Comment Archives: stories: Last 30 Days
Re: “Three Awesome Bike Day Trips in the Bay Area”
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Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Bob, your explanation of how Richmond can afford the equivalent per capita of what would be 770 cops in Oakland makes more sense than the RPD chief's explanation about RPD cops paying in to their pensions many years earlier than Oakland cops.
The ad valorem property tax rate in Oakland is now about 1.4057% vs 1.3738% for Richmond. The rate for SF is only 1.1691%.
Parcel taxes and direct assessments are 820, 1018, and 247 (!) respectively for a single family residence.
Would like to ask one of the several "urban economics" staff if any are left at City Hall now that Redevelopment is gone, if they ever ran the numbers comparing increased tax revenue per capita from adding more residential housing vs industrial vs commercial real estate.
Adding more residential might lower the cost of housing, but it might also be chasing our tail in trying to get more tax revenue per capita regardless of what we want to spend that on.
Re: “The Best Chinese Restaurant in Oakland That You've Never Heard Of”
I've been going to Ben's for a year, the food is delicious and inexpensive but what keeps me coming back is how fresh it is. They are located in the produce district and it shows. Ben knows how to cook vegetables, not overcook them like most restaurants. Expect warm service, great inexpensive food and don't forget to bring cash.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
As somewhat of an aside, at the last Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board (LPAB) meeting, CalTrans presented their plans for the rehab of the Posey & Webster tubes. Plans call for replacing the boarded-up windows in the towers with Plexiglass or a similar material.
As a board member, I asked about why they were not planning on retrofitting with more historically-appropriate and presumably much less expensive glass. While I was expecting to hear about seismic requirements or durability or some-such, the answer was to meet the requirement of bullet-proof material.
Apparently the maintenance personnel who work in the towers insist on bullet-proofing because the towers get shot at so frequently. While I have no idea if these concerns are substantiated, I find it interesting that CalTrans is willing to acquiesce so readily.
In Oakland, apparently it's taken as a given that people will blindly shoot at a tower that might have someone working inside.
Re: “How the IRS’s Nonprofit Division Got So Dysfunctional”
Thanks for publishing this! I had been confused about this issue. But I still wonder how any non-profit that engages in political action, right or left, including churches that push for a particular party or candidate can have a tax exempt status. My father was a minister and when I was growing up, it was a no-no for him to opine on any party or candidate.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Len,
Richmond spends more on policing per capita than Oakland because it has a higher revenues per capita than Oakland -- so it has more money to spend.
According to Richmond's financials, it collects about $1,298 a year per person in taxes for its general budget each year. Oakland, by contrast, collects about $1,050 per person in taxes each year (about 19% less) for its general fund budget. More overall revenues for Richmond result in more money available to spend on cops:
http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/index.aspx?ni…
If Oakland collected as much taxes per capita as Richmond, it's general fund would be about 19% larger than it is now. And assuming Oakland would spend the same percentage of its budget on police that it does now, then its force would currently have about 770 cops (as opposed to about 645 that it has now).
So really it comes down to tax revenues. And the difference isn't that Oakland has a lower per person tax rate than Richmond. The difference is that Richmond is a wealthier city on per capita basis (large revenues from Chevron and other big employers helps Richmond's bottom line quite a bit).
Re: “Occupy Oakland's Livestreamer Controversy”
The SAME PATTERN (assaulting photojournalists) is going on in the Pacific NW. See: TESC 4-20-13 Strong (A)rm Robbery-Assault on Photojournalist
http://amicuscuria.com/wordpress/?p=9505
Also see: (LEO being mobbed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MtzijlUmu…
Then see how certain (A)narchists stalk those whose speech/1st Amendment activities they can't stomach on:
http://pugetsoundanarchists.org/content/ma…
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Karen, did anyone ask City officials how they expected to pay the bills three years from now when the City's five year plan forecasts large deficits even without adding a bunch more cops or paying down the long delayed retirement and infrastructure obligations? Paying those down would create massive deficits according to the City's forecast.
Or was the focus entirely on the two years covered by this budget?
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
I attended the Oakland budget meeting yesterday for District's 1 and 3 with Councilmembers Kalb and McElhaney as well as Mayor Quan and City administrator Santana and about 10 other senior City of Oakland staff there. I was the 2nd person who commented and when I did about funding or not funding OPD to levels over 700, I referenced this article and cheers broke out as so many appreciate the serious investigative reporting that Gammon has done over the years. Know that this type of reporting is noted among the City staff and residents and knowledge is power. We need to keep hammering home the message--fix OPD and its culture before we keep throwing our hard earned $ down a deep hole--OPD may be understaffed but it is certainly overpaid.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Ellen Cushing's article was worth reading. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/what-richmonds-getting-right/Content?oid=3524859
Looking at the Contra Costa Times list of employee total cost of compensation for 2011, and backing out the even higher than Oakland OPD overtime that Richmond cops were paid, there was no difference in base pay (as expected) and no obvious difference in cost of benefits either between OPD and RPD. if anything, Oakland cops seemed to cost a bit less than Richmond cops.
