Big cities throughout California continue to be roiled by police issues. Oakland and San Francisco have gotten the most attention because of high-profile

But the two iconic Bay Area cities are hardly alone in having police problems.

In Sacramento, last month’s release of a video showing officers’ July 11 killing of Joseph Mann, a mentally ill African American who was carrying a knife, has shaken public faith in the Police Department. The agency refused to provide the video or to offer key details about the incident until forced to by the Sacramento Bee’s release of a surveillance video on Sept. 20. It was revealed that before officers shot Mann 14 times, they tried to run him over, though he appeared no immediate threat to anyone.

A casualty of the controversy may be the Sacramento Community Police Commission, which formed last year partly in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Last week, the chairman of the commission — Sacramento pastor Les Simmons — abruptly resigned. At a press conference, he said the commission’s lack of authority to subpoena witnesses and conduct independent investigations left him feeling he was “not being relevant and true to my community.” The panel is essentially a city advisory body.

Days before the Bee released the video, Sacramento Police Chief Sam Somers Jr. announced he was retiring in December, when new Mayor Darrell Steinberg takes office. Somers insisted his decision was unrelated to his officers’ fatal shooting of Mann. But the Sacramento Bee reported that Somers wasn’t comfortable with the new era in which police are routinely called on to defend and justify their actions.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Police Commission — which has the level of authority that Simmons wants in Sacramento — has broken with Police Chief Charlie Beck over two police killings in 2015. On Sept. 20, a near-unanimous board ruled that both cases violated LAPD’s use-of-force guidelines. In one case, James Joseph Byrd — a 45-year-old white man with a history of mental illness — was shot to death after throwing a beer bottle that hit a police car. In the other, Norma Guzman — a 37-year-old Latina with a history of mental illness — was shot to death while brandishing a knife and approaching officers.

Beck offered a particularly vigorous defense of his officers’ handling of the Guzman case. But commissioners — and members of the public — repeatedly questioned why officers didn’t use a Taser to subdue the woman.

L.A. officers must ‘choose your life or your job’

This drew a fierce counterattack from the LAPD union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, on its website:

Run away. If a police officer is confronted by a suspect with a weapon, those entrusted to set policies for the Police Department believe officers should run away. That’s the recent finding from the Los Angeles Police Commission which has turned Monday morning quarterbacking into a weekly agenda item at the three-ring circus they preside over every Tuesday morning. …

The Commission is becoming nothing more than a politically motivated rubber stamp for the warped worldview of a handful of activists that they pander to. …

The message the Los Angeles Police Commission is sending to officers confronted with a violent and dangerous suspect is clear: You can save your life or save your job, but you cannot do both. You choose.

The Police Commission dismissed the union criticism and followed up last week by approving new policies meant to reduce civilian deaths and to promote transparency. The policies require significantly more information to be released about shootings involving officers; an increased emphasis on role-playing training using “real world” scenarios; and regular evaluations of how serious incidents that don’t end in tragedy are handled to develop a best-practices approach to scaling down confrontations with individuals.

Commissioner Steve Soboroff — the only member to side with Chief Beck and defend the fatal shootings of Boyd and Guzman — joined in the unanimous vote to force changes on the LAPD.

A tumultuous year in Bay Area law enforcement continued last week when Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan abruptly resigned after six years on the job.

Meehan won national attention — and rebukes — for a 2012 decision to send an officer to an Oakland Tribune reporter’s home after midnight to try to get him to make changes in an unflattering story. He was also in the news that year for treating the theft of his son’s stolen iPhone as a department priority, assigning 10 officers to the case.

But the years since have seemed quiet — until last month. That’s when an online publication, berkeleyside.com, obtained emails that revealed Meehan was facing withering internal fire from individual officers. A survey completed by more than half of employees of Berkeley PD featured complaints about “weak leadership, low morale, insufficient staffing and inconsistent communication,” berekeleyside.com reported.

Meehan took the criticisms hard, according to the publication, telling staffers he was plainly not doing his job well. Captain Andrew Greenwood will fill in as chief while Berkeley elected leaders decide how to name Meehan’s replacement.

San Francisco loses one chief; Oakland, three

Meehan’s exit comes after months of turmoil in larger neighboring cities.

In May, San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr resigned at the request of Mayor Ed Lee following the third police killing of an unarmed African American since December. Deputy Chief Toney Chaplin was named interim chief.

San Francisco police are also facing a federal probe over the discoveries last year and earlier this year that a total of  17 different officers had sent racist and homophobic text messages.

In June, the Oakland Police Department went through three police chiefs in nine days — aftershocks from a sordid scandal involving a teenage prostitute who goes by the name Celeste Guap (pictured). She told the Bay Area News Group that she had sex with two dozen police officers from five different local departments, in some cases while she was underage. A majority of the officers were from Oakland, including one who committed suicide in 2015 and left a note that triggered an internal probe.

The first chief to go was Sean Whent, who left the Oakland force after 19 years after being viewed as botching the investigation of his officers’ relationship with Guap. Assistant Chief Paul Figueroa lasted two days as interim chief before leaving for unspecified reasons, although Oakland Mayor Libby Shaaf indicated he was not caught up in the scandal and would resume his previous role as an OPD lieutenant. Schaaf then named Bay Area Rapid Transit Deputy Police Chief Ben Fairow as interim chief, but he was gone after a week after city officials learned of a sex scandal from Fairow’s past.

The Oakland Police Department has been run since mid-June by a civilian: City Administrator Sabrina Landreth.

Teen prostitute sues Oakland for $66 million

Guap has sued the city of Oakland for $66 million, likening her treatment by officers to “modern day slavery.” Her sexual encounters with city officers while underage “constitute unlawful forced labor, trafficking into servitude and sex trafficking of a child by force, fraud and coercion and have caused [her] to suffer unimaginable abuse, pain, and suffering that she and her family will endure for the rest of her life,” according to a report on the lawsuit by NBC Bay Area.

Guap was also in the news earlier in September after she pleaded no contest to assaulting a worker at a Florida rehab center that treats drug abuse and sex addiction.

The Oakland police force has been under federal oversight since 2003. The oversight was a requirement stipulated in the settlement of a massive civil rights case involving four OPD officers who allegedly assaulted and planted evidence on 119 plaintiffs. All but one was black.