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Dellums Doubletalk Ignores Police Shortage
Mayor Ron Dellums and police chief Wayne Tucker announced a reorganization of the police department on Wednesday.
For an indefinite period the City will stop filling vacancies of community police officers, who work on persistent problems in a specific "beat" in consultation with the neighborhood crime prevention council. Instead, the next 50 police hires will become patrol officers, who are dispatched to calls for help over a wide area.
The City will also assign several captains to a new job, grading each of them on reducing crime in one area of the city.
The plan provides no additional police for Oakland, the most underpoliced major city in the U.S.
Dellums described the indefinite cap on community policing officers by saying, "We are turning a significant corner toward real community policing." (Oakland Tribune, Mar. 8, 2007)
The immediate spur for the department reorganization department was the Harnett report purchased by outgoing mayor Jerry Brown. Harnett and associates specifically noted that the "first and most obvious [impediment to department performance] is staffing." The report repeated common statistics that Oakland "is understaffed to serve a population of more than 400,000, fielding fewer than 20 officers per 10,000 residents. In contrast, New York City fields more than 40 officers per 10,000 residents," as do Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and nearly all major cities. (Harnett draft report, p. 7)
Also recommended by Harnett was an increase in investigative officers who go after repeat burglars, robbers, and such. Here, too, the report noted, "The Criminal Investigations Division has lost 13 personnel in the past two years without any replacements. The Department has only 10 homicide investigators and only seven robbery investigators, or less than one robbery investigator for every 500 robberies reported in 2006." (p. 7) Dellums and Tucker had nothing to say about the so-called Negotiated Settlement Agreement, which forces the department to put more investigators on internal affairs than on solving crimes.
Oakland has about 700 sworn officers but needs at least 1,100. Only a week ago, Dellums called the $1 billion City budget "chump change." (Oakland Tribune, Feb. 28, 2007) Using a liberal figure for the salary, benefits, and overhead cost of each officer, the 400 needed officers would cost about $72 million a year, or 7 percent of the "chump change" budget. The first priority of city government must be public safety, but the mayor has not committed to a solid plan to get to 1,100 or more police.
Instead, the City goal is only 802 officers. This miserable target virtually guarantees years more of mandatory overtime for officers. Morale is low. No wonder Oakland has trouble recruiting people into a half-department. Although the goal was set with the passage of Measure Y taxes, collected since 2005, police chief Tucker admits that Oakland will not have even 802 officers until maybe late in 2008.
Dismissal of Laws on Community Policing
With Dellums looking on, police chief Tucker claimed the reorganization will turn all patrol officers into community policing officers. Not only is this desciption nonsense, it signals disdain for City law embodied in several resolutions on community policing that were adopted years ago.
Nonetheless, occupants and groupies of City Hall were quick to endorse the suspension, if not destruction, of community policing. Indeed, the chair of the Community Policing Advisory Board, Don Link, said "he was not concerned the change represents a retreat from community policing, adding the advisory board believes the chief and the mayor are committed to addressing crime through prevention and intervention as well as enforcement."
Since the board only met in the evening after the press conference, chairman Link had no authorization to speak for the board. Link's cavalier dismissal of community policing was quoted in the Oakland Tribune's March 7 web coverage of the reorganization press conference. It was deleted from the printed story that appeared the next day.
Instead, the printed story quoted another member of the advisory board. "It's the right thing to do," Nick Vigilante said. "Staffing is the key thing." In fact, the key point all around is that City Hall does nothing about the crisis in police staffing. These fawning groupies, however, are spineless, whether because they have business contracts with the City or in less sober moments imagine that they, the tail, wag the dog.
Councilmember Jean Quan also welcomed the reshuffling at the expense of community policing officers. Although disappointed that neighborhoods in her district would not be getting new community police officers, she said, "I can live with it. I just wish the recruitment had been faster." (Oakland Tribune, Mar. 8, 2007) With a home on a secluded street up in the hills, Quan can no doubt "live with it." Meanwhile, residents in the flatlands of her district see drug dealers coming back to long-contested corners, boom cars are more common than ever, and vehicle break-ins and thefts are rampant. Sitting on the council, Quan has done nothing of significance toward effective recruiting of police.
Although the reorganization is the first under new mayor Dellums, it is only one in a long series of rearrangements. Only a few months ago, the City announced Target 100 to concentrate on the 100 most violent criminals in Oakland. No one has heard much of anything since then, while homicides shot up for the rest of 2006. In another bureaucratic-political shift, the neighborhood service coordinators were put under the control of a political operative in the city administrator's office, even though they are supposed to continue working as part of the department.
Indeed, the area command system announced yesterday by Dellums and Tucker largely revives the police department's setup six or seven years ago. The city's population has grown, but the number of police officers is less than it was then.
– March 8, 2007; updated April 1
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