On Tuesday night, Oakland’s City Council will address the City’s growing crime problems the way it approaches most problems: reactively. Rather than confronting the issue with a well-thought-out overall strategy, Council will debate piecemeal proposals: gang injunctions, and curfew and anti-loitering ordinances. Make Oakland Better Now! believes that the real solution to the City’s growing crime problem must involve a comprehensive public safety strategy that dispenses with the current piecemeal approach and the “police vs. social programs” dichotomy that divides the City and keeps us from uniting to solve our most pressing issue.

When he arrived in Oakland two years ago, Chief Batts stated that the best way to reduce Oakland’s crime rate was to address three root causes: gangs, guns and drugs. The City responded by shutting down the police department helicopter, crippling the gang injunction program, and taking a series of budget actions that would ultimately cause a 25% reduction in authorized police officer positions.

Predictably, the homicide rate began to climb. Then came the unimaginable horror of little Carlos Nava’s killing in August. Two weeks later, Jose Esparza was robbed and gunned down in front of his 6-year-old son. The cry went out from City Council members to do something. Council members Reid and De la Fuente urged the Council to reverse its action limiting gang injunctions. Council member Brooks led a crowd into Council’s Public Safety Committee meeting to demand the City reinstate its “Shot Spotter” contract, increase lighting in public spaces, hire previously approved crime analysts, and take other immediate actions. Mayor Quan announced a half-day “public safety summit” featuring “strategy sessions, dialogues and/or workshops” on such subjects as “Gang Awareness, Loitering, Racial Profiling, Restorative Justice, Barriers to Youth Employment, Foreclosures, Volunteering and Youth Mentoring, Sexual Exploitation of Minors, Youth Perspectives on Crime, Truancy, Police-Community relationships, Parolees and Re-Entry.”

Many of these subjects are worthy of public discussion. But some are also code words for one side of a divisive debate that has dominated the public safety discussion in Oakland for years. Instead of looking at our public safety efforts comprehensively, Oaklanders have fought each other over the false dichotomy of “police officers vs. social programs.”

On Tuesday, Council will debate three relatively small public safety measures that involve police activity. Well-organized and vocal advocates for the “social programs” side of the debate will likely turn out to attack the proposals as part of a war on the community, and to accuse the police of racism. Residents who favor enhanced police activity will speak on the other side. No matter what action the Council takes, we will continue to have a divided community. We will continue to make no progress at all toward Oakland’s most critical public safety needs: finding ways to restore an adequate number of police officers to the Oakland Police Department, and even more importantly, designing and implementing a comprehensive public safety strategy for the City.

It is clear that we need more police officers (and far more than the 25 the Department of Justice has just agreed to finance). The ever-decreasing number of police officers is taxing the system to the limit; our citizens are experiencing a drastic reduction in police services. We also need focused, measured, and accountable programs to address the underlying social issues facing all Oaklanders today.How do we accomplish this? We need to make sure that all parts of the public safety effort are working together, and are held accountable for making Oakland safe.

We all agree our goal is to make Oakland safer. The organizations dedicated to this goal include not just the Police and Fire Departments, but a host of groups involved in Kids First programs, violence prevention programs, and the City Attorney’s office. So who coordinates the efforts of everyone involved in making Oakland a safer place? Who aligns all of their efforts to make sure they are pulling together? Who ensures that every contributor to the public safety effort shares a common vision? What mechanisms exist to ensure all players in our most mission-critical endeavor are aligned? And what procedures measure whether all participants are successfully making Oakland safer?

Sadly, there is no such person and there are no such mechanisms or procedures. Until there is a comprehensive public safety plan coordinating every person and every program involved in making Oakland safer, we will continue the pointless and destructive debate over cops vs. programs. Until we align, coordinate, and measure our public safety efforts, we will remain unable to effectively address the crime and violence problem in our city.

The stalemate centers around the police officers’ union (OPOA) request for a three year no layoff pledge in exchange for the Officers paying their “employee share” pension contribution of 9%. This pension contribution would be an important part of helping to build a long-term financially sustainable system.

I think we should accept and I have a proposal that allows us to do so. My proposal avoids the need for police layoffs, gets the 9% pension contribution from the OPOA and does not require our residents to pay a new $360 parcel tax.

We were asked to refrain from publicly discussing our proposals, until negotiations ended, but given the lack of a resolution and the urgency for Oakland to resolve this logjam I am putting it forward now.

