Comment Archives: Stories: News: Seven Days
Re: “Howard Jordan Was Never the Right Choice”
Len,
I think you're seriously underestimating the knowledge, abilities, and experiences of Compliance Director Thomas Frazier and Court Monitor Robert Warshaw. These guys are NOT anti-police. They both spent their entire careers as cops and were successful police chiefs.
Frazier was a cop in San Jose PD for 27 years, before he took over the Baltimore Police Department. President Clinton thought so highly of him that he appointed Frazier to run a key policing program for the White House.
Warshaw, meanwhile, had an extremely successful run as chief of the Rochester, New York police department -- a city that is not that dissimilar to Oakland (I've spent a lot of time in Rochester; my wife is from there).
In short, these guys are cops who know how to run police departments. And they have very little patience for cops who misbehave. They believe in ethical policing that does not run afoul of the US Constitution. Oakland's new police chief Sean Whent seems to be cut from the same cloth.
Now, if there are a substantial number of Oakland cops who are unwilling to do their jobs in an ethical way and abide by the reforms in the federal consent decree, and would rather leave the department than follow the rules, then that's not a bad thing for Oakland. In fact, it's a win-win-win.
1. The departure of those officers likely will speed up the reform process in OPD and give the department a much better chance of getting into compliance with the consent decree.
2. It'll save the city lots of money: These officers tend to be older veterans who make high salaries. Many of them also have cost the city millions in lawsuits involving their behavior.
3. The city will save even more money by replacing these veteran cops with rookies who will be trained to act ethically -- and thus will save the city even more cash over the long-run.
Re: “Howard Jordan Was Never the Right Choice”
Mayor Quan chose Jordan to be Chief because she thought he would follow her orders via Santana and back up her silly ideas like the 100 block plan.
To his credit, he did contradict some of her more ridiculous assertions, but generally he went along with the Mayor.
Your optimistism that Frazier via interim chief Whent is a big improvement is not justified. We've switched from a police chief who was a lapdog for the Mayor to one who is a yes man for Thomas Frazier. He'll carry out Frazier's directives no doubt. But whether he should is another question.
Frazier's selection of Whent signals his approach of changing the culture of OPD by playing tough cop on other cops.
There is a concept foreign to Frazier called restorative justice. In Oakland it's only brought up in the context of an alternative to punishment for civilian crimes. In South Africa it was called Reconciliation and was primarily between officials and law enforcement people who committed human rights crimes during apartheid. It had mixed results in South Africa but some success.
It shouldn't apply to cops who truly seem to be abusive or who shot people recklessly. There are some of those still in OPD who have benefited from the protection "binding arbitration" clause of the city charter.
The South African approach should be tried before Frazier pushes half of OPD onto medical leave and we have even worse crime than before Frazier took over.
Re: “CEQA Reform Bill Is Too Modest”
Developers, WalMart, and the SF Bicycle Coalition think CEQA needs to be "reformed." See a pattern there? They just want their projects to sail through the process unhindered by any pesky environmental review on the impacts. Still waiting for the author to tell us who he was quoting with "too much traffic" and "enough parking" quotations.
Re: “CEQA Reform Bill Is Too Modest”
Keep Gammon away from that Koolaid! Can he provide cites to any "current research on climate change" which proves that building apartments will prevent people from buying homes in the suburbs? Can he tell us exactly which "research shows that residents of Manhattan have a much smaller carbon footprint than the average American?" Does this include the second and third homes of the increasingly 1% Manhattanites? Making our cities unpleasant, cutting off light and air and paving over open space, will just drive people, especially those who have families, farther out. Jerry Brown's original plan to gut CEQA has been opposed by both labor and environmentalists, and Steinberg's version is almost as bad.
Re: “CEQA Reform Bill Is Too Modest”
We used CEQA the way it was designed to be used. Any project that even might have an impact on the environment must undergo some kind of environmental review. Is that even controversial? With the Bicycle Plan, obviously if you take away traffic lanes and street parking on busy city streets, you might make traffic worse, right? Of course the city should have done that review before they began implementing the ambitious Bicycle Plan, and they knew it. They just thought they could get away with it. Now that they've done an EIR on the Bicycle Plan, it tells us that yes the Bicycle Plan is going to make traffic worse for everyone but cyclists, including delaying a number of Muni lines.
Re: “CEQA Reform Bill Is Too Modest”
Just curious, are you the same Rob Anderson who used CEQA to stymie bicycle improvements in SF for years on the grounds that they would hurt the environment?
Re: “CEQA Reform Bill Is Too Modest”
Unconvincing account of CEQA "reform." You put "enough parking" and "too much traffic" in quotes, but who exactly are you quoting? And please cite some specific lawsuits over aesthetics and some of the other so-called abuses of CEQA. "Forward thinking" requires that cities all morph into something like Manhattan? You don't seem to understand that most people---especially people with families---don't want to live in your trendy, "transit oriented" urban environment. They accept long commutes to live in the suburbs.