Richmond's police chief's point that RPD cops have been contributing to their pensions since the 1990's vs OPD only started a year or so ago would explain how Richmond might be in better overall fiscal shape cumulatively than Oakland. Without looking at Richmond's budget, couldn't say whether they have relatively more money avail to support a police depart staffing level that seems equivalent to about 760 cops in Oakland on a per capita basis.
From the article Richmond doesn't appear to spend higher percentage on social programming of any sort, including job training ones, than Oakland. Hard to say though.
Darwin, if income inequality was the factor explaining much of the difference between Oakland and Richmond crime rates, I'd expect that Richmond's crime rates had been consistently lower than ours for the past decade. But I'm thinking Richmond's crime only starting dropping in the last two or three years after Magnus was hired?
Eric, as others posting here have pointed out, no one is expecting more cops or a better run OPD would do anything more than reduce crime down to the rates typical of neighboring similar cities. Yes, those rates would still be astronomical in absolute terms. But the likelihood of what Oakland city funded economic development doing anything to affect underlying poverty is hard to see when most job training programs are garbage, and most city government driven economic development = real estate development.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
The LA Times looks at the problems understaffing are causing inside OPD instead of looking at some study that has nothing to do with OPD.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oa…
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Charlie Pine writes: "City government simply does not have the financial scope to dent structural income inequalities." Well, there's your (overly simplified) answer as to why Oakland has so much crime. Pine goes on to say, "Mayor Quan and her army of social program operators...have sucked money out of Measure Y and Kids First for years, with no documented evidence of results." But Pine conveniently ignores the fact that 60% of Measure Y spending, off-top, goes to--wait for it-- the police and fire departments. So who's really "sucking money" out of Measure Y?
I can understand why this article seems to be unpopular with proponents of allocating the majority of Oakland's resources toward police. Basically, it reaches a conclusion, supported by empirical evidence, that they don't want to hear: that merely throwing more money at OPD won't make it more effective nor address the underlying cause of crime, i.e., economic inequity at a structural level. That line of thinking, interestingly enough, also explains why anti-violence programs aimed at youth don't drive down crime in the larger sense, because they are not aimed at increasing economic opportunity or addressing structural inequality, only violence reduction (which is not the same as crime reduction).
Along with addressing the elephant in the room--the too-high cost-per-cop which makes adding officers a significant financial drain on the city--perhaps the answer lies in refining Measure Y to maximize economic and educational opportunities for youth, which could not only ultimately impact youth violence, but youth crime, as well as graduation rates--studies have shown a link between drop-out rates and recidivism, and the lack of job opportunities for the formerly-incarcerated has also been identified as a major causal factor of recurring crime. Increasing police staffing won't address this, since even if more arrests are made, those arrests will only contribute to the revolving door of incarceration and recidivism, which does not in and of itself constitute a long-term solution.
Zero-tolerance policies and the "Broken Windows" theory have long been debunked by many studies which show their very premise is flawed. If statistical gains which appear to show crime reductions are only possible by underreporting actual crime, then those numbers aren't very credible, are they?
Finally, asking reporters to have answers that city government doesn't have is to misstate the role of the media. The Express is not a think tank, but BondGraham and Winston have clearly done more thinking on this subject than most of the local media pundits. Rather than try to bash them by calling them dispatchers from the "looney left" (sic), and smear them with Occupy accusations, Bair would do well to remind himself that at its core, Occupy was about addressing economic inequity and the corporate greed which contributed to the financial collapse, the subprime crisis, and the foreclosure epidemic, then rewarded financial institutions with a bailout while homeowners became homeless. All the political hash-slinging from Pine, and to some extent, Tuman--a former and perhaps future mayoral candidate--is misguided, since only a truly objective look at the problems (social/economic inequity = crime) can arrive at a truly objective solution. An objective reading can only arrive at one conclusion: Oakland cannot significantly increase its number of officers without first reducing its cost-per-officer, but even if it does so, it must also address inequity and become more proactive in closing the income gap which is the main underlying cause of crime.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Hi Len,
Ellen Cushing wrote a story about Richmond last month that touches on some of the stuff your bringing up- http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/what…
As for comparing Richmond and Oakland's inequality, yes, it's very similar in proportionate terms, and also in the role that racial segregation plays, but of course Oakland's number of poor households dwarfs Richmond's in absolute terms.
