A Purple Heart, 3 decades at OPD, and he talks to reporters: Meet Oakland’s new police chief 12%
By Tasneem Raja11%
7/20/2026, 2:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Appeal to Emotion, and Halo Effect, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 17.6% saturation with 323 hits. Analysis detected 1,879 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,834 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.9% and a BS Rank of 12% (17,612 of 19,841 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 88.80% of the article peer group.
Oakland has a new, permanent police chief.
Mayor Barbara Lee recently named James Beere to the job, after he’d already spent seven months running the department as interim chief.
I talked with our public safety reporter, Roselyn Romero, about who Beere is, how he landed one of the hardest jobs in Oakland city government, and why it’s been so difficult for any OPD chief to hold onto that job for long.
We also got into what Beere is walking into right now: a department on the verge of finally exiting 23 years of federal oversight, but still short-staffed, still working through an overtime crisis, and currently negotiating a new police union contract.
— Tasneem Raja, editor-in-chief, The Oaklandside
This is an edited transcript of Oaklandside 510.
You can read it below or listen to the episode on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/oaklandside-510/id1827523642">Apple</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=LAAc0mcb6B0&list=PL2NG5BxNXCZKwhSzOoaWRiPS9UrwL6vth">YouTube</a>, or anywhere you get podcasts.
<strong>Tasneem: Let’s start with the basics.
Who is James Beere?
</strong>
Roselyn Romero, Oaklandside public safety reporter: He’s a nearly 30-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department.
He started as a patrol officer back in 1997, and he’s worked his way up through the ranks ever since: sergeant, commander, deputy chief, and finally assistant chief.
He spent years in OPD’s Special Victims Unit.
He’s also an Oakland resident.
He and his wife have lived here for about three decades, and they raised three sons who all went through Oakland public schools.
<strong>And he has a military background too, right?
</strong>
He does.
Before joining OPD, Beere served in the U.S.
Marine Corps.
He did a seven-month tour in Iraq, where he was shot in the hand.
A couple of months later, he suffered a concussion and inner ear damage when a homemade bomb exploded under his vehicle.
His unit was later credited with foiling an ambush.
He received a Purple Heart.
<strong>That’s a lot of history even before he put on an OPD badge.</strong>
Right.
And once he did, he had a pretty colorful career.
Early on, as a narcotics officer, he raided a West Oakland home and found a hidden bunker stocked with food and water, run by a “survivalist” who also had Nazi paraphernalia.
Years later, while Beere was working undercover with OPD’s Vice and Child Exploitation Unit, a man who was impersonating a police officer actually tried to pull Beere over on International Boulevard.
Another time, Beere was trying to arrest a man accused of indecent exposure at Lake Merritt.
The man punched Beere in the mouth and both of them ended up in the hospital.
Point being, Beere has seen a lot of different kinds of action on the street and worked with a lot of different units.
He knows this department, and he knows public safety in Oakland.
<strong>Let’s get into how he became OPD’s new police chief.
Walk us through the timeline.</strong>
Beere was an assistant chief, a No. 2 to the police chief, when Mayor Barbara Lee announced that his boss, Floyd Mitchell, was leaving.
Beere stepped in as interim chief soon after.
That announcement came during a really difficult week for Oakland.
Skyline High School had just gone into lockdown after <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2025/11/12/third-lockdown-at-skyline-high/">a student was shot on campus</a>, and Laney College’s longtime football coach, John Beam, <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2025/11/14/john-beam-dead-laney-college-shooting/">had just been shot and killed</a>.
Then, in March, Beere sat down with us and said he’d applied to be the department’s permanent chief.
By then, he’d already overseen a lot: rebuilding the fire violence prevention strategy, re-signing a ShotSpotter contract to keep gunshot detection in Oakland, extending Flock surveillance cameras in Oakland.
He told us he wanted the job for good.
<strong>And I understand from your reporting that the Police Commission ran the search.
That’s Oakland’s civilian police oversight group.</strong>
They did, with help from an outside recruiting firm, Ralph Andersen and Associates.
It took about six months.
In early June, commissioners sent Mayor Lee a shortlist of three finalists.
One thing that was different this time: the commission kept the finalists’ names confidential.
In the past, they’ve publicized candidates so the public could weigh in.
But commissioners said past applicants told them they wouldn’t have applied if they had known that their names would be made public, and the recruiting firm gave similar guidance.
<strong>So we don’t know who the other two finalists were.</strong>
We don’t.
But in the end, Lee picked the person who’d already been running the department for seven months — and had frankly done a lot and faced a lot in the job in that short time.
<strong>What did the mayor say about why she chose him?
</strong>
She talked a lot about stability.
At a press conference last week, she said Oakland has cycled through too much turnover in police leadership, and that Beere has earned the trust of both officers and community partners.
City Council President Kevin Jenkins was there too, and he pointed out that Beere actually lives in Jenkins’ own East Oakland district.
He called it a great hire.
<strong>And Beere himself, what’s he been saying about the job?
</strong>
He's talked a lot about the department's federal oversight program, which is finally <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2026/05/27/opd-nsa-reforms-completed-federal-oversight-ending/">close to wrapping up</a> after 23 years.
At the press conference, he said that even after Oakland exits federal court oversight, the underlying reforms aren't going anywhere.
