Comment Archives: Stories: Last 30 Days
Re: “East Bay Pizzerias Get Love from the Cooking Channel's 'Pizza Cuz'”
The episode with Cheese Board is airing Monday 5/20 at 6pm PST.
Re: “Facebook Co-Founder Dustin Moskovitz Tosses $50K To Prop 19”
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Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Bob, disagree with your "The number of police officers Oakland currently has is reflective of the incredibly expensive police union contract -- not a political philosophy that's anti-policing."
This is a city of which close to a majority of whom collectively voted for two mayoral candidates, Quan and Kaplan, who famously body blocked OPD during the first Oscar Grant demonstration.
Most of the Oaklanders who consistently vote in local elections live in the more affluent parts of town. And up until very recently, most of them shared the anti-cop beliefs of the old Quan and the old Brunner, and that of the consistent Nadel disdain for cops best expressed by one of our council members who said "We can't police our way out of crime."
The high compensation paid police here actually was the result of the widespread anti-police philosophy in combination with the economic self-interest of the police and of the other city employees. Voters and their elected officials didn't want more cops so they never bothered examining what cops were getting paid just so long as the total budgeted for cops didn't eat into other programs like libraries and anti-violence programs. Cops complained about high overtime but got addicted to it. The SEIU and other miscellaneous unions supported the hefty raises given to the cops and fire fighters as long as they also get hefty raises that lifted many non-safety city jobs in the highest paid in the country.
About the same time that the city ran out of smoke and mirror fiscal budgeting tools crime expanded out of the ghetto's into the hills and middle hills.
Practically overnight, liberal voters changed from being cop haters haters to cop lovers. The New Mayor Quan heard the drumbeat and hired Bratton.
And now the non-safety city employees are hoisted by their own petard of supporting their police and fire sisters and brothers past compensation demands because adding more cops now at 200k/cop average total compensation eats into the other employees' pie.
This extreme fast swing by voters and the politicians here from cop haters to cop lovers is not likely to result in rational, optimum use of city resources to increase safety.
I don't care what the elasticity of policing is on a broad sampling of American cities when you have a very specific city with a very specifically screwed up police department nominally overseen by officials who are bi-polar towards police. if anything, I'll bet the elasticity of dysfunction within OPD is such that you could increase the number of Oakland cops by 10% and only see a fraction of a percent drop in crime, if any, until you have doubled the number of cops.
At least one cop supporter, a retired sergeant, has posted cogent reasons why we don't have have to hire a bunch more cops in order to greatly improve OPD performance.
But it's a lot easier to get elected and re-elected by showing the likely to vote voters that you're tough on crime by hiring more cops and not delaying that by negotiating lower compensation. So what if in a couple of years there won't be any money for cops or for programs because local pols and union officials only plan two years at a time.
Re: “It's Time for the Union Fighting to Stop”
Juan Castillo used to be a union rep for UAW Local 2244 at NUMMI where he worked with management to shut down NUMMI with a pack of lies. The main lie used to justify shutting down NUMMI was the pullout of GM which somehow caused a financial strain. That was not true because we didn't make GM cars. We made Corollas and Tacomas and the Pontiac Vibe (25% at its height). GM made little from the sale of the Vibe because it was a rebadged Toyota Matrix. GM didn't get to keep all the profits. The vast majority of revenue came from Toyota production. The GM lie was nothing more than a red herring.
Juan Castillo was also a part of the union busting crew who started a riot at the union hall , videotaped it and spread that across the union busting milieu in the U.S. to frame union workers as "thugs". It's still on You Tube. The whole "riot" was nothing more than a fabricated provocation. People still have flyers from Juan promoting that day with incendiary language designed to provoke anger against the union instead of Toyota.
FYI: Toyota had $39 billion when they announced the shutdown of NUMMI
The lies from Toyota was spread through Juan's newsletter called "Autoworkers News". Juan's newsletter replaced the legitimate workers newsletter called "The Barking Dog" after Caroline Lund passed away. Workers simply assumed "Autoworkers News" was legit and believed the lies from a pro-Reagan anti-union mole. Juan's cheesy website is still up, but the incriminating articles have been taken down to give the impression of just another loyal union rep.
Juan Castillo is still on You Tube in interviews by "laborvideo" where he is quoted as calling the UAW a "business" and spreading the lies about GM.
Juan Castillo lied then and he lies now. Ignore his position as a union rep. He's a union buster.
Either SEIU-UHW was ignorant of who they were hiring; or worse, SEIU-UHW knew of his past collaboration with Toyota management and hired the right guy for the job.
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: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Jonathan,
I'm glad you brought up Measure DD.
Measure DD was funded as a capital project via $198 million in bonds, but there is no money for the operations and maintenance budget for the lakefront improvements. Deanna Santana pointed this out at the recent community forum on public safety sponsored by Make Oakland Better Now! (April 28, 2013 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church). I believe Santana also said the new West Oakland Youth Center also has no operations and upkeep budget.
Santana's point was similar to the one we've highlighted in this article; public safety is about more than cops. There's a delicate balance. De-funding important capital projects and non-police services can have major negative impacts on public safety.
Santana said at that meeting that she would like to implement a "fair share" budget, one that doesn't require the trade-off of funding one department at the expense of others.
Unfortunately the police department, because of its outsized costs, directly competes with general fund dollars that should be used to upkeep this beautiful public works project. Perhaps the Council will find money to fund maintenance and repairs for the millions we've borrowed and spent. It would be a shame if we had to let our wonderful city improvements crumble over the next few years because of a very costly effort to ramp up police staffing levels, an agenda that is by no means guaranteed to make the city safer.
Re: “Oakland Officials Withhold Air Pollution Plan”
Good coverage, a well balanced article.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
What this really comes down to, is are you going to believe two Occupiers and their cherry-picked quotes from academic studies that don't discuss Oakland, or your own eyes? Oakland has invested in tremendous infrastructure projects recently like Measure DD (Love