Re: “Caltrans Should Delay Bay Bridge Opening”
Right on, Mr. Gammon and all journalists continuing to perform a public service by informing us about the "nuts and bolts" soundness of our new Bay Bridge!
Re: “Quan's Budget Is Unsustainable”
Yes we have to significantly lower the cost of more cops and fire fiighters before we hire more, not afterwards. We also need to manage them so they do their work efficiently and safely for them and us. That takes political leaders who respect police without putting them on a pedestal. Not an attitude commonly found in Oakland pols who typically treat cops like unneccessary evils.
But we also have to get more results out of the millions our city spends or administers on anti-violence, job training, and various other "social" programs.
Have never seen anything from you about the abysmally low performing high cost per trainee job training programs Oakland runs. Maybe one or two of them get decent results. Most of them appear to only succeed in creating internal jobs for job counselors and trainers and administrators.
If we can't get better results out of those programs consider giving the money to OUSD to do the work and see if they can do any better.
Or spend as much of it as legally allowed on restoring Fed cuts to Head Start.
Re: “Quan's Budget Is Unsustainable”
Now we have a new mini me real estate bubble and the Mayor and the Council are giddy in their rush to spend the increased revenues on more cops at high cost and restoring cuts that turned out to be only temporary to other city employees.
No, don't tell me that the "rainy day' reserve proves that our elected officials learned anything from the Dot Com and the Great Recession. That reserve goes poof as soon as Jerry Brown wiggles his pinkie.
And even if he lets us keep some of the Redevelopment money in the reserve, a 7.5% rainy day fund ain't much help in the face of the oncoming fiscal hurricane.
Re: “Quan's Budget Is Unsustainable”
The Mayor's proposed budget would be unsustainable after a couple of years even if she were not proposing increased spending on expensive cops and fire.
Her very competent budget office staff prepared the 5 year fiscal projection that shows we're scrogged because nothing has been done to fund all the huge overhanging "structural" obligations re the medical and pension costs of all the general fund employee costs, not just cops and fire; the deferred capital improvements, old pension costs etc.
All the Mayor did in her budget was repeat the mantra we've heard local politicians chant that "we have to start addressing the long term budget problems" but did absolutely nothing to start dealing with them. Nada. Zilch.
For any of our officials to blame the "Great Recession" for the city's problems is disingenuous. It's more a case of the "Great Dot Com and Great Real Estate Bubble" inflating the city's revenues for several years and thus covering up the underlying failure of normal revenue to cover current costs plus fund future retirement and infrastructure costs. Didn't help that just as the bubbles burst the baby boomers started to retire at the hoary age of 50 and 55 allowed by city contract.
Mayor Quan and all of the sitting council members other than the three newbies, signed the police and fire contract a couple of years ago that preserves and protects binding arbitration for cops and fire in all matters of personnel including compensation and discipline. The council agreed that if any of them tried to repeal binding arbitration that the police fire contract was null and void. So the Mayor and the council members can jawbone all day but the police and fire associations are not about to be guilt tripped into any major compensation concessions before they have to. (btw, check out the old PFRS retirement plan and find out whether a reduction in pay for new hires would lower retirement benefits to police and fire retirees of PFRS. I don't know the answer.)
Re: “Quan's Budget Is Unsustainable”
It's total bankruptcy: ethical, functional, financial. Oakland absolutely cannot protect the well-being of its citizens. Oakland has failed at police reform and management so costs are exceedingly high through low morale/high attrition, overly high salaries and excess overtime. "Leaders" have been financially incompetent, dishonest, short-term-oriented, incapable of understanding risk.
There's only one possible route to change: new leadership.
Re: “Quan's Budget Is Unsustainable”
Oakland is completely bankrupt: ethically, functionally and financially. This bankruptcy reflects the failure of leadership.
Ethical bankruptcy: Oakland cannot protect the well-being of its citizens. Rather than take responsibility, Oakland's "leaders" assign blame.
Functional bankruptcy: The city's electeds utterly lack the ability to deal with complex problems. Police reform has failed. The Police Department is demoralized because of a lack of strategic civilian leadership and support. The very expensive high police attrition rate is a result.
Financial bankruptcy: A long history of poor decision-making and short-term thinking. An inability to understand financial planning and the nature of risk. An inability to face facts and deal with them.
None of this will change until there is new, and real, leadership downtown.
Re: “No More Cops Without More Cuts”
Couple of things- if you want to see details of Oakland's city budget that are easily understandable for the first time check out http:openbudgetoakland.org - a new site to help you see and discuss Oakland's spending!
Secondly, I can't speak with legal certainty, but I've worked under contract w Tony Smith since he arrived and he has been perhaps the most trustworthy, genuine senior official I've known in Oakland. Feel free to suggest unsubstantiated theories about why he is going, but be willing to admit you slandered him if it never pans out that anything else is up- and I'll admit I was wrong about him also if something is fishy, but he's a guy a I would trust over most in public service and that's rare and awesome. He's no saint, but he's legit.