My proposal is during the next three years (the duration of the OPOA’s current contract) as long as the City honors its no lay off guarantee the police continue to pay the 9% toward their pension. We can avoid layoffs both by agreeing to a retirement program and by taking other steps to improve our financial situation. In order to protect all parties to the agreement, I would propose a provision that if layoffs took place during the contract, the pension contribution would be reduced to 4%.

A combination of normal attrition and the savings from the 9% would allow us to avoid police layoffs, while also giving us the opportunity and time to reach agreement on other cost-saving/non-layoff solutions for our police force. This would meet the police union’s demands of no layoffs and take a much-needed step toward necessary structural change.

Many of the recently laid off officers are some of our youngest and most diverse. They also cost less than older officers. Taxpayers have made a significant investment in their recruitment and training. This is an investment that cannot be wasted. We save much more money by allowing more senior officers to leave the force through a retirement program like the one requested by OPOA, rather than laying-off the most junior officers.

We must include other ways to reduce costs while assuring public safety. These include achieving full compliance with the Riders settlement so that we can move sworn officers from Internal Affairs to community policing, and civilianizing certain tasks, such as intake of civilian complaints and clerical tasks, to lower costs and increase efficiencies.

Other cities are using civilians to do routine clerical tasks previously done by police officers. The civilians cost about half what a police officer costs. This frees up more cops for patrol and community policing efforts.  Here in Oakland we need to work together in a way that everybody contributes and shares in providing for the public safety and the fiscal sustainability of our city.

Rebecca Kaplan is Oakland’s City Councilmember at-Large and a candidate for Mayor. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and at KaplanForMayor.org.

Just like when we looked at this last month, crime continues to be down significantly, both compared to last year and the last few years.

The progress is, of course, very welcome. I can’t help but wonder a little bit about such a dramatic drop in rapes, though. Does that seem weird to anyone else? Just cause, in general, rape doesn’t seem like the sort of crime that would go away so quickly in response to more aggressive or more efficient policing. It makes me wonder if there’s some kind of reporting or recording issue going on there. Any insight into that one from readers would be much appreciated.

The numbers, as usual, come from the Oakland Police Department’s weekly crime report (PDF) and are as of May 9, 2010.

Anyway, here you go. Part I crimes reported through April 4th, 2010. All figures come from the Oakland Police Department’s weekly crime report (PDF).

So, there you go.

Whether it’s doable or not of course remains to be seen. However, the Chief’s record in Long Beach, both in terms of reducing crime and also restoring community trust of the Police Department, makes me optimistic.

New plan, Old concept

Of course, it isn’t like the concept of strategic planning is new to OPD. There have been frequent stabs at creating such plans even just in recent years. There’s this one from 2007 (PDF), for example. And of course there was the ongoing Crime Fighting Strategic Plan (PDF) efforts discussed repeatedly at Council (PDF) meetings during 2008. These discussions were probably most memorably summed up in a presentation to the Public Safety Committee, where Committee members were told that the bottom line is “We can’t arrest our way out of the problem.”

Consistent with that statement, the Crime Fighting Strategic Plan (PDF) documents and presentations generally characterized the Department as practically helpless with respect to crime reduction, taking the general position that the Police Department, no matter what they do, can have at most a limited impact on Oakland’s crime rate.

There are a number of factors that contribute to changes in crime: socioeconomic conditions, community involvement, and the school system are three significant factors. While the Police Department’s impact is important, it is limited.

and

While there are strategies that provide a toolbox approach to specific types of crimes, there are no “national best practices” for crime reduction. Oakland in comparison to cities of like size has both common and unique crime problems.

Another common thread in the discussions was essentially that crime in Oakland isn’t actually that bad, and that perception is worse than reality. Perhaps in some neighborhoods that’s the case, but of course many people would like to think that all of Oakland’s residents deserve safety.

A noticeably new approach

The new Strategic Plan framework (PDF) and presentation (PDF) unveiled by Chief Batts last week represent a sharp (and welcome!) departure from that attitude. Both the Chief’s letter introducing the framework (PDF) and the introductory charts in the presentation (PDF) (see pages 6-17) make no bones about the fact that the level of crime in Oakland is beyond unacceptable and the Department’s current response to reported crimes is deplorable. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

As with any plan, it is important to define the current reality or starting point as well as the destination. Unfortunately, the current reality is not very positive. Oakland is not a safe community – in fact it is among the least safe and most violent in the US. Services provided to the Community by the Police Department are nowhere near the standards that should be expected. Many good people in the Community do not trust the Police Department and live in fear of the police as well as of criminals.