Half of the households of both cities subsist on less than $50,000 in household annual income. Using a conservative 2.5 persons per household figure, that means that half of Oakland and Richmond's populations are subsisting on less than $20,000 in individual income, and a majority of these impoverished persons are women and children.
Actually the data paints an even bleaker picture when you account for the differences in households sizes across different deciles of the income distribution. Toward the top levels, households making $100,000 and up, household sizes tend to be smaller, whereas those homes earning below $100,000 are probably larger on average. So the rich homes have fewer mouths to feed.
Of course the only reason any of this would relate to crime would be the socioeconomic factors Krivo and other sociologists are pointing out. According to this school of thought, the crime isn't caused by poverty; it's caused by the inequality.
Here's a quick and rough peek at Oakland and Richmond's household income distributions - http://www.scribd.com/doc/142302196/Distri…
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Darwin/Ali, how about an in depth comparison of Richmond's situation to Oakland's instead of all of us quoting from academic social science studies whose statistical methodology is far above the one stat courses a few of us struggled thru in college?
Even if the Census stats show Oakland has much greater income or wealth inequality than Richmond, I would think residents compare themselves to people in much wider area than just Richmond, if not entire East Bay and SF.
For years Richmond cops had a much worse reputation for abuse (and corruption) than OPD has now.
Other than the ex Alameda Sheriff that Jerry Brown installed, most OPD chiefs in recent years have been African Americans with urban policing backgrounds. Jordan even had a background as a social worker in NYC.
How is it that Richmond with a Mayor with much more consistent progressive track record than Quan, brings in a white police chief from Montana of all places and their police department appears to have better rapport with residents than ours without their Chief putting the troops thru a cultural revolution?
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
I'm a well-educated computer programmer and scientist. I love data, evidence, and all. But if someone tries to tell me that there are more than enough police in Oakland, I just can't possibly believe it. Anyone who's been burglarized in the last few years and tried to get a cop to even come look at the crime scene a bit doesn't believe it either.
I firmly believe that big part of a functional, civil society is a base level of behavior that is respectful enough of other people that everyone feels safe. (This is essentially what laws are for.) When that level is achieved, people sweep their front yards, they open businesses, they employ "local youth". Without it, they hunker down and just try to survive, or plan their exit.
And in order to get to this level of mutual respect, I believe you need a justice system that early-on teaches people that if they violate the behavioral norms, they will hit a brick wall. It won't work. It won't be cool. They won't get away with it. Now of course parents SHOULD be the ones to teach this, but in cases where they don't, the police have to do it. And Oakland just DOESN'T have enough police to establish the "brick wall". It had ONE officer investigating 10,000 robberies last year, for crying out loud! And since the hoodlums around here KNOW of this staffing insufficiency, violating the law (and seriously hurting other people) has become a bit of a joke.
Count me in with the growing majority that wants a 900-officer OPD.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
This article describes "Councilwoman Libby Schaaf" as a "Founding member of Make Oakland Better Now."
This is not technically untrue, but the short sentence is somewhat misleading. Ms. Schaaf was not a Councilwoman when she was a founding member of Make Oakland Better Now. She was not even a candidate, in fact she resigned from the board, as would be appropriate, before she became a candidate. She has not returned to the board since then.
An uninformed reader could get the impression that Make Oakland Better Now is a front group for Ms. Schaaf's agenda, which is simply not true. This is in stark contrast to the Block By Block Organizing Network, which is not only a front for Jean Quan, but is also not registered as a PAC, a 501c3, or a 501c4, or registered in any way in fact, while they have spent money that is arguably campaigning expenses.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Bob, For all the SEIU's complaining about how much money is spent on police, they never criticize how much cops or fire fighters are paid.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Bob, re the last November defeat of IDLF, Brunner and the value of police association endorsement and money. IDLF and Brunner would have lost by even bigger margins without that police support. IDLF lost because Kaplan is the most popular elected politician in Oakland and enough voters just thought IDLF was shady.
Brunner had her own campaign problems that had nothing to do with the crime issue. Apart from the skepticism of many cop supporting voters of Brunner turning overnight into a big police supporter, it’s not as if Parker disavowed her professional support of gang injunctions. That's why Brunner couldn't get votes on the crime thing.