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Do you think the City of Oakland should expend $25.6 million of scarce affordable housing funds for two parcels of land that are unsuitable for housing, so Oakland Harbor Partners (OHP), who have been unable to come up with the $18 million to purchase the Oak to Ninth property from the Port, can purchase it by May 1? Come and speak out at the Community & Economic Development meeting tomorrow, Tue. 4/23 at 1:30 pm in Hearing Rm 1 in City Hall.
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Naomi,
The Chron had more this morning on Oak to Ninth and the redevelopment funds:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/ar…
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Joyce,
I agree that Oak to Ninth is not smart growth -- in fact, the above article states exactly that. As such, I don't think developments such as this one should be exempt from CEQA.
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Wait a minute--what about the big subsidy from the city's redevelopment funds (or what's left of them) for the affordable units? Those units are not paid for by the developer, in my understanding. Has that changed? I believe the city also has to buy that land back from the developer, although it is currently owned by the public. Also, this project entails knocking down 89% of the historic Ninth Avenue Terminal, in continuous use since its construction, and potentially a valuable destination on the waterfront.
Re: “Why the Oak-to-Ninth Housing Project Is Coming at Just the Right Time”
Bob, my respected friend, you just negated the whole premise of your article, “How an Environmental Law Is Harming the Environment” in the March 13th issue. (And see my comments.) You summed it up at the end with: “Our primary environmental law should protect the environment against the greatest threat it faces — climate change — and not make it harder to implement solutions that help fight that threat.”
So it would seem to follow that any project that increases carbon emissions should be opposed.
Unlike Parker Place in Berkeley, the Oak to Ninth project will not help Oakland to “meet its climate-change goals, because it will provide much-needed urban housing near jobs and mass transit, thereby helping lessen the need for suburban sprawl and greenhouse-gas-belching commutes.” It will acerbate it!
Oak to Ninth isn’t infill development. It isn’t transit-oriented development. It is a massive 3100-unit development on an isolated site with poor accessibility adjacent to a major pollution-spieling freeway and active rail lines.
It has the worst attribute of suburban life—auto dependence. The nearest transit, Amtrak, is almost a mile away, and the Lake Merritt BART station, more than a mile, and reached across railway tracks with 75 daily trains, not a safe route for either pedestrians or bicyclists.
To help picture 3100 units consider this project in San Francisco—One Rincon Hill next to the Bay Bridge. The first of two towers has been completed; its 60 stories have 376 condos. So 3100 units would be equivalent to EIGHT such towers? Does that not seem ludicrous even as the market improves?
The so-called Community Benefits of housing for low-income families and seniors were not to come out of the developer’s pocket, but the community’s, that is, from redevelopment funds. But they went poof! Without those funds, low-income families and seniors will not have to live next to a very noisy, polluting freeway and purchase clunkers for transportation.
The Air District recommends that homes not be sited within 500 feet of a high traffic freeway. Most of the residences are less than 500 feet from I-880 and the most vulnerable population, low-income families and seniors, would have been closest to it.
CEQA lawsuits cannot, in themselves, stop a bad project. The EIR’s purpose is to layout the environmental impacts of a project so that an informed decision can be made. The Oak to Ninth EIR disclosed the horrendous traffic congestion the project would bring to the already congested two-lane access road. The cold starts and start & stop traffic would greatly worsen carbon emissions.
But the EIR for the Oak to Ninth project was completed before Jerry Brown took up the issue of greenhouse gases and required EIRs to quantify them. It would have certainly stated that the project would significantly contribute to climate change. But, even then, the city could approve the project, citing overriding considerations like, say, jobs? Possibly the same consideration will be used to push the Keystone XL pipeline—jobs!
Michael Ghielmetti, President, of Signature Properties, once admitted to me that it would be smarter to build high-density housing downtown. And yet, he has downsized one of his fully entitled projects downtown from 351 to 105 units, Parcel B of the Broadway-West Grand site. The completed housing at Broadway & Grand is being pitched as: “There is so much happening in Uptown, and Broadway Grand is at the center of it all.”
If we are serious about climate change, the high-density housing planned for Oak to Ninth belongs downtown. But, it would not be harmful if a few hundred units were built at Oak to Ninth as long as residents all drive hybrid or electric cars and have good health insurance plans.
Re: “Bad Training by OPD Led to Three Deaths”
Sounds like the arbitrator reached the correct decision, unlike some other arbitrator decisions reinstating cops who should have been disciplined.
Could it also be that Frazier's effort to change the "culture' of OPD is missing the real problem at OPD, incompetent, politcized upper management? Fix the management and presto the supposed cultural problems of the rank and file cops go away.
Sean Whent certainly knew what upper management at OPD wanted. Maybe he'll do what should be done instead of what he did in the past to please his bosses. But that will be impossible if his new boss, Frazier, is fixated on culture change. (historical note. I'm told that the famed police anthropologist, Wayne Tucker, first targeted OPD culture)