He put it this way: they're "stitched into the fabric of this police department."
<strong>Let's talk about why keeping a police chief in that seat has been so hard historically, because this is a real pattern in Oakland, right?
</strong>
It really is.
When Mitchell resigned last fall, one longtime OPD deputy chief pointed out he was the sixteenth police chief she'd seen come through during her time at the department. <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2024/01/08/hiring-oakland-police-chief-has-always-been-messy/">Go back through Oakland's history since the early '90s,</a> and there's chief after chief who got pushed out for political reasons, left in the middle of a scandal, or only lasted a matter of months.
Back in 2016, after then-Chief Sean Whent abruptly resigned amid a police sexual exploitation scandal, the city cycled through two more chiefs in about two weeks; one lasted six days, the other just two, before the city administrator herself had to step in and run the department.
That whole crisis is actually what led voters to create Oakland's civilian Police Commission later that year.
Part of what makes this job so hard is all the layers of oversight.
Whoever holds this job answers to three different authorities, any of whom can remove them: the mayor, the civilian Police Commission, and the federal monitor overseeing the reform program.
On top of that, they're managing a department that's chronically understaffed, in a city with a long, complicated history with policing.
<strong>Let's talk more about staffing, because that's been a constant headache.</strong>
It really has.
Back in March, when Beere sat down with us, OPD was authorized for 678 officers but had only about 500 actually on the street.
The department's own inspector general found OPD <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2025/04/24/oakland-police-department-staffing-study-report-draft/">would need 877 officers</a> just to maintain its current level of service, let alone improve it.
Beere told us what the city really needs, long-term, is closer to 1,200.
Beere pointed out that Oakland's population has grown by tens of thousands of people since OPD had officers back around 2010.
The department hasn't caught up.
<strong>What's he doing to try to close that gap?
</strong>
He's leaned hard on recruitment.
Under his watch, OPD graduated 14 trainees from one academy class in December, had 18 more coming through in the following class, and was expecting more than 40 in the class that started in April.
He also brought back OPD's cadet program, which gives high schoolers a paid pathway into the department.
Historically, cadets who go on to the police academy graduate at a rate of over 90%.
<strong>How is Beere approaching police overtime?
That's been a major story of ours this year.</strong>
We worked with freelance investigative reporter Beck Klein on a <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2026/01/29/oakland-police-overtime/">bombshell reporting series</a> that we published in the spring.
Beck found that one OPD officer was paid nearly half a million dollars in overtime in 2024, and the department couldn't even document almost half of those hours.
Shortly after that story ran, Beere issued a special order <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2026/03/11/oakland-police-chief-orders-end-discretionary-overtime-james-beere/">canceling</a> discretionary, or voluntary, overtime.
Now, extra shifts need approval from his office, and commanders have to justify overtime requests with actual data.
He told the City Council at the time, "I live here, I'm raising my kids here."
He said this spending feels personal for him as a taxpayer.
<strong>Has it worked?
</strong>
It's a start.
But the bigger fix, a real digital scheduling and overtime tracking system, isn't expected to be up and running until at least the end of next year.
And right now, OPD's police union contract has just expired, and it's still being negotiated.
Community advocates want that new contract to lower the overtime limit, which currently lets officers accrue up to 300 hours a year, well above the regional average of around 190 hours.
They also want to finally activate <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2024/07/22/oakland-police-pursuits-starchase/">GPS trackers</a> showing where patrol cars are.
These GPS trackers are already installed in OPD cars, but they haven't been turned on for over a year.
<strong>Sounds like Beere is stepping into the permanent job right as a lot of these fights are coming to a head.</strong>
He is.
And just this week, we got a reminder of how fast things can move.
OPD officers <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2026/07/13/oakland-police-shooting-international-boulevard/">fatally shot</a> a person near Fruitvale who they say was armed "with bladed weapons."
It's the third officer-involved shooting in Oakland this year.
Beere spoke to reporters at the scene but didn't share many details, saying the investigation is ongoing.
And because OPD encrypted its radios last year, we weren't able to independently confirm much about how the incident unfolded.
That story is still developing; we'll keep reporting on it.
<strong>Let's close on this: what does it seem like Oakland actually needs from its next chief, based on everything you've reported?
</strong>
Trust and access, honestly.
Floyd Mitchell <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2026/01/09/opd-chief-floyd-mitchell-no-interview/">barely spoke to reporters</a> his whole time here; he did one real sit-down interview in 19 months.
When Mayor Lee's office was asked what she wanted in the next chief, her office said building public trust requires "transparency and open communication with the public."
Beere, at least so far, has been more available.
When he announced he was applying for the permanent job back in March, his department actually set up a press day so local outlets could each get one-on-one time with him.
He <a href="https://oaklandside.org/2026/03/25/opd-chief-james-beere-interview/">told us</a> he wants what he called "kneecap-to-kneecap, eyeball-to-eyeball conversations," not just with his own officers, but with residents and others in Oakland's civic landscape.
We'll see if that holds up now that the job is his for good.
Have a tip for Roselyn Romero on public safety in Oakland?
Reach her at <a href="mailto:roselyn@oaklandside.org">roselyn@oaklandside.org</a>.
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