By Rachel Swan
San Francisco Chronicle
OAKLAND, Calif. — A fourth Oakland police officer has been placed on administrative leave as a result of an ongoing sexual misconduct investigation by the police Internal Affairs Division, according to Oakland Police.
Police, who remain tight-lipped about the case, said Wednesday that three police officers were placed on leave as the department’s Internal Affairs Division looked into allegations of sexual misconduct involving officers.
Then on Friday, Police Chief Sean Whent and Mayor Libby Schaaf held a news conference and revealed that the Alameda County district attorney’s office would begin a parallel investigation into the misconduct case, and review the department’s handling of another case involving two suicides: the 2015 suicide of police Officer Brendan O’Brien and the 2014 suicide of that officer’s wife, Irma Huerta Lopez.
Whent said he welcomed the district attorney’s review and had himself been concerned in 2014 when he’d heard about Lopez’s alleged suicide. He said that his department investigated the case to make sure it wasn’t a homicide and that he was confident in their finding of suicide because Lopez had gunshot residue on her hands.
Whent and Schaaf would not say whether the suicides and the sexual misconduct cases are related. They said little about what the misconduct case involves except to say they will not tolerate lying and criminal behavior by their officers.
“The allegations in this (sexual misconduct) case are extremely troubling,” Whent said.
He said a review of off-duty misconduct cases over the last several years had shown an “unfortunate” spate of incidents over the last few months. Whent has asked the city auditor and the Police Department’s inspector general to analyze all of those cases and look for patterns.
In April, another Oakland officer, Cullen Faeth, faces misdemeanor charges of battery, trespassing and public intoxication for an incident in which a family complained that a man tried to break into their home and attacked a woman who lived there.
These scandals came just as things were looking up for the embattled Police Department, which has been subject to a court-appointed monitor for years.
Schaaf has made law enforcement a pillar of her administration, promising to boost Oakland’s police force to 800 officers by the end of her term in 2018. Last year, the executive director of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing touted Oakland’s department as one to emulate in the post-Ferguson,
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