it will be veteran Oakland police investigators, not bureaucratic underlings or outside consultants, who will be asking the questions.

Edgerly has requested - and received - concessions in the past from the Police Department, most notably a change in the city's physical training requirements to help her daughter's efforts to become a police officer.

Erin Breckenridge, her daughter, who still works as a civilian employee in the department, was provided with an unprecedented four opportunities to pass the academy training's physical skills test.

Even with all the messiness, Oakland city residents have come out ahead from the latest dysfunction in Oakland City Hall.

For the first time in Tucker's term as chief, he can point to an Oakland-led operation that resulted in a significant blow to treet crime.

"We simply have not had the manpower we needed but we are starting to get them," Tucker said, referring to an additional 70 officers being trained to hit the street by year's end.

"We have better technology, better staffing and we have the ability to focus on a long-term problem and look for a long-term impact. We've participated with federal raids taking on regional drug gangs, but the focus here was violent street gangs operating in Oakland - and this is only the beginning."

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

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 11CCEG.DTL

Edgerly has requested - and received - concessions in the past from the Police Department, most notably a change in the city's physical training requirements to help her daughter's efforts to become a police officer.

Erin Breckenridge, her daughter, who still works as a civilian employee in the department, was provided with an unprecedented four opportunities to pass the academy training's physical skills test.

Looks like nepotism is alive and well in Oakland! I'm sure her daughter is a real winner as well. I guess it's not what you know, but who you know! Or in this case, who your related to.

This is the kind of thing that we need to purge from our nation, as much as possible. As it pertains to our illegal invasion, as if this one example does not show that we have far enough of our own corrupt politicians, government officials and everyday criminals to deal with, but to have an invasion of the porportions we are dealing with, is more than we need.

Let's get out the illegal aliens, return them to their home nations and then clean up our own trash from within.