Dellums Fires City Administrator

Late on Tuesday, Mayor Dellums finally fired Deborah Edgerly, the city administrator who ran Oakland like her private fiefdom, hiring friends and family members. Edgerly is threatening to sue to clear her name. In this case, a lawsuit would be a good thing, as all the dirty laundry that has been building up for well over a decade would finally get washed. The incident that sparked Edgerly's dismissal is that she allegedly tipped off her nephew -- a city employee and a suspected member of a violent street gang -- to a police crackdown on the gang. Edgerly, of course, oversaw the police department. She later showed up on the scene when police began towing her nephew's car as part of the operation and confronted the officers. (The operation led to the arrest of 56 suspected members of the Acorn gang.) According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "The nephew, 27-year-old William Lovan - who works for the city as a parking meter repairman - had left the car running and locked the keys inside, along with a gun" outside a West Oakland liquor store.

According to KTVU Channel 2:
KTVU Channel 2 learned that Edgerly may be the focus of federal investigation over information she divulged regarding wiretaps being used to track members of the notorious Acorn gang. The sources say that police listened in on a phone call between Lovan and Acorn gang leader Marc Anthony Candler a day or two after Edgerly's alleged confrontation with the police. During the call, Lovan reportedly told Candler twice "Get rid of all your mitts. I got this straight from the head." According to sources, the call was a warning that the "mitts" – a code word for phones – were tapped and that the information regarding the wiretaps had come "from the head," who sources believe to be Edgerly.

This isn't the first time one of Edgerly's relatives who are employed by the City of Oakland has been in trouble. According to a post on A Better Oakland,
"Another on of Edgerly’s nephews was at the center of controversy 2 years ago- he was the animal control officer who killed animals without putting them to sleep first and tossed half-alive animals on top on dead animal carcasses in the freezer. He was pulled off duty — then a new animal control director from Florida was hired in response the the demoralizing crisis. He quit without notice when Edgerly unilaterally re-instated her nephew back into contact with animals. Suffice it to say, we have a new Shelter Director and it is my understanding that Rashon McLarty, the nephew in question, is no longer in contact with animals. But that whole mess was in early indicator of Edgerly’s protecting and promoting relatives."


The always excellent SF Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson provides a telling anecdote about how race was used to cover-up for incompetence and nepotism inthe City of Oakland. Oakland blogger and entrepreneur Zennie Abraham provides more examples. He writes: "Oakland's government has a long history of hating well-educated Black men who don't follow the normal ethnic stereotypes."