Community Policing Is Casualty of City Hall Gimmick

Five problem-solving officers (PSOs) who perform community policing are leaving their assignments as a result of City Hall's flawed reorganization of the police department.

PSOs are supposed to work in a neighborhood (one of 57 beats in Oakland), tackling persistent problems. Instead of responding to service calls one after another, a PSO, in cooperation with concerned residents, identifies issues like a drug house, a group of persistently truant youth, or an illegal car repair business. He then uses both traditional police methods and broader social service resources to deal with the problem.

Community policing works. Residents who have had dedicated PSOs can tell you what a difference they make. Community policing is law, mandated by several council resolutions. In addition, the additional police promised by the Measure Y tax vote of 2004 are all supposed to be community policing officers. However, Marleen Sacks, the Oakland resident and attorney who has filed suit over City Hall's numerous violations of Measure Y, notes that although the City charges 40 percent of OPD training charges to Measure, only 18 percent of the graduates of the last eleven training academies have been assigned to Measure Y positions. (Marleen Sacks, broadcast email, April 16, 200)

At the beginning of the year the police department implemented a geographic reorganization plan under which three captains in charge of three areas of the city are responsible for the crime statistics. The captains are not allowed to cite the understaffing of the department as an explanation of poor results. It is no surprise that this challenge has apparently caused strife.

A problem-solving officer may request at any time to be assigned to traditional patrol duty instead. Patrol officers are on a 12-hour day, unlike the PSO 10-hour day. Furthermore, patrol officers work seven shifts in two weeks. The days off vary from week to week, making it difficult to plan family, social, and continuing education activities. Currently, a PSO requesting a transfer thus indicates he would rather work five percent more hours on a terrible schedule just to get out of community policing.

Since the captain is now judged heavily on crime stats and little else, some neighborhood crime prevention councils (NCPC) have been told that they have no input in prioritizing problems in their communities. The NCPC for beat 10X is on the verge of suspending activity as an NCPC (which is formally organized as a City sponsored and funded group), meeting instead as a citizen group organizing for change at City Hall.

Last year chief of police Wayne Tucker combined his plan for geographic reorganization and his demand for a 12-hour work schedule, then fought the rank-and-file for months to get his demands through arbitration. However, the chief has let the City delay the preparation of newly purchased squad cars drag on for months. As a result, some PSOs must pair up to share a car, meaning that each one serves his particular area only half the time.

This crisis of community policing is fundamentally caused by City Hall's refusal to commit to an adequate police force of at least 1,100 officers, and by the chief of police's stated disdain for officer morale.