Remarks Issued by CPAB Chairman

[Don Link, the mayor-appointed chair of the Community Policing Advisory Board, issued this reply to Nancy Sidebotham. Our rejoinder follows.]

Nancy: I have always regarded you as an ally and friend in the cause of community policing and citizen empowerment even though we did not always agree on every issue. That is a normal and expected thing in a city as organized and energetic as ours.

Your posting has a few inaccuracies which I feel a need to rebut. ...

First, the CPAB was not an initiator in the creation of the new Neighborhood Services Manager (NSM). In every report to the City Council since 1998 or 1999, we called for better supervision for the NSCs because they were largely left to their own devices throughout the city, the lucky few getting guidance and support from enlightened OPD supervisors, most getting little or none. Their effectiveness was very uneven, and the expectations of them varied widely or was non-existent: they had no-one supervising their daily activities. We always assumed that any new supervisor would be in OPD because that is where their jobs and paychecks came from, today as before.

Aides of Jean Quan and Ignacio De La Fuente led the effort to create the new position, assisted by the City Manager's office. Representatives of the Board, including myself, were invited to participate, but it was a train with a destination and a purpose before we arrived at the station. We assisted, arguing strenuously that Neighborhood Service Coordinators (NSCs) needed to remain in OPD to have the connection with the Problem Solving Officers, Police Service Area command, and the rest of the staff that was needed for them to be effective. Again logic would have placed a supervisor of them in OPD as well. I don't know of a single Board Member involved in the creation of the NSM position who is or ever was comfortable with removing them from OPD office territory to be physically in the City Administrators Office. We fought that battle bitterly and very publicly with city manager George Musgrove back in 1999 or 2000. The symbolism of their having a new supervisor not working for OPD already undermined their connection with OPD: they were regarded as working for an outside agency. Their physical removal from OPD buildings will increase that sense of otherness and outsider status by OPD staff. They will tell you that, and you can hear it first hand from top command. I have heard both a captain and the chief refer to the NSCs as Ms. Albano's people. This does not suggest animosity or derision, rather it suggests the attitude that they are no longer full blood members of the tightly-knit OPD family. The distinction is subtle but important in an organization where the distinction between sworn and non-sworn is already a powerful stratifier between colleagues who are dependent on one another and work in close cooperation every day of the year.

The question arises: why did the City Council take the initiative to provide a new supervisor? As best I understand the motivation, it came from a mixture of concerns. One was that City Council members did not know what it was that the NSCs did and suspected that, in some cases, it was not much. This was incorrect on the whole, but there were laggards who did very little, and they were not held accountable by OPD. Another was that their role was a little redundant with the Council aides: NSCs dealt with citizens' problems and so did the aides. Another was that the NSCs resisted doing City Council members' bidding, just as the rest of OPD does (because it is forbidden in the city charter) and with the same difficulty that police chiefs and commanders experience when called on the carpet by City Council members: this is an established tension with a history that the NSCs inherited when they became part of OPD. Another was that NSCs were not organizing their beats, going door to door, engaging citizens to participate in the NCPCs as was envisioned in the original community policing legislation. That legislation also called for one NSC per community policing beat (which has from 2000 to 5000 households each). Oakland has never had more than 19 NSCs meaning a minimum of three beats each, and because of PSA boundaries, some NSCs with four, others with two, and some with five (because of the need to maintain the chain of command – one commander only). I have heard City Council members state that they had knocked on the door of every household in the council district during their election campaign, yet those that I accompanied got to only a fraction of the households in the precincts I helped work. It is easy, but is it fair to demand of others things that you would not demand of yourself?

The NSM office is not a product of the CPAB, but of the City Council and the City Administrator's Office. Claudia Albano, the NSM, is also not a bad or devious person. She is doing what she was recruited and what she passionately loves to do – organize and empower communities. Whether that is a perfect fit for the NSC position is an issue of staffing levels and job descriptions. The best NSCs do what the position required in its early and still understaffed days and do it very well now. NSCs kept community policing alive during the many times that OPD and the city removed sworn cp resources, leaving the NSC as the only face of OPD for the citizens for months and even years at a time.

My take on NSC duties is: staff them to 57 as the original legislation dictated and then hold them accountable for the accomplishments envisioned. Do the arithmetic, with approximately 2000 hours in the work year, how many doors can a NSC knock on and effectively interact with, factoring in the other duties such as assisting and staffing the NCPCs, working with the merchant associations that meet during the day and refuse to attend evening meetings, attending and participating energetically in Services Delivery System meetings, answering calls for assistance from citizens in their beats and their NCPCs, coordinating with their PSOs regarding projects and meetings, and so on. The list of what the best NSCs do currently fills approximately 11 pages. How do you add to that without reducing the number of beats served, yet that is what is being demanded today.

Nancy also calls for citizens and NCPCs to let the CPAB know their concerns, and goes on to suggest that "their policies are always written without input from the NCPC groups." Every meeting is noticed and any and all NCPCs and citizens can receive agenda packets (I believe these are currently sent to all NCPC chairs), is open for discussion on every subject from the audience, the Board, city staff. It is an open and not a closed process. We rarely have more than two to eight citizens attending.

The NSM does not want to do away with the NCPCs; she fervently believes that commitment and participation begin closest to home and strongly perceived self interest, and the highest percentage of participation. As the arena becomes larger (block to larger neighborhood), the commitment decreases with fewer willing to venture out and commit. Her argument is that you can't start in the middle, at the NCPC level, and succeed in organizing a meaningful community with strong roots. People disconnected from a strong network at the block by block level do not have the commitment needed to effect real change and carry things through consistently over time. She may very well be right about this. On the other hand, in some areas of Oakland, we have carried this NCPC level of organization fairly effectively, remaining engaged and productive over the years and even decades, and able to engage neighborhood participation.

As I see it, there are no evil or scheming people here, and no elitists anywhere in the mix. The City Council and the City Administrators Office want to transform the NSC position into something different without staffing it to necessary levels at the same time. The CPAB wants to see the NSCs supervised and supported better to see a more predictable and satisfactory delivery of services to every part of the city, but this cannot be done without staffing this position with enough qualified people to attend to those multitude of concerns that the neighborhoods need to deal with. The NSCs remain the vital ingredient (I almost said link; modesty made me refrain) in that mix of needs and solutions.

My take on the situation,

A Cheerleader for City Hall Squirms

In the above remarks, Mr. Link tries to have it both ways. On one hand, he realizes that any thinking resident of Oakland will see the blatant power grab involved in moving the Neighborhood Service Coordinators out of the police department and over to a manager at City Hall. He provides further evidence of what a rotten idea this switch is, although he pointedly refrains from supporting Ms. Sidebotham's call for protest.

On the other hand, Mr. Link shows City Hall that he remains a loyal appointee. He agrees with weakening the NCPCs. The method is to divert scarce resources into a vain effort at blanketing the city with Home Alert block groups.

Furthermore, Mr. Link says there are no evil or scheming people. When more than 1,100 people signed the historic "Enough Is Enough!" petition demanding public safety last Spring, Mr. Link opposed and slandered it. Regardless of words, deeds show that City Hall does not care about public safety. The residents of Oakland who want peaceful neighborhoods face a political task, not a policy discussion.