Secret Government Spent $25,000 to Rig LLAD Tax Vote

FBI Reports Huge Oakland Violence

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Dellums: "Historical Day" – Most Police in Oakland History   Officers per 10,000 residents Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland, and most major cities 35 to 45 Oakland 21

After adding several dozen officers in 2008, Oakland still has half a police department compared to most major cities. While mayor Dellums called the marginal increase a historical achievement, we are nowhere near the 1,100 police that Oakland needs. Dellums did not remind residents that we have no City jail, almost no in-house fingerprint capability, too few cars for the officers and no coherent policy for getting some police out of cars, two crime statistics staff instead of the six Oakland once had, and seven dispatcher positions not filled for years. Oakland still has official tolerance for the culture of disrespect, such as allowing a drug rapper to promote his new CD under the banner of City-sponsored National Night Out. City Undermines Future Police Recruiting With all the finesse of a steam shovel, Dellums announced that the record police staffing was only a momentary thing. He is already canceling police training academies, advising residents that the City will be back below the 803 officers mandated in Measure Y by summer 2009. The tax will continue to be collected. In the Spring, the mayor thundered that we must raid the Measure Y fund in order to recruit officers. Now he has done a U-turn, canceling recruitment in progress. A resident tells us: "There were offers extended to come work for our city. During the orientation class they were notified that the class was canceled and they no longer had jobs. Some of the people had sold their homes and moved to the Bay Area (from as far away as New York-ed.) for the opportunity to work for our city. Now they are left high and dry. I can't believe our city would be so thoughtless with people's lives in these trying economic times!" The recruits had letters from the City stating, "A position will be reserved for you in the 166th Recruit Academy on Monday December 8, 2008." They were advised that at the Nov. 13 orientation they would sign up for a medical plan and receive their OPD serial number. (Reported by Ron Oz.) Instead, the powers-that-be at City Hall informed the police department its December academy is canceled – on the very morning of the recruits' orientation last Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008. Budget issues, as acting city administrator Dan Lindheim told the city council on Nov. 18? Hardly; the budget situation has been plain for months. KTVU reports the hiring fiasco.   Instead, Dellums wanted to get past election day, Nov. 4, because he had Measure NN on the ballot, a promise to add more police for a huge new parcel tax. It would not help to cancel an academy before the voters spoke (although they rejected this Son of Measure Y anyway). NN's money was supposed to be for additional police, but events suggest the new revenue would have been used for current operations. After all, for three years after Measure Y passed, the City actually had fewer officers than when the proposal was written. At the Nov. 18, 2008 city council meeting, councilmember Jean Quan admitted she is already hearing objections from residents. Her explanation in reply to them: the December academy was not canceled but rather "delayed" to July 2009 or later. Somehow Quan thinks repackaging a rotten fish contains the odor. Tell that to the 44 recruits who were informed on the day of their academy opening orientation session that they are welcome to hang around the Bay Area with no income for seven months. Dellums' claimed record staff level of 837 is phony counting. The figure includes recruits trained under a contract in Santa Clara County. Despite being counted as graduated officers, they are currently spending five or six weeks in finish-up training in Oakland. By the time they get on the street, other police will have retired and resigned, meaning that the department never really got to 837 officers. Meanwhile, daytime home burglaries have resumed in the Montclair district. Similar waves of breakins have hit the Maxwell Park and Harrison-Oak neighborhoods recently, too.

–––––––– ORPN: Reporting and advocating since 2005 ––––––––

What We Are For

Oakland could be a great city to live in. It has gorgeous weather nearly year-round; the city participates in the cultural riches of the San Francisco Bay Area; and the population is a talented mix of long-time residents and eager new arrivals.

Yet living in Oakland brings too much pain throughout the city's broad flatland districts: Maxwell Park, Dimond, San Antonio, Laurel, Fruitvale, and north Oakland, not to mention west Oakland and deep east Oakland. Boom cars disrupt peace in our homes throughout the day and evening; then they gather for gunshot-punctuated sideshows at night. Oakland is one of the top cities for vehicle theft; it is not safe to leave your car parked on the street. Our children walk to school past aggressive thugs dealing drugs openly. Armed robberies and violent burglaries are rampant.