How refreshing! What’s that thing they say about problems? You can’t solve one until you acknowledge that it exists or something like that? Yeah. So just the recognition that the status quo is not acceptable represents a huge step forward.

Basics of the new strategic plan framework

The framework lists five strategic goals, along with a set of actions related to achieving each of them. I won’t copy it all out here, since the document (PDF) is basically just a set of short, bulleted lists and if people are interested in reading the whole thing they should just go ahead and download it. It is a very fast read, since, like I said, it’s basically just an outline. The goals that frame the plan are:

• Focus on the underlying causes of violent crime in Oakland – Gangs, Drugs, and Guns
• Improve police services provided based on the Community’s priorities
• Improve the relationship between the Oakland Police Department and the Community
• Develop and implement a “Total Community Policing” model in Oakland
• Expand the capability of the Oakland Police Department to meet its Mission

OPD seeks community input

Perhaps most refreshing of all is the Chief’s serious effort to work with Oakland residents in crafting the plan, which is supposed to be ready in a final version this summer. Over the next two weeks, there will be a series of community meetings to solicit feedback on the framework. People should go!

Here’s the schedule:

• Wednesday, March 3: Montera Middle School, 555 Ascot Drive. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Thursday, March 4: East Oakland Senior Center, 9255 Edes Avenue. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Wednesday, March 10: Willie Key Recreation Center, 3131 Union Street. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Thursday, March 11: Manzanita Recreation Center, 2701 22nd Avenue. 6:30 to 8:00 PM

If you can’t, or for some reason don’t want to, make it to any of the meetings, you can still share your thoughts. The Police Department has put up an online survey to collect feedback from residents. Questions are basically all open-ended, asking residents to share their own ideas for reducing violent crime, improving OPD services, and improving the level of trust between the Department and the community. Additionally, residents interested in participating in implementation working groups are invited to leave their contact information and areas of interest. It’s so refreshing to see the Police Department reaching out to citizens like this.

BTW, the Library wants your input too!

Oh, and one more thing. As long as we’re on the topic of City surveys, the Oakland Public Library is also currently soliciting patron input. As you guys may remember, all OPL branch libraries were reduced from six day per week to five day per week service in August as part of the City Council’s budget decision. The library is now evaluating the new branch schedule and is looking for patron thoughts on Monday vs. Saturday service, morning vs. evening hours, and for patrons with children, the most convenient periods for storytime. Also, there are open ended questions where you can offer general feedback. The survey ends after this weekend, so please, if you are a library user, take a few moments to fill it out. You can find the survey here: http://surveymonkey.com/oplpatronsurvey.

When compared to the same date in 2008, reported crimes have been down pretty much all year, and that trend continues here, with overall reports down a little under 13%. It’s not the 26% drop we were looking at in February, but it is significant.

It’s not all good news, though. Take a look at the second row. Aggravated assaults are now up from last year. As happy as I am that fewer cars are being stolen, I also find it extremely disheartening to just watch Oakland’s violence problem get worse and worse and worse every damn year. The new Police Chief at least seems to feel some sense of urgency about this problem, so hopefully we will see a reversal of that trend in 2010. For now, it’s just depressing.

Anyway, as always, the numbers come from the Oakland Police Department’s daily crime reports. The numbers above reflect data as of November 12th:

I did enjoy listening to Batts speak, but everything else about the night was annoying. Before the Chief started talking, we had to listen to a long series of speeches about how great the Mayor is and a bunch of self-congratulatory nonsense about the Mayor’s task forces and how amazing they are. Personally, I think it’s kind of pathetic if three years into your term, the best accomplishment you can point to is something that nobody ever really cared about and that happened before you even started, but that’s just me.

The Mayor promised to give Batts a brief introduction, and then talked for like half an hour about how great he is, and how he’s been such a great Mayor, and great Oakland is doing, and so on and so on, to the point I made myself dizzy trying to get my head around how it is even possible for someone to be so completely disconnected with reality. Anyway. Eventually he got around to letting the Chief talk, but only after forcing everyone to sit through a stunningly boring litany of all the ways Oakland and Long Beach are similar (highlight: we both have an airport).

The Chief promised to keep his remarks short so there would be plenty of time for questions, and he totally did not do that at all, but nobody minded (well, some people probably did, but not me), because he is just such an engaging speaker. He didn’t say much about his plans for Oakland – it was all pretty general, stuff about his background and why he decided to come to Oakland. Apparently his remarks last night at the OPOA/UNCO event were a little more interesting, but since I wasn’t there, I’ll leave it for readers who were to share their impressions in the comments.

