Getting more police officers on the street

You know how Oakland politicians are constantly talking about how we can improve public safety by moving sworn officers out of desk jobs and putting them on the street? People running for office, people in office, people in office and running for re-election…pretty much everyone says this all the time. It’s one of those things that I get really sick of hearing. Like, yes, that sounds like a good idea, so why don’t you just do it already and stop talking about it. (Just like Ignacio with his constant harping about GPS and 311.) Read more

2007 City Crime Rankings Released

And Oakland moves down a slot, to number five on the list!

Doubtlessly, this news will result in the same litany of excuses from the Mayor and Police Chief that we heard last year about how the rankings (PDF) aren’t accurate and besides, most of the good citizens of Oakland can rest easy at night, safe and sound, because crime isn’t a problem in their neighborhood. Remember this gem from last year: Read more

Highlights from last night’s Council meeting

Did you skip the show last night? Had something better to do with your Tuesday evening than stare at KTOP for seven straight hours? Don’t worry. I watch these things so you don’t have to. Here’s what you missed: Read more

OPD at 837 doesn’t mean what Dellums seems to think it means

So, if you read the newspaper, it probably did not escape your notice that the Oakland Police Department has now exceeded its staffing requirement of 803 officers, and is, in fact, now at its highest level of staffing in history, with a total of 837 officers.

When you read these stories, you may have noticed two claims from Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums that probably made you feel a little better about the direction Oakland’s been heading. Read more

OPD, 803, and Measure Y

So tomorrow, four years and twelve days after Oakland voters approved an $88 annual parcel tax to fund increased police services, the Oakland Police Department will hit an important milestone and finally reach (surpass, actually) the 803 officers voters have been paying for.

Before you get too excited, this does not mean that the promise or obligations of Measure Y have been filled. Read more

The story with CompStat and Oakland

So, Chip Johnson’s column today is sort-of about general problems with the police department and sort-of about CompStat. I’ve noticed that the word CompStat is getting thrown around more and more often in discussions about OPD, and while I’m thrilled about that because I think we desperately need to do it here, I also think that it sometimes seems people aren’t exactly clear on what it is. Read more

Jean Quan and elementary math

My little sister has this, like, handheld video game thing. It’s like a game boy except that it’s sleek and has a color, not sepia-tone screen, also, the screen is much bigger than on a game boy. In fact, there are two screens, and they both respond to touch. Also, it recognizes voice. So I guess it isn’t actually that much like a game boy after all. Anyway. She will sit on the couch for hours and hours playing this totally inane “game” that’s supposed to help prevent Alzheimers or something. Why she can’t just read a book or pick up a crossword puzzle, I couldn’t say. Wev, I spend my free time watching DVDs of months-old City Council and Planning Commission meetings (you should see my collection!), so I’m hardly in a position to judge. Read more

Where is the outrage?

So, a funny thing happened to me on Monday evening. As I was putting the finishing touches on my endorsements blog, my computer froze. So then I went to restart it. Then it wouldn’t restart. Then I spent a couple hours on the phone with tech support, then at the store, and the end result of all that is, well, I once again find myself without a computer. Also, I lost that blog and all the notes for it.

I’ll still do endorsements, unfortunately they’ll be a little less detailed than I had originally wanted, and of course, they’ll be later than I’d planned. I hope to put them up tomorrow or at the latest Saturday. (I wouldn’t feel bad about this if so many people didn’t insist on voting absentee for God knows what reason. I love going to the polls!) Anyway, that’s the story with the endorsements and also why I haven’t been posting the last couple of days.

Anyway, I’ll keep working on recreating that, but in the meantime, I have a question. Why are people not up in arms over the police department? Read more

More taxes for everyone, not just property owners

So at the Council meeting way back in July when the Council voted in favor of putting the police parcel tax (Measure NN) on the November ballot, District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan, who supported the tax, said that she would be introducing a proposal in the fall that would allow landlords to pass the cost of the new tax onto their tenants. Read more

They want more money so they can do more of this?

