City Official Bullies Police To Help Gang Banger Nephew

A top-level city official known for intervening on behalf of corrupt friends and relatives is being investigated for interfering in the police crackdown of a violent drug gang after her gang banger nephew was arrested in a sting.

The well-connected city administrator (Deborah Edgerly) in Oakland California has for years wielded her clout to help her shady friends escape justice, but this time she may have gone too far and police in the crime-infested municipality have made her latest stunt public.

Edgerly actually threatened police officers in the midst of a high-profile operation to dismantle the city’s notoriously violent Acorn street gang. Officers raided various locations this week and arrested 56 gang members. Edgerly’s nephew, William Lovan, was among them. Police arrested him at a liquor store after finding a gun in his car.

Edgerly arrived at the scene and demanded to know why her nephew’s car was being towed. She then proceeded to bully officers and threaten them with an internal police department probe aimed at their actions.

Police say the city administrator has inappropriately intervened on behalf of friends, family and co workers in the past. A few years ago Edgerly made similar threats when police arrested the son of her assistant city administrator, also a city employee, for disorderly conduct outside a bar in downtown Oakland. The arrested man remains on the city payroll.

Just last year she helped a separate city employee friend who got in trouble for convincing the police department to hire a thug. The new police employee actually used an alias to conceal arrest warrants for identity theft and welfare fraud. When the city employee who recommended the criminal got fired, Edgerly overturned the decision that allowed her friend to keep her public job.

She also intervened on behalf of her city councilwoman buddy, Desley Brooks, during an illegal kickback investigation in which police linked suspicious bank deposits to the councilwoman. The investigation was actually thwarted by Edgerly.

Additionally, Edgerly has put numerous friends and relatives on the city’s payroll, including nearly a dozen in the finance and management division and her son in the office of information technology. No wonder one Bay Area columnist is calling for the state’s attorney general to investigate Edgerly’s scandalous tenure.

Could it be that California Attorney General Jerry Brown, also a former California governor, is stalling because he gave Edgerly her job when he was Oakland mayor from 1998 to 2006?