At the end of the Town Hall meeting on Monday, there was time for questions, but the whole thing was just impossibly poorly coordinated, and instead of hearing the Chief answer people’s questions, we listened to a series of people ramble at length about whatever their pet project is. In a few cases, the diatribes were punctuated with a half-hearted question (“Blah blah blah, me, blah blah blah, I’m so great, blah blah blah, this organization I work with is so great and everyone should come to their event next week, blah blah blah blah. And so, do you think we should have more police officers on the street?”), but mostly it was just people babbling at the room in general and the Chief didn’t really have an opportunity to say much in response. It was kind of disappointing. I ended up leaving early cause I was just so irritated.

Anyway, there will be two more Town Halls where you can hear the Chief talk – one on Monday from 6:30 to 8 at Cesar Chavez Educational Center (2825 International Boulevard) and another on Wednesday, November 18th, again from 6:30 to 8, at the Tassafaronga Recreation Center (975 85th Avenue). I’d advise showing up a little late so you don’t have to endure the Dellums campaign rally, and unless they restructure the way they do the Q&A, it’s probably not worth sitting through that part either, but I do recommend going just to watch Batts, who is extremely impressive.

But if you can’t make it to either of those (or if you can, but are still left curious afterwards), I have another opportunity for you.

The Oakland Tribune Editorial Board will be sitting down to talk to the Chief in a couple weeks. Naturally, we’re all bubbling over with our own questions, but what we really want is to make sure that our interview reflects what readers want to know. So we’re soliciting questions from the community.

Big picture stuff is welcome, but we’re also looking for questions based on your experiences in your own neighborhood. Just anything you want to know, basically. We’ll collect all the questions we receive, pick out the best ones, and ask as many as we have time for. You can send in your question via the contact form here, or just leave a comment on this post.

We’re really interested in what you want to know. So please, start firing away.

Overall Part I crimes reported in Oakland continue to be down compared to last year, which is always a good thing. And as it’s getting so late in the year, it’s looking at this point like we will end up meeting the Mayor’s goal of a year-end overall crime reduction of 10%.

You may remember that early this year, reported crimes were down dramatically versus 2008 (26% in February, 22% in March, close to 20% in May). That level of drop didn’t last through the summer, but we did manage to maintain double-digit reductions (16% in June, 13% in July, and 13% in September).

And where are we today? Well, see for yourself:

As always, figures are taken from OPD’s Daily Crime Reports, and the numbers above reflect data as of October 13th (xls).

If it’s any consolation, according to the applicant rankings (PDF), we need the cash more than any other police department in the whole country, scoring 75.77 out of 100 possible points on the desperation index. Following us are Gary, IN with 72.90 points, Stockton, CA with 69.87 points, Pontiac, MI with 69.27 points, Muskegon Heights, MI with 68.70 points, Detroit, MI with 68.25 points, Atlanta, GA with 68.64 points, Darlington, SC with 67.65 points, Warren, OH with 67.21 points East Chicago, IL with 67.10 points, Vallejo, CA with 65.98 points, and Dayton, OH with 65.71 points. No other departments (out of 7,202 agencies applying) scored more than 65 points. Hmm. I guess that’s not really much of a consolation at all, actually.

Unfortunately, there simply wasn’t enough money in grants to go around. Despite the Federal government’s recognition of the dire need here and in many other cities, a cap was imposed on the number of officers that could be funded – no more than 5% of a department’s existing force, with a maximum of 50 officers.

The grants cover entry-level police salary and benefits for three years. Any overtime or steps over entry-level are up to cities to cover. Below, I’ve listed the 25 largest grants awarded, in descending order.

• Oakland, CA: $19.7m: 41 officers
• San Francisco, CA: $16.6m: 50 officers
• Los Angeles, CA: $16.3m: 50 officers
• Cincinnati, OH: $13.6m: 50 officers
• Chicago, IL: $13.3m: 50 officers
• Riverside, CA: $12.9m: 50 officers
• Columbus, OH: $12.7m: 50 officers
• Washington DC: $12.4m: 50 officers
• Boston, MA: $11.8m: 50 officers
• Cleveland, OH: $11.8m: 50 officers
• Atlanta, GA: $11.2m: 50 officers
• Detroit, MI: $11.1m: 50 officers
• Miami, FL: $11.1m: 50 officers
• Indianapolis, IN: $11.0m: 50 officers
• Philadelphia, PA: $10.9m: 50 officers
• Prince George County, MD: $10.6m: 50 officers
• San Antonio, TX: $10.4m: 50 officers
• Milwaukee, WI: $10.3m: 50 officers
• Fresno, CA: $10.2m: 41 officers
• Baltimore, MD: $10.1m: 50 officers
• Sacramento, CA: $9.5m: 35 officers
• Jacksonville, FL: $9.21m: 50 officers
• Dallas, TX: $8.9m: 50 officers
• St. Louis, MO: $8.7m: 50 officers
• Nashville, TN: $8.7m: 50 officers
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC: $8.5m: 50 officers

I’ll let you guys draw your own conclusions.

