Oakland City, California on Wednesday fired the police chief amid allegations that he repeatedly covered up misconduct by another officer.

The departure of Chief Leron Armstrong marks the crime-plagued city’s seventh police chief since 2016.

The department has also been under federal oversight for two decades.

Mayor Shen Thao, a Democrat, announced she was firing Armstrong after an independent investigation concluded the chief failed to properly investigate and discipline Sergeant Michael Chung after he was involved in a hit-and-run with his patrol car in 2021 .

A separate disturbing incident showed Chang firing a gun in an elevator at police headquarters.

Tao, who just last month became mayor of the embattled city, said the federal judge overseeing the city expressed deep disappointment with the evidence that landed on his desk.

The judge said the report showed “significant cultural problems” with the police department.

Newly elected Oakland Mayor Shen Thao announced Wednesday that Police Chief Leron Armstrong has been fired for covering up misconduct by an officer he was supervising. She said she respected Armstrong but had to put her personal feelings aside in the interest of the public and the health of the department.

The department’s ongoing problems were deemed serious enough to keep Oakland police out of compliance with a set of requirements agreed upon in 2003.

“As Oakland continues to improve its police department, we must be confident that our chief is effective in making sustainable improvements that can be recognized by a federal watchdog, a federal court, and the people of Oakland,” Tao said.

She said the decision to fire Armstrong was difficult for her personally because she admired Armstrong, but she was required to put personal relationships and feelings aside for the betterment of the department.

“Chief Armstrong has my respect and gratitude for his service to the Department and the city he grew up in and loves so much. He will continue to have my respect and gratitude,” she said.

She also expressed her admiration for the many Oakland police officers who work “very hard” and serve the community with integrity.

In January, Armstrong was placed on paid administrative leave as the mayor handled an investigation by a federal monitor assigned to the department, which ultimately found Armstrong responsible for “gross dereliction of duty.”

He said he was very disappointed by the decision to fire him and that once all the facts were assessed it would be clear he had done nothing wrong

“Once the relevant facts are fully evaluated by weighing the evidence instead of pulling sound bites from strategically leaked inaccurate reports, it will be clear that I have been a loyal and effective reformer of the Oakland Police Department,” Armstrong’s spokesman Sam Singer read in a statement.

“It will be equally clear that I have committed no wrongdoing and my dismissal is fundamentally wrong, unjustified and unfair. I expect to release a more detailed statement shortly once I have had a chance to fully digest the mayor’s remarks.”

A department investigation reportedly found that Armstrong failed to properly investigate and punish Chung after he hit a Mercedes Benz parked next to him while backing out of the garage of his San Francisco building.

The report shows that Officer Kayla Brandwood was with Chung during the incident nearly two years ago on March 25, 2021.

Although Chang stopped his patrol car for about five seconds, none of the law enforcement officers got out of the car, despite surveillance footage from the parking garage showing that the impact of the collision “torn off” the front bumper from a luxury car.

The accident was not subsequently reported to supervisors, and the city was not aware of the incident until it received a claim from Progressive Insurance detailing what happened.

The 56-page report by law firm Clarence Dyer and Cohen said a police captain in the department’s internal affairs division downplayed the incident and coached an investigating officer to write a report that allowed Chang to avoid serious discipline.

A year later, Chung fired a gun in an elevator at Oakland police headquarters and hid the evidence.

He didn’t tell his supervisors until a week after the incident and has reportedly been on paid leave ever since.

Armstrong was the 13th person to lead the sick unit since federal oversight began in 2003.

He was backed by John Burris, one of two attorneys who filed the first lawsuit against the department back in 2000.

Even after his firing, Boris has stood by Armstrong and said he was disappointed by Thao’s decision, based on what he believed to be “not very strong evidence of wrongdoing on Mr Armstrong’s part”.

The Oakland Police Department has been under federal oversight since 2003 after significant corruption and misconduct were found within its ranks

In June this year, the police were due to end surveillance after a year’s probation, but a judge now says the report into Armstrong’s conduct “demonstrates that significant cultural problems in the department are being ignored”.

Armstrong said he is disappointed by the decision to terminate him, but believes he will be vindicated when all the facts are clear.

The department was scheduled to come out of federal oversight in June after federal judge William Orrick placed it on a year’s probation because of the “substantial compliance” that had been achieved.

But in January, he decided to release portions of the law firm’s reports, which led to Armstrong being placed on administrative leave.

During the virtual hearing, the judge said: “The report … shows that significant cultural problems in the department are being ignored.”

The city was ordered to submit its implementation plan by early April.

In 2000, the department made national news after a new officer came forward to report significant abuses of power by a group of officers known as the Oakland Riders.

The four officers were accused of a range of wrongdoing, including false arrests, gathering evidence, using excessive force, falsifying police reports and assaulting people in predominantly black areas of the city.

Three officers were acquitted by a deadlocked jury, and one became a fugitive and is believed to have left the United States.

As a result, the department was placed under federal oversight in January 2003, which required, among other things, the adoption of 52 reforms and mandatory reporting of progress to a federal judge.

Armstrong, when he became police chief in 2021, promised to implement all reforms within a year.

Oakland is consistently ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in the state.

In 2021, there were 134 murders in the city next to San Francisco, which remains under a cloud of dangerous streets polluted by thieves and drug users.

According to Traveling Lifestyle, there are about 1,274 violent crimes per 100,000 people in Oakland, which is about 235 for the national average.

Although Oakland’s crime rate has declined over the past decade, gang-related violence is still at the heart of much crime in the Bay Area city, which is California’s eighth largest city.