Bay Area mayor says he was punched in chest after ‘heated’ conversation with man about parking
ALAMEDA – A City Hall meeting with the city’s police chief left the Mayor and his staff on edge Wednesday morning over one controversial decision after another.
The meeting, which lasted about 20 minutes, began with the mayor, Libby Schaaf, getting up from her chair at 10:05 a.m., and ended about a half-hour later, after Chief Bill Bratton made his case for the city’s decision to ask the California Public Employees Retirement System to reimburse it for police overtime that may not have been used in any hours at the time.
The mayor was seated on the opposite side of the table from her chief of staff, Nick Michels, who has come under fire for making statements to police about the mayor’s conduct when she was a candidate for election to the police commission.
In March, Michels described a conversation with Schaaf as an unpleasant “argument about parking.”
“There was, like, an argument about parking that took place in her office,” Michels told the Alameda Journal in March, regarding the conversation the police chief has acknowledged having with Schaaf about the parking issues. “She said one thing and then the chief said something else. We kept talking about it and we were trying to make it work.”
On Wednesday, Michels, who is also the commission’s chief administrator, told a news conference, “I didn’t walk out that morning and go,” and that he was “not a liar.”
“But if I said it, I am sorry,” Michels said. “I do apologize. I just don’t know how I missed that, but I missed that. There was a lot going on in that room. I was being asked questions for almost the entire morning.”
Michels said he was in the room with everyone during the May meeting of the police commission, and was with Schaaf for a time in her office.
Michels said Schaaf was trying to solve the parking issues, and while the conversation got “heated,” it was the mayor and his staff