Former Oakland police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick alleged in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that she was fired in February in retaliation for exposing corruption and abuse of power by the city’s Police Commission.

Kirkpatrick says she blew the whistle on illegal demands that commissioners made of the Police Department for personal gain, a commissioner making derogatory remarks publicly toward a Black public defender and the commission directing police staff inappropriately. Kirkpatrick also alleges that commissioners publicly berated and bullied police staff at hearings.

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Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.