San Leandro Police Chief Angela Averiett has been placed on administrative leave after a misdemeanor hit-and-run charge was filed in connection with a freeway collision last year.
Averiett was placed on paid leave Wednesday after the charge was filed by the Alameda County District Attorney, city spokesman Dustin Claussen said in a press release.
Assistant Chief of Police Luis Torres will serve as acting chief of police while the city works to identify an interim chief of police, Claussen said.
The charge stems from a May 19, 2025, collision about 10:50 p.m. on eastbound Interstate Highway 580 in Pleasanton near the Interstate 680 interchange, according to prosecutors.
The victim in the case took down Averiett’s license plate number and called San Leandro police to say they’d just been hit by a police vehicle, District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson said.
“This is a minor misdemeanor case, not a felony,” Jones Dickson said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “It’s not the crime of the century.”
After hearing about the collision through a media report last month, Jones Dickson said she asked for the investigation report from the California Highway Patrol, which hadn’t sent it to her office with recommended charges.
“I just think that based upon the information they had in front of them, they didn’t think it bubbled up to a point where it should come to us,” she said.
After reviewing the CHP documents, Jones Dickson said there was, in fact, sufficient evidence to file the misdemeanor hit-and-run charge.
Averiett said Wednesday she didn’t realize she was involved in a collision at the time.
She said she was driving an unmarked police vehicle “when contact was allegedly made with another vehicle.”
She said the CHP responded, investigated and didn’t issue her a citation that day.
“I did not knowingly leave the scene of a collision,” she said at a news conference.
There was a small scratch on the victim’s side mirror and given the “minimal nature of the damage,” she said she had no indication that she had hit the other vehicle.
At the time, Averiett said, she was trying to get off the freeway as fast as she could because she believed she was having some kind of medical emergency.
She said she fully cooperated with law enforcement and will continue to do so.
Averiett was appointed chief in San Leandro on June 3, 2024, after serving as the police chief of Los Altos.
She previously served with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, Hayward Police Department, and BART Police Department, according to San Leandro officials.
She is scheduled for arraignment at 9 a.m. June 18 in the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin.
