San Leandro Police Chief Angela Averiett was placed on paid leave on Wednesday, after Alameda County’s district attorney charged her with a misdemeanor earlier this week.
Assistant Police Chief Luis Torres will serve as acting chief, while the city works to identify an interim chief, the city said in a statement.
Averiett denied the allegations against her at a press conference on Wednesday.
“I want to be clear,” Averiett said. “I did not knowingly leave the scene of a collision. Given the minimal nature of the reported damage, a small scratch on the other vehicle’s side mirror, I had no indication at the time that any contact may have occurred.”
Just after Averiett’s statement, Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson said at a separate press conference that the victim of the alleged car crash suffered damage to their vehicle and was entitled to “restitution.”
“This is absolutely a misdemeanor case,” Jones Dickson said. “There’s no allegation of injury, but the reason we’re here is because this did not come to us in the normal course of business.”
Jones Dickson called it “unusual” that the complaint was not escalated to her office, and that after launching her own investigation, she found “sufficient evidence to charge Chief Averiette with a hit and run.”
In March, ABC7 first reported the allegations against Averiett that a family driving home from a Giants game in San Francisco in May 2025 saw an unmarked police jeep with lights flashing driving down the median of Interstate 580.
The victim, identified by ABC7 as Daffani Ryan, said the vehicle swerved into her lane, hit the driver’s side mirror, and drove off. No one was injured.
Averiette said she was experiencing what she believed to be “a medical emergency,” at the time, though she did not specify. She also stated that the California Highway Patrol responded and conducted an investigation and did not find a cause to issue a citation.
According to ABC7, Ryan reported the vehicle license plate number to 911, and the operator said the vehicle was registered to the San Leandro Police Department.
But when Ryan called the department to complain, she said the watch commander, Lt. Antwinette Turner, initially denied that the vehicle belonged to the department, then called back offering to pay for repairs. She also asked Ryan not to file a report, ABC7 reported.
Ryan did not return KQED’s call for comment.
Turner, who is now the deputy chief of BART Police, already faces calls to resign over her supervision of the 2024 arrest of an unhoused Black man in San Leandro, who officers forcibly detained and later dumped seven miles away in Oakland, though he had committed no crime.
The incident and Turner’s involvement are detailed in a February 2025 complaint and request for investigation by San Leandro PD’s internal affairs Sgt. Michael Olivera, citing “Misconduct, Corruption and Systemic Failures” by Averiett, as well as SLPD’s Assistant Chief Luis Torres, Capt. Ali Khan and Human Resources Director Emily Hung.
Olivera’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.
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