The politically connected police chief of the Oakland public schools has been placed on paid administrative leave for allegedly hurling a series of racial slurs at fellow officers - then trying to cover up the incident - following a day of drinking at a charity golf tournament.

Police Chief Pete Sarna, 41, told officials that his use of the word "n-" was offhanded and intended to be funny, sources tell us. But San Francisco attorney Joe O'Sullivan, who is representing a white officer who filed a complaint with the school district, says the episode was anything but comic.

As O'Sullivan tells it, it started when Sarna invited three school district officers and a civilian staffer who works for him to play in a charity Oakland police golf tournament at the Sequoyah Country Club in the Oakland hills in mid-July.

As the group was headed home afterward through the Caldecott Tunnel, O'Sullivan said, Sarna turned to an African American sergeant and began cursing him, saying no blacks should be allowed to live in Orinda and that "the only good n- is a dead n- and they should hang you in the town square to prevent any other n- from coming in the area."

"There was no trigger for it - he just blurted it out," O'Sullivan said.

The attorney said the outbursts continued when they reached a white sergeant's home in Lafayette, where Sarna allegedly directed insults at his colleague's children. He let loose with more slurs at an Asian American officer as he was being driven to his home, O'Sullivan said.

Several days later, after word went around the department that a complaint had been lodged against Sarna, O'Sullivan said the chief drove the African American sergeant to a secluded location and told him, "What happened didn't happen."

Troy Flint, spokesman for the Oakland Unified School District, declined to discuss specifics of the incident. But he confirmed that Sarna had been placed on paid leave pending completion of a personnel investigation.

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Sarna declined to comment while the probe is continuing.

This isn't the first time Sarna has faced troubles.

After a promising career at the Oakland Police Department, Sarna was named by then-Attorney General Jerry Brownto a $132,000-a-year job in the state Justice Department, helping to oversee hundreds of employees. He was forced to resign in August 2007, however, after crashing his state-owned vehicle and being cited for misdemeanor drunken driving.

He resurrected his career two years later, in June 2009, when he was named police chief of the Oakland schools, overseeing more than a dozen officers.

One person who knows Sarna well described him as someone who has been deeply dedicated to Oakland's youth, and its black community in particular. He noted that Sarna's wife is African American.

"But males do stupid things when they drink," the source said.

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