Comment Issued by Councilmember Nadel

Councilmember Nancy Nadel posted this comment on putting the Neighborhood Service Coordinators (NSCs) with the suits in City Hall rather than with the uniforms at OPD:

The NSC is responsible for prevention as well as enforcement solutions. In Boston they found that tight affiliation of staff with the police can inhibit their ability to gain community trust on some of the prevention programs.

Prevention programs are important, and we can understand councilmember Nadel's interest in conforming the NSCs to the "Boston Plan," which consists of a carrot-and-stick offer to young offenders of opportunities for redirecting their lives before they become the targets of concentrated enforcement actions. Boston has run this prevention program for about a decade with some success, although recent results have been less productive.

Does councilmember Nadel agree to conform police staffing to the Boston model? Boston has twice as many police per population as Oakland. In addition, the job of public safety in Oakland is tougher than in Boston: Oakland is ranked as the eighth most dangerous city in the U.S., while Boston is considerably safer at number 58 down the danger list.

The Boston Plan calls for equal portions of prevention and enforcement. Nadel and other councilmembers are largely meeting the Measure Y goals for prevention programs, but the City actually has a smaller police staff today than when Measure Y was proposed.

Worse still is the message sent by dangling a big carrot of social programs while maintaining only a limp noodle of police presence. For decades Oakland has let thugs know that when it comes to comprehensive law enforcement in Oakland, Gertrude Stein was right – "There is no there there." Perhaps that's why a significant proportion of crooks arrested in Oakland every year are from surrounding communities. Unless the police element of a public safety program is equal to the task, Oakland's Boston Plan will only drop millions of dollars into social programs while leaving residents at the mercy of endless armed robberies, home break-ins, boom car and sideshow disturbances, and street dealing conducted like open-air seminars for children to watch.