But my point is that Brunner got re-elected for several terms in D1 telling voters that more cops wouldn’t solve crime problems here. Her refrain was “only you can prevent crime.” Her base of support was Rockridge and the Hills loved her.
And knowing that is why in this past D1 election, every candidate except for two of us, started with official platforms that were silent on OPD staffing. It had worked well for Brunner. Within just a couple of months the three leading candidates had gotten the voter feedback that most voters in D1 wanted more cops on the street, and adapted their platforms accordingly.
(Speaking of Dick Spees, the last elected Oakland Republican, my recollection is that his endorsement of Quan clinched her first council seat election. To this day our Mayor remains remarkably nimble on the perennial police vs social program wars here.)
If you don’t think police association support is worth much in elections anymore, are you expecting that the Mayor and Council will make substantial cuts in police and fire total compensation when the police and fire contract comes up in 2014?
I don’t see that happening until we get much closer to Chapter 9 bankruptcy in two to three years because the non public security employee unions don’t want to start compensation cutting at OPD that could easily spread to the also very well compensated non security employees.
Re: “Recreation Calendar”
SFMOMA puts Mark di Suvero's junk on Crissy Field. Steel eyesores are not art but I have fun imagining their removal.
http://alfidicapitalblog.blogspot.com/2013…
Re: “It's Time for the Union Fighting to Stop”
“Ryan Martin” you are entitled to your own opinion but NOT to your own facts. In addition, your comments would have more credibility if you use your real name as opposed to a fictitious one and if you focused on facts as opposed to name-calling and personal attacks.
On your first paragraph, you contradicted yourself by stating, “we didn't make GM cars. We made Corollas and Tacomas and the Pontiac Vibe (25% at its height)” GM owned the Pontiac brand, therefore, we DID built GM vehicles, according to your math, 25% of NUMMI’s production. (contradiction.....!!)
But lets focus on the subject being discussed on this post as opposed to your own agenda. The comparison of the auto industry and NUMMI to healthcare and Kaiser should be explored.
In the mid 1990s, NUMMI entered a different business practice. The contract started changing and at each bargaining year there were more concessions being made by the union. The employer’s attempt to do more with less intensified. Temporary workers were introduced on 2003; this meant that labor with no benefits, raises, or seniority replaced the conventional 90-day provisionary period for a benefitted employee. Attendance policy became extremely strict and it terminated more seniority employees than any other issue in the facility……. (Sounds familiar?)
What did the union do? We focused 90% of our resources on representation. Year after year at the bargaining table, being faced with a challenging business climate and rising cost of healthcare, we took steps backwards for fear of losing jobs. On 2008, NUMMI had beaten every record in the industry by producing more vehicles with less people than any other auto plant in the nation. The vehicles we built had the best quality and were in higher demand than most vehicles in the world. Toyota was making record profits and was expanding; then 2009 and the Housing Bubble came, GM and Chrysler were seeking Federal aid in order to prevent bankruptcy. Toyota stopped production in some of their plants for the first time in history, and Ford was on the verge of financial ruins as well.
The UAW negotiated a deal with GM and Chrysler over the retirement plans in which the UAW became part owner of the companies with 17.5% ownership of GM, and 55% ownership of Chrysler. However, this deal did not stopped plant closures or a two-tier wage system negotiated on 2011 by the UAW. In addition, the UAW continues to drop in membership to an alarming rate.
The lessons I learned in my tenure with the UAW and the NUMMI plant closure are that the world can change in one second, and that unions are not truly representing its membership well if they continue to show up at the bargaining table with no ideas or solutions to the challenges of tomorrow. Calling the employer names and pointing at record profits did not work for the UAW and it’s not working for other unions throughout the Nation.
On June 4th 2013, SEIU-UHW will be mobilizing 10 thousand people to the state capital to rally against a one billion dollar in cuts to Medical. These cuts affect working families, low-income Californians, Hospital Administrators, Healthcare workers, Insures, etc. While Kaiser and other Healthcare giants are affected by these cuts, they’re unable to mobilize thousands of people like we are, thus stopping the cuts from materializing. It is these actions we are taking that generate strength to our union, political power, and results at the bargaining table.
It is shameful that NUHW and CNA spent over 10 million dollars in a second failed attempt to destroy the best contract in the industry while they could have focused on organizing the unorganized or fighting cuts to Medical. It is a shame that NUHW calls itself “the workers” union while NUHW and CNA are doing nothing to prevent cuts to Medical. Who are they really looking out for……?????
Ryan Martin, or whatever your name is, if you really care about labor and working families, join me on June 4 to stop cuts to Medical………..