Former Oakland council member Lauren Taylor called the decision to fire the police chief “excessive”.

The decision to place Oakland’s police chief on administrative leave was “excessive,” Oakland’s runner-up mayor and former city councilwoman Lauren Taylor said Saturday.

Auckland Police Chief LeRonn Armstrong has been placed on administrative leave by newly elected Mayor Sheng Tao following a report released Wednesday detailing allegations of police misconduct at the Police Department. The alleged misconduct could call into question whether the department can get out of the federal oversight it’s been under for about 20 years.

After reading the 16-page report, “I have come to the conclusion that the decision to put Chief Armstrong on administrative leave was excessive and if I were mayor, I would not have done so,” Taylor said in a statement released Saturday.

“The scale of the disciplinary action imposed in this case is inconsistent with the nature of the violation documented in the report,” Taylor said.

The charges consist of two violations committed by the same police sergeant and a poor investigation by the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, which investigates officers’ misconduct.

“The report accuses the chief of not knowing and not acting on information that the report admits was withheld from him by internal affairs officers during his Friday briefing,” Taylor said.

The former board member added, “The report also mentions that the Chief did not ‘authorize’ a detailed discussion of the case and did not carefully read the accompanying written report. Assuming this is true, we can’t take advantage of Chief Armstrong. an explanation of why he felt that a deeper analysis and discussion was not needed.

“It could very well be that he felt that the discussion was already thorough enough based on the information presented to him and decided to move on to the next case,” Taylor said.

The investigation report was written by the law firm Clarence Dyer and Cohen LLP, which was hired by the city of Oakland last year.

“We must hold officers accountable when they violate public trust,” Tao said on Thursday.

Auckland Mayor Sheng Tao held a press conference on Saturday after Auckland Police Chief Leronne Armstrong was placed on administrative leave.

According to the report, in the first violation, the sergeant allegedly left the scene of the March 2021 clash in which he was involved and did not report the clash. At the time of the collision, the sergeant was driving a police car.

The second breach involved an alleged accidental gunshot in April 2022 in a freight elevator at Police Headquarters and waiting a week to report it. The sergeant also allegedly removed evidence of the dismissal.

Clarence Dyer and Cohen’s report partially concluded that the Internal Affairs department “sought to change, dismiss, and minimize the severity of the officer’s misconduct.”

This “created a climate that enabled this officer to commit far more egregious and dangerous misconduct” at police headquarters.

The report stated that leaving the scene of the collision was tantamount to a run-in, but the Department of the Interior found that “the officer did not violate a departmental rule requiring compliance with laws.”

Taylor is not Oakland’s only voice in support of the police chief.

One example is Brenda Grisham, Executive Director of the Christopher LaVell Jones Foundation, which honors her son, who was killed in Oakland in 2010.

She described the infraction by the sergeant as petty and said the community would support the chief. She had known Armstrong for many years and said she breathed a sigh of relief when he became chief.

Taylor urged residents to contact the mayor and city council to share their views on the decision to send the boss on vacation.

Oakland Police Chief Leronne Armstrong has been placed on administrative leave, Mayor Sheng Tao and City Administrator Ed Raiskin said late Thursday. Bob Redell reports.