Source: Oakland mayor hires new police chief after 7 months

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, left, reportedly has named Anne Kirkpatrick as police chief. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, left, reportedly has named Anne Kirkpatrick as police chief. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Photo: Jeff Chiu, Associated Press Photo: Jeff Chiu, Associated Press Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close Source: Oakland mayor hires new police chief after 7 months 1 / 28 Back to Gallery

Ending some seven months without a police chief, Oakland has chosen an outsider from Chicago to take the department’s top post, according to a source with knowledge of the selection process.

Anne Kirkpatrick, who most recently led reform efforts within the Chicago Police Department, will relocate from Chicago to serve as Oakland’s police chief, becoming the troubled department’s first-ever female chief.

The appointment by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf of Kirkpatrick, the former police chief in Spokane, Wash., ends months of speculation about who would be selected to the East Bay city’s top police post.

A spokeswoman for Schaaf and another with the Oakland Police Department did not immediately return requests for comment.

Councilman Dan Kalb said he couldn’t confirm the selection of Kirkpatrick, adding that the mayor’s office planned to brief council members Wednesday morning on the process.

“Independent of this person possibly being the mayor’s choice, just in general, I could say I’ve heard good things about her as a law enforcement leader,” Kalb said.

Kirkpatrick, a licensed attorney, has spent almost 30 years in law enforcement, including stints around Washington, according to her LinkedIn profile.

In Chicago, she took charge of a department designated by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to work to reform the force, and she was one of three finalists to replace an ousted Chicago police superintendent in 2015, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Schaaf recently named Venus D. Johnson, who advised outgoing Attorney General Kamala Harris, as Oakland’s director of public safety — a position designed to oversee law enforcement in the absence of a standing police chief,

The mayor announced her national search for a new chief in August following a revolving door of internal scandals that escalated to the point of Schaaf saying civilian control of the department was temporarily needed to eradicate the “macho” culture she said continued to pervade its ranks.

In November, Oakland voters overwhelmingly approved a new citizen-led police commission that would have the power to mete out discipline to officers and even fire the chief if five of its seven members voted for dismissal.

The last acting Oakland police chief, Paul Figueroa, in June became the third head of the department to leave the top post in nine days, leading a frustrated Schaaf to declare at a news conference that she was “here to run a police department, not a frat house.”

Schaaf revealed that an internal investigation was under way inside the department, this one examining racist text messages and emails swapped among officers.

At the time, the police department was already engulfed by a sex scandal involving a female teenager prostitute that led to criminal charges for seven current and former police officers. Several of the charges were dropped, with prosecutors citing a lack of evidence.

The woman, whose attorneys have asked she be referred to as Jasmine, was a minor at the time of the alleged sex offenses. She told The Chronicle she had sex with 29 officers from several police agencies, including more than a dozen from Oakland, when she was 16 and 17 years old.

Though it wasn’t specified at the time, the resignation in June 2016 of Chief Sean Whent — who had taken charge after acting chief Howard Johnson resigned in 2013 — was later found to be linked to the sex scandal.

Michael Bodley and Andrew Ross are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com, matierandross@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @michael_bodley, @matierandross