It's a Choice –
Spend First for Public Safety or Social Programs

On June 30, 2010 Oakland laid off 80 police. At the same time, then-councilmember Jean Quan and her colleagues made sure that violence prevention programs were funded without a break.

The layoff pushed the total police force so low that the City could not legally collect the Measure Y parcel tax for failure to meet its staffing commitment. The City solved that problem with Measure BB, a rewrite of Measure Y that simply removed the officer staffing requirement while continuing the parcel tax. However, the fix did not happen until the November ballot vote on BB, so Quan and company arranged to use general fund money for violence prevention programs from July 2010 to Jan 2011.

The result of the 80 layoffs was predictable. With reduced police staffing has come more crime. Neighborhoods are reporting more shootings as well as wave after wave of robberies and burglaries.

The gunshot killing of a three-year-old in early afternoon on International Blvd., followed days later by the shooting of a two-year-old a few blocks away, is not a homicide problem. The street savagery is the most visible sign of the collapse of public safety in Oakland. The experience of the last year confirms that Oakland must make a choice:

• Oakland can spend available revenue to get the Oakland police force up to the 1,100 officers we need; social programs will have to wait until we can afford them. Do that for basic public safety.

• Or make the other choice: give police chief Batts half the officers he needs while spending big money on ineffective, badly supervised, and uncoordinated social programs. That's what Oakland has done for years, and the consequences have arrived in pools of blood on our streets.

As recently as Aug. 22, 2011, top mayoral aide Richard Cowan wrote to a neighborhood email list, "First, Mayor Quan has never been for social programs instead of police services. Instead, she has always been for a combination of the two. Frankly, one cannot work without the other."

Cowan's rhetoric about a combination is phony. His boss Quan really means too few police, as the choice to lay off 80 police while funding social programs showed. Similarly, when the mayor cast a tie vote on the final two budget alternatives this summer, she chose the one that left 22 police not hired rather than the budget that would have brought them back on staff.

Ever since Quan campaigned for the Measure Y taxes in 2004, she has refused to staff the police department. Quan insisted Y would guarantee 802 police – before it passed. Afterward, she said the City could not hire competitively when the economy was good and did not have money for police when the economy went bad. She always finds money for social programs.

The "combination" cover for social programs came unwrapped in the dispute over gang injunctions, too. Former city attorney John Russo issued a proposed injunction nearly a year ago. He named two dozen individuals. They had arrest records and evidence of coordinated gang crimes that earned them a place on the list.

One of the named individuals for the gang injunction, it turns out, was on the staff of a Measure Y outreach program!

The City has a violence prevention coordinator, Kevin Grant. Instead of admitting that the City has a problem when it puts a current gang banger on the staff of a social program, Grant complained about the lack of immunity for the thug: "That's like telling your child, 'Okay, I'm not gonna whup you for that,' and then an hour later you whup 'em.'"

Grant believes that if he puts a thug on City staff as part of a "street outreach" team, that guy gets an exemption from the law. Mayor Quan supports Grant.

Oakland still has social programs, but Russo's gang injunction has been shunted aside. Oakland has half a police force, and public safety is vanishing. The choice is clear:

• Cut the Measure Y/BB funding, the Kids First revenue set-aside, and all the other provisions for social programs by 90 percent. For the remaining ten percent, let the City sort through the swamp of programs to find some that really help public safety.

• We need police presence on the street. We need police investigations that apprehend criminals, letting them know that Oakland is no longer an enforcement-free crime zone.