When news broke late Friday that the Oakland Police Department had lost its third chief in a little over a week, the Twittersphere lit up with disbelief.

“What the holy eff is goin on with #Oakland leadership?” one person tweeted.

“This is getting dicey for Mayor (Libby) Schaaf,” wrote another.

“Even the worst-run McDonald’s doesn’t have turnover like this,” tweeted a third.

Within an hour, Schaaf went back before the microphones to address the latest in a series of unfolding scandals — racist text messages allegedly sent in 2014 by black officers. It had been just a few hours since word leaked that a homicide investigator was in trouble for allegedly having his then-girlfriend write his reports. In between those headline grabbers came the news that acting Chief Paul Figueroa had stepped aside after just two days for unexplained reasons.

Hanging over it all, of course, is the big one: An investigation into whether cops were having sex with an underage hooker and in at least one case tipping her off to a prostitution sweep.

Sources later told us that Figueroa wasn’t under investigation for any wrongdoing. Schaaf wouldn’t talk about it, other than to say he wasn’t caught up in the racist texts or sex scandal.

The mayor did her best to show that she was in control. She said it was changes she’s made to Police Department oversight that are leading to all this bad news being rooted out. She once again took ownership for firing interim Chief Ben Fairow, whom she had brought over from the BART police, after all of six days.

Fairow, whose sin may have been an extramarital affair more than a decade ago, was brought in to replace Chief Sean Whent, whom Schaaf showed the door for mishandling the sex scandal.

Schaaf is gambling that whatever the short-term political costs of her rapid-fire actions to clean up the “frat house” police culture, they will pay off in the long haul.

But it’s a tough image to sell to a city that is only beginning to climb out of years of soaring crime and criticism of police for mishandling protests.

“I don’t think the mayor is out of control,” said civil rights attorney John Burris, who is party to the negotiated settlement that led to federal court monitoring of the Police Department. “She is being confronted with difficult situations and having to make decisions.”

Burris said Schaaf is right to claim credit for creating the environment that is leading to the discovery of one scandal after another.

“Basically it’s going down because of her commitment to ferret out the truth and uncover unholy relationship, and I think people have gotten nervous about that,” Burris said.

So far, Schaaf appears to have the support of the City Council — or at least its silence.

“The mayor was dealt this hand, and she is trying to do the best job she can do,” said Councilman Larry Reid, who earlier in the week had expressed frustration over Whent’s abrupt ouster.

“It’s really starting to tax her,” Reid said.

It’s taxing everyone.

Blue line: There’s still plenty of head scratching over the scope of the police sex scandal that has rocked the Bay Area — and over just how a teen sex worker managed to connect with as many as 14 Oakland police officers, plus cops in other agencies from San Francisco to Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

According to a lawyer familiar with the case, who wasn’t authorized to speak for the record, the now-18-year-old woman befriended most of the officers on Facebook — playing off the fact that her mother was an Oakland police dispatcher and her aunt was a dispatcher in Contra Costa County.

“They always started out legitimately and in a tone that was not sexual,” the attorney said.

The woman would open up by messaging that she hoped to be a dispatcher herself one day and that she had a lot of respect for cops.

Among those she reached out to were officers from Richmond who had worked in the schools where she grew up. She would mention teachers and other people they both knew, said our source.

After a time, the chatting became more flirtatious, in some cases turning to sexting and eventually resulting in sexual encounters.

The officers involved could lose their jobs for any of three reasons — having sex with the woman when she was under 18, knowing that she was a sex worker and consorting with her anyway, and — as is suspected in at least one Oakland case — tipping her off about planned prostitution sweeps.

But no matter their contact, the attorney said, “they are all being put in the uncomfortable position of being questioned about their communications with her.”

Alioto reborn: Former San Francisco Supervisor Angela Alioto is ready for her return to the city’s political arena, and she already has an adversary picked out: Supervisor Aaron Peskin.

Alioto left the Board of Supervisors in 1997 and ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2003. On June 7, she won election to the Democratic County Central Committee, where she wants to push for comprehensive health care and call out “corrupt public officials.”

She didn’t say whom she meant by corrupt officials. But she’s clearly not happy with Peskin, saying he used his clout to block her plan to turn Vallejo Street between Grant and Columbus avenues into a traffic-free “poets plaza.”

Alioto says it was payback for her endorsement of Peskin opponent Julie Christensen in the 2015 supervisorial race.

Peskin says that’s nonsense. He simply slowed down the push for a poets plaza, he said, because “there are legitimate concerns being raised by both residents and businesses.”

Peskin added that he was “delighted” that Alioto is going to be on the DCCC — and joining him there. Peskin was elected to the committee as well.

“This will resolve itself,” he said.

Just as Muhammad Ali and George Foreman resolved their differences.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: matierandross