Comment Archives: stories: Today
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: “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…