City Raises Alarm Fee; Police Still Arrive Too Late

By Robert Klinger

If you have a burglar alarm system that can generate a call for police response, the City of Oakland demands a registration fee. Now the city council is about to raise the fee 60 percent.

Has response time by Oakland's understaffed police department improved anywhere near 60 percent? The City staff report on the alarm program offers no information on that point.

The City's figures show that in the five cities they compared, two cities charge less than Oakland while two other cities charge more. Seeking to maximize the taxes levied on Oakland residents, the city council is set to boost the licensing fee for residential burglar alarms by $15, or 60%. This will result in Oakland residents paying the highest amount reported for any city, $40 per year.

Oakland raises alarm fee to top rank

The City report tries to justify the fee increase on the ground that it will "generate adequate revenue to cover the costs of the false alarm billing and collection program." (May 8 report to finance committee, p. 3) In other words, the City tells all alarm system owners to pay more for enforcement against those owners whose systems generate a false alarm – not for improved police response time.

At the present fee level, false alarms have already declined 47 percent in the past three years.

The police on the street are hard working, professional and dedicated. There just are not enough of them. Anyone who lives or works in Oakland knows that if you need help from the police, you are likely to wait a long time to receive it. This is yet another fee for yet another service not delivered.

If an intruder was attacking you, how long would you feel was a reasonable amount of time before help arrived? Three minutes? Forty-five minutes? If you could get three-minute response time by the police, would you care if the City charged you $40 a year or even twice that? Probably not.

How come the fire department responds in a reasonable time but the police response is vastly slower when your life is threatened by an intruder instead of a fire? Maybe we should merge the police department into the fire department. In fact, the firefighters' union poured more than $100,000 into the campaign to pass Measure Y, and a little-known provision of the ordinance gives the fire department $4 million a year off the top of Measure Y tax revenue before police get one cent.

It is hard to fault the police officer who eventually comes to your home after you wait four hours when he tells you about the major crimes he just handled. All the same, we just don't care any more about all the explanations that City officials, the chief of police, and councilmembers give us to deflect our demand for more police. Cities all around us are increasing the number of police, but only in Oakland is it impossible.

Remember what Measure Y was supposed to do? Yet we have fewer police today than when voters approved those taxes. We already pay for police protection that we don't receive. We don't need to pay more to not have protection; we can not have protection for free.

Imagine what it would be like to live in Oakland if there were a low level of crime. You could take a walk at night. Businesses would open. Jobs would be created. Money would be available for better schools. There'd be opportunities for everyone to lead happier lives. There would be neighborhood places to shop, obtain services, and meet with your neighbors.

All it takes is a city council that gives top priority to the first job of any municipal government, public safety – instead of figuring out how to nickel and dime residents with endless fee increases and new taxes.