Jail Closed, and Results Are In

One year ago the Oakland city council closed the city jail. It was labeled a budget-cutting move, for an estimated saving of no more than $3 million per year. A year later, the council just finished spending a $16 million budget surplus. Oakland lost a facility permanently on the basis of fluctuating budget numbers.

The jail closure has further crippled police work. OPD officers tell us:

• The processing time to put a detained or arrested person into the jail has more than doubled from 20 minutes to 45 minutes. In effect, the already understaffed department has lost another several police officers.
  
• Criminals are now taken to the County's Glenn E. Dyer Detention Facility, but the sheriffs there are not happy about the increased workload. They use various legal excuses that force Oakland to take the criminal all the way out to the Santa Rita jail.
  
• When Oakland had a jail, prisoners with minor health issues could be kept there and provided health care. Without a jail, the County pushes the prisoners to Highland Hospital, where Oakland police must guard them for hours or days.
  

A year ago, "The approach proposed by City Councilmember Desley Brooks (Eastmont-Seminary) would have made more sense. She proposed the city keep the jail open if the county covered the estimated $8 million operation costs. Indeed, Supervisor Keith Carson said such an arrangement might have been possible." (Oakland Tribune, July 7, 2005)

Not needed in Oakland – there is no jail.

The council's jail closure is one more step in the de-policing of Oakland. While the city budget grew by 357 positions from 1994 to 2005, the city council kept the police department at the same size. The council collects Measure Y tax money while the number of police has actually declined. Non-officer jobs in the police department are also not filled – dispatchers, for example.

The first job of city government is public safety. The council has refused to meet its number-one responsibility. Instead, the council hands subsidies to favored developers, and a swelling Redevelopment empire smothers day-to-day City services.

Councilmembers also play politics to deliver grants to private agencies, whose managers become political allies.

Most recently, the council that closed the jail has gone into raptures about building a palace main library at Kaiser Center. Voters should reject the $148 million library bond measure that would be paid for by taxes not business revenues.

One year later, the verdict is in: closing the jail was a dumb move.