So how did the hole get so big so fast? Well, first, the budget passed last June assumed a stimulus grant that would fund 140 police officers. We knew at the time we probably wouldn’t get the entire grant, and would have to open up the budget at some point and make up the difference. At this point, we’re expecting to receive funding for only 40.7 of those 140 officers, which leaves us $11.3 million short of where we were hoping to be.

This leaves us with some very unpleasant choices. One, we could go ahead and lay off 100 police officers, but then we’d have to stop collecting Measure Y taxes, which would mean laying off an additional 63 officers, for a total of 163 officers lost, plus giving up significant funding for the Fire Department and violence prevention programs. Since nobody wants to do that, we’re stuck with finding another $11.3 million in cuts elsewhere in the budget.

On top of that, the budget the Council passed assumed $11.92 million in reductions to the Police Department budget, but didn’t say how we were going to do it. Now we have to figure that out, leaving us with $23.22 million to cut. Then, it turns out we may have to repay Measure Y $2.14 million (fallout from Marleen Sacks’s lawsuit), bringing the total amount we need to find to $25.36 million. Fortunately (sort-of), the budget we passed included a $6.62 million surplus, so if use all that money to cover the shortfall, we’re left with $18.74 million to cut. Ouch.

So how are we going to get there? You can read the whole proposal that will come before the Council here (PDF), but here are some of the highlights:

• Savings due to changes in police contract: $8.5 million
• Reduce police overtime: $3.98 million
• Eliminate 4 Neighborhood Service Coordinators: $0.3 million
• Eliminate 7 other non-sworn police department positions: $0.46 million
• Eliminate Rangers (who patrol the parks): $0.21 million
• Ground OPD helicopter: $0.25 million
• Raise police department special event permit fees: $0.09 million
• Close San Antonio Recreation Center: $0.09 million
• Close Main Library 2 days/week: $0.12 million
• Reduce arts grants by 20%: $0.23 million
• Reduce other non-departmental subsidies (Chabot, Zoo, etc.) an additional 10%: $0.3 million
• Begin peak hour parking pilot program: $0.64 million
• Raise expired meter parking fee $10: $0.53 million

There’s also a bunch of other layoffs and elimination or freezing of vacancies scattered across departments in there, for a total of 49.04 FTEs being eliminated, 36.04 of which are currently filled. The proposed layoffs include 12 Public Works positions that had been eliminated in the Mayor’s budget, but were restored by the Council.

Some of these measures are new – closing the San Antonio recreation center and reducing the Main Library to 5 day per week service weren’t on the table before. But a lot of it was proposed in June and rejected by the Council.

The peak hour parking program, which would raise meter fees to $3/hour downtown (which the exception of Chinatown and Jack London Square) from 10am-2pm, would generate a lot of money, as would the increase of the expired meter parking fee to $65. But the Council wasn’t willing to do either of those things before, for fear of hurting businesses with the meter fees and angering residents with the high ticket prices. Given the widespread outrage over the ticket and meter increases they already adopted, it’s hard to imagine anyone on the Council having the stomach to raise them even higher so quickly.

Likewise, the Police Department offers up the Rangers and Neighborhood Service Coordinators (NSCs) for cuts pretty much every time we come back to the budget, but so far, the Council has been pretty adamant about keeping them. Both the Rangers and the NSCs have large numbers of extremely devoted advocates who are quick to raise hell every single time these positions are threatened.

But there simply isn’t enough money to pay for everything, and many services have already been sliced so drastically, it’s tough to imagine where the funds avoid such cuts are going to come from. There was talk in the last budget discussions of sending police back to the airport to save some money, but at least back then, a number of Councilmembers seemed strongly resistant to the idea. Most depressing of all, it’s pretty much certain that this won’t be the worst of it, and we’re going to have to be back at this again several times over the year.

The meeting starts at 5 PM on Tuesday.