A dinner celebration will be held in honor of Police Chief Anthony Batts tonight, who announced in August that he will leave the Long Beach Police Department after 27 years to head the Oakland Police Department. The event is being held at the Aquarium of the Pacific at 6:30pm.
Chief Batts began his career with the LBPD in 1982 and worked through the ranks to become Chief in 2002. Batts spoke with us in June for this extended interview about crime rates and budget challenges. The announcement of his departure was a shock to many in the city, including Batts himself, who was at the dentist when the announcement was made in Oakland. Rumor has it that Batts contacted Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata after he was urged to do so by a former Long Beach City Councilmember.
The move has been extremely high profile. The New York Times today runs a lengthy feature piece about the challenges that Chief Batts will face, likening the Oakland Police Department to the Raiders (ouch) and quoting Batts saying that the officers do good police work, then turn around and “do some very stupid things.” It’s clear that he’ll have his work cut out for him, and this excerpt from the Times piece by Jessie McKinley explains why Batts was chosen:
There are fewer than 800 officers in this city of 404,000. Long Beach, a city of 465,000, has more than 1,000. In Oakland, the force operates under a cloud. The behavior of a group of rogue officers a decade ago led to years of federal oversight, and the city continues to pay millions each year to settle police-related lawsuits. Other Bay Area cities have their own crime dramas — a new chief in San Francisco, charges of racial profiling by the police in San Jose, the Jaycee Dugard case in Antioch — but Oakland’s ocean of problems seems wider and deeper. And Oakland officials say it is exactly Mr. Batts’s record of managing several problems at once that appealed to them.
City Manager Pat West recently indicated that he will soon name an interim chief as the nationwide search for a permanent replacement continues. The Grunion Gazette this week reported that the hire will likely come from within the Department. Deputy Chief Robert Luna and Commander Jorge Cisneros have been pegged as two possible successors.