So I know that in yesterday’s post, I promised some positive suggestions for today, but alas, I’m faced with an unexpected and pressing deadline for work that I’m actually getting paid for, so you guys will just have to wait until tomorrow for that. In the meantime, you’ll have to put up with just a little more whining. Sorry.

So, the Oakland Police Department has this thing called the Alcoholic Beverage Action Team, or ABAT. Basically, they’re the fun police.

Okay, that’s a little unfair. The idea behind ABAT is basically that they help prevent businesses in possession of a liquor license from being a nuisance. ABAT is funded partly by a $1500 annual fee paid by all alcohol-selling businesses, but mostly by grants - some from the State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, some from the County Health Department. They use the money to pay for the overtime costs associated (for both sworn officers and civilian support staff) with their tasks, and also to pay underage decoys to assist with their sting operations. The idea is that we can reduce the number of problem liquor stores if we hunt down and fine the ones selling liquor and cigarettes to minors.

So in their most recent report (PDF) to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, here’s what ABAT listed as their activities for the previous year:

• Conducted over 405 Annual Inspections and 125 re-inspections.
• Conducted 75 bar check operations.
• 32 re-inspection fees were charged to operators for failure to comply with State and Local laws. These fees generated $6,400.00
• Conducted 166 decoy operations, resulting in 39 sales to a minor (24% sale rate).
• Made 2 felony arrests.
• Issued 55 citations for public intoxication/open container in front of liquor stores.

Okay…fine. I mean, honestly, I’m still a little too close to my own high school days to get all that worked up personally about underage drinking and smoking, but I’m certainly not going to complain about OPD trying to make sure that businesses comply with age laws either.

But ABAT’s activities are not limited to stopping underage alcohol and tobacco sales. They’re also the ones who gave my friend a ticket for smoking outside while not violating any law. For those who missed the story, this happened on a Friday evening adjacent to an actual crime scene. (BTW, my friend did not end up having to pay…so far.)

Anyway, regardless of who pays for it, I have long resented the fact that we use our extremely limited police resources to run around town hunting for outdoor smokers to ticket and similar bullshit that, I’m sorry, is just not the problem in Oakland.

But when I returned to Oakland yesterday after a blissful weekend away, I heard something about ABAT that makes the outdoor smoking manhunt seem downright reasonable. Apparently, they spent Saturday night going around to local bars and issuing fines to a bunch of spots that had DJs and no cabaret license.

The Municipal Code’s definition of a cabaret is as follows (Sec. 5.12.010):

A “cabaret” shall be construed to include any place where the general public is admitted, where entertainment is furnished by or for any patron or guest present upon the premises, including, but not limited to singing, vaudeville and dancing, and where liquid refreshments or foods are sold; provided, however, that any place where entertainment is furnished by the mechanical or electronic reproduction of pre-recorded music or radio broadcasts or by motion pictures, shall not be construed to be a cabaret within the meaning of this section unless dancing privileges are afforded in connection therewith.

Now, the idea behind this is that you need to get a special license to have live music. I think this is annoying, but wev, I understanding the reasoning behind it. And I wouldn’t have any problem with it at all if the City didn’t make it so damn difficult to get the stupid license in the first place. So, it’s the City’s position that you need a cabaret license not just for live music, but also for DJs. I understand the reasoning behind this as well. If you want to open a big dance club, you’re going to have all the same associated issues as you would if you were having bands play every night. So for dance clubs with DJs, it makes sense.

What does not make sense is that the City considers all bars with DJs to be cabarets, including those that do not have dance floors. It’s still considered live entertainment, even though what you’re talking about is basically some guy sitting in a corner pressing buttons on a laptop while people ignore him all night. I’m sorry, this just a stupid requirement that places a totally unnecessary burden and cost on local businesses. But beyond that, just…OMFG. This is what we have police officers doing on a Saturday night? How is this a good use of resources?

Banner summer for Oakland

So, to recap.

The general political climate in Oakland at the beginning of the summer was best summed up by the Trib in their Council race endorsements, which they introduced by saying “If there were ever a city crying out for leadership, it’s Oakland,” then proceeded to endorse the re-election of every single incumbent. Oakland voters followed suit at the polls in early June, and sent Nancy Nadel, Jane Brunner, Ignacio De La Fuente, and Larry Reid back for four more years.

Mid-June news of a large-scale gang bust by the Oakland Police Department was almost immediately eclipsed by allegations that Oakland City Administrator Deborah Edgerly had interfered with the 2-month investigation by tipping off her nephew, a member of the Acorn gang and City of Oakland employee, that his phone was tapped.

Faced with widespread citizen outrage, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums took the opportunity to demonstrate his unique ability to find the absolute worst possible way to handle a municipal crisis, first giving her until Monday, June 23rd to either resign or be fired, then pre-empting his own deadline by sending out an e-mail on Friday, June 20th directing all department heads to report directly to him. Nevertheless, Edgerly remained at the helm at the beginning of the following week.

Then on Tuesday, June 24th, Dellums held a press conference announcing that Edgerly would retire from her post, at the end of July (although she would continue to work for the city for as long as six months while selecting her own replacement) but claimed that the announcement was unrelated to the brewing scandal, saying her retirement plans had been in place since January. When pressed for details on the search for Edgerly’s replacement by Chip Johnson on KQED Forum, Dellums Chief of Staff David Chai remained insistent that the plan had been in place since January, but refused (or was unable) to answer follow-up questions about when the search for a replacement had begun.

By Friday, June 27th, Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente and Pat Kernighan were calling publicly for her to be placed on administrative leave until her retirement date, and Dellums finally did so that night, naming his interim CEDA director Dan Lindheim acting City Administrator. Edgerly fired back the next Monday, claiming that Dellums didn’t have the authority to appoint her replacement, in response to which, the Mayor finally fired her on July 1st, then told reporters the following day that claims he had behaved indecisively were “absurd.” Ultimate fallout of the Edgerly scandal is yet to be determined, awaiting the results of an FBI investigation, for which subpoenas were issued in late August.

Reaction to the Edgerly mess from the rest of City Hall varied widely. Oakland City Attorney John Russo, Oakland City Auditor Courtney Ruby, and Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente stepped in with government reform packages, offering proposals ranging from a new anti-nepotism law to an audit of hiring practices to records reform, while District 3 City Councilmember Nancy Nadel called such actions “opportunistic power grabbing (PDF)” and warned that we should wait for all the facts before “rushing to judgement.” Calls to eliminate waste in Oakland’s government were met with derision by District 4 Councilmember and wanna-be Mayor Jean Quan, who announced in a newsletter that she believes the worst case scenario is that the City has less than a million dollars in waste that could be cut.

The administrative crisis was compounded by a financial one. The Council passed a mid-cycle budget with $15 million in cuts in June, but got two bits of unpleasant news the next month. First, in response to findings of vote counting irregularities with LLAD from activist David Mix and ORPN founder Charles Pine, the Council admitted defeat and agreed not to collect the tax, putting them another $12 million in the hole. Then Dellums acknowledged that the revenue estimates he had presented in his (late) budget proposal were inaccurate by millions of dollars and announced he was bringing in former City Manager Robert Bobb to sort out the mess and find a replacement for Edgerly. Bobb announced two weeks ago that the actual deficit was somewhere between forty and sixty million dollars. Matier and Ross later reported that Oakland’s fund reserve dropped from over $60 million last year to $22 million currently. Although the City is unable to account for where the money went, Finance and Management Committee Chair Jean Quan tried to put a rest to concerns, saying “It’s not like the money was stolen.”

Things just got worse in August, when the City experienced a spree of local business robberies that appeared to have no rhyme or reason, with targets ranging from a pizzeria on Skyline to a nail salon in Temescal to a monument to mediocre cuisine in Rockridge. Dellums responded by blaming the economy, informing the citizens that the apparent crime rise is perception, not reality, and calling in the volunteer Guardian Angels to patrol our streets. The spate of high profile crime wasn’t limited to restaurant robberies - Oakland residents also got to deal with arsons in West Oakland, a four year old boy getting hit by a stray bullet, and this weekend, the second murder this year of a pregnant teenager. A Labor Day shooting in East Oakland brought the year’s homicide tally to 95, up from 88 this time last year.

In response to rising concerns about crime, the Council agreed to place a parcel tax on the November ballot that would hire 105 additional police officers and 75 additional police service technicians over the next three years, at a cost of $275/year for Oakland homeowners. Dellums named former County Health Department director Arnold Perkins as his temporary Public Safety Director. Although the public will have to wait until September 11th to see the Mayor’s full public safety program, residents got a preview of Perkins’s answers for the Oakland crime problem in a Trib editorial this weekend, where Perkins suggests to Martin Reynolds that citizens combat the crime problem on their own by bringing fried chicken to the groups of young men loitering on their streetcorners.

You know, following this stuff day to day, you’re always angry, of course, but as with anything, after a while you just sort of get used to it. There’s outrage, sure, but somehow it just gets dulled over time. I had a wake-up call this weekend, watching the way people not from Oakland reacted to my telling them, in this kind of jaded, matter-of-fact way, about the restaurant robberies and the statements in response from Dellums and Tucker. Their response, which was just complete disbelief that anyone would tolerate living in such a place, made me realize just how totally, totally fucked-up the situation is in this town. (I am sorry for the language. Although I may have a few sailor-like tendencies in person, I do try to restrain myself on the blog, but sometimes there are no other words.) The people of Oakland deserve better, and there is absolutely no reason we should tolerate the status quo even a day longer. Immediate action is needed from City Hall. As for what that action should be, well, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow on my thoughts there. Today is just about reveling in completely justifiable outrage.

When your best isn’t good enough, it’s time to go

So I’ve had like a dozen people ask me this week why I haven’t written anything yet about the latest plan for ending Oakland’s spate of restaurant robberies from Mayor Ron Dellums and Police Chief Wayne Tucker.

For those who missed it somehow, Dellums says that the problem will not end until we all start running around writing down license plate numbers of all the suspicious looking vehicles we see. The Mayor also made the extremely helpful observation that he thinks people are robbing restaurants because they are “targets of opportunity.” Um…duh.

Meanwhile, the police department basically blames the continued robberies on the media, saying that all the coverage of robberies and no reporting on arrests emboldens would-be robbers. Again…duh.

The police department thinks this is unfair, since they’ve actually arrested 52 robbery suspects in the past two months, although none of those arrests are of suspects in the recent restaurant robberies. So…52 suspects. 60 days. Out of how many crimes? Well, between June 24th (xls) and August 24 (xls), we went from 1,897 reported robberies for the year to 2,606. So…two months, 709 robberies, 52 arrests. And the problem is with the media not reporting arrests? If they say so.

Anyway, I mostly haven’t written about it yet because it’s just too depressing. The latest pleas for help and rounds of blame and sad defensiveness are just so totally pathetic that my immediate reaction was one of pity rather than anger. Both Dellums’s and Tucker’s remarks just give off this overwhelming stench of complete desperation. And yeah, it’s totally unacceptable that they can’t get a handle on things, but my feeling at this point is that both really are doing the best they can. The problem is that both are just completely overmatched by their jobs. And when you’re doing your best and working as hard as you’re capable of (I’m not saying that the Mayor is working harder than most people would be capable of, BTW, just that I don’t think it’s in him to do anything beyond what he’s already doing), and the result is just flat-out not acceptable, that means it’s time to hand the reigns to someone else. At this point, the best thing both Dellums and Tucker could do to help Oakland move forward is to put their egos aside and admit that these extremely important jobs should be filled by someone with more energy, more ideas, and more, well, just general competence.

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