Recently fired Oakland Police Department Chief Anne Kirkpatrick spoke out Monday for the first time since the city's police commission and the mayor ousted her from her job.
"I did not want to leave," Kirkpatrick said. "I even told the mayor, 'I don't want to leave.' Even now, I don't want to leave."
Kirkpatrick, Oakland's first female police chief and 11th chief in the past 21 years, said she is disappointed by the firing. She received a personal visit from Mayor Libby Schaaf last Monday and a follow-up call on Thursday telling her she had been fired.
"I don't feel betrayed," Kirkpatrick said. "That would not be the right word for it. I would say that I'm disappointed."
Kirkpatrick added that she was shocked Schaaf decided to side with the police commission to terminate her without cause. Kirkpatrick was hired by Schaaf three years ago.
"Two weeks ago in an internal staff meeting talking about she'd fight for me, and so I actually believed her," Kirkpatrick said. "I believed the mayor. So when she came to tell me she was terminating me and joining with the police commission, I was like, 'Why aren't you fighting for me?'"
The decision to remove Kirkpatrick as the city's top cop was unanimous and was made during a closed-session meeting. Measure LL, which voters approved in 2016, allows the volunteer members of the commission with the mayor’s permission to dismiss the police chief without cause.
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Kirkpatrick said she knows why she was fired, but she's not willing to go on the record with her thoughts. She was willing to say her dismissal may have something to do with the fact that she wasn't the police commission's choice.
"I was hired prior to the police commission's start-up," she said. "I'm not from Oakland. I think that is very important to them. And I'm not a person of color. And I think that has been very important to them."