City government has not responded. The city council maintains only half a police department, comparing Oakland on a population basis with Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and most major cities. From 1994 to 2005, the council added 357 positions to the total City budget – but the number of police wound up where it started, just around 700. That's a choice of priorities, a choice that led to today's policing crisis.

On the other hand, the City acts as though it can take the place of county, state, and federal social programs. The city council turns again and again to financially strapped homeowners for additional parcel taxes and other levies on homes. But the City does not spend the money well, often not even as promised. Sometimes the handouts are disasters, like the $185,000 embezzled by PUEBLO officers. Overall, too many private agencies are badly supervised, uncoordinated, and inefficient. One operation, Youth UpRising, even received $1.5 million in Measure Y "violence prevention" money while promoting the sideshow culture whose celebrants make our streets unpeaceful and unsafe.

Oakland Residents for Peaceful Neighborhoods is one representative of the growing ranks of people who will no longer accept City Hall's business as usual.

When we fight bad proposals from a council that is supposed to craft good legislation, we think we perform a public service.

We warned Measure Y would not provide 802 police officers. Events confirmed that supporters of Measure Y were either irresponsibly ignorant or just plain lying when they insisted its language guaranteed 802 officers. Indeed, the City has not even maintained the 739 police supposedly required as a prerequisite to spending Measure Y money.

We similarly exposed Measure N, the palace library bond proposal, on a dozen grounds of substance.

We helped defeat permanent annual increases in the Landscape and Lighting Assessment, simply by publicizing the city council's unashamed provision that it would put 55 cents of every dollar back in the general fund, to be used for anything but landscape and lighting.

Our critics are not happy with the odious but accurate picture of a city council that disappoints and betrays residents time after time. The charge is that we are always so negative. What are we for?

Let the aroused residents of Oakland say what we are for.

1. We are for restoring public safety in Oakland. That means at least 1,100 police officers, and therefore a solid plan and commitment to rebuilding what is currently half a police department. That means bringing closure to the crippling "negotiated settlement agreement" that continues to enrich a couple of attorneys year after year.
2. We are for City leadership that insists everyone in Oakland observe simple respect for the community. We must turn around the attitude of making concessions to boom cars, open street dealing, sideshows, wrecking of public events, and disruptive party houses. There is no "cultural" excuse for making the lives of innocent residents all across Oakland miserable. City leaders must draw the line, not give Oakland a national reputation for thug rule of the streets.
3. We are for the City providing efficient basic services first and foremost. In addition to public safety, that means maintain the streets and sidewalks, do garbage collection right, keep the traffic lights working. These are the first jobs of government, even if they are not exciting like grandiose schemes for a Coliseum deal, a palace library, and Fox Theatre restoration. Do first things first; you can play later if there is the money.
4. We are for imposing accountability on social programs. From the PUEBLO scandal to the latest illegal raid on the Measure Y fund, social programs in Oakland are scattered, overlapping, inefficient, out of control, and a breeding ground of political corruption. We are for fewer, consolidated programs run by public departments, not by half-secret nonprofit agencies. The City should largely confine itself to helping implement county, state, and federal job training, probation, and other programs. These levels of government have a broader tax base and the responsibility to run their criminal justice and penal systems well to achieve real rehabilitation.
5. We are for a rollback of redevelopment districts. These districts starve basic services of tax money, funneling the dollars largely into residential projects. Redevelopment amounts to welfare for politically connected developers, who get rich then use their wealth to grab even more public money for themselves.
6. We are for a selective brake on residential development projects. Oakland does not need the two main kinds of housing promoted by the city council in its role as the redevelopment agency: neither more unsold condo towers, nor subsidized low-income housing. Our money should not help developers sell condos built like stacks of ship containers. As for so-called affordable housing, Oakland has 28 percent of the people in Alameda County but 55 percent of the income-based assisted housing, and this housing is concentrated in flatland districts while other parts of the City bear none of the travails that have accompanied these projects. We need peaceful, comfortable neighborhoods for the current residents of the flatlands – a mix of hard-working middle-income and poor people who all want peaceful communities for themselves and their children.

Today the political situation in Oakland is fluid. It is time for every major participant to commit to this platform – or tell us why he would deny Oakland residents a peaceful, efficiently run city. We are already paying for it. We want it. It is for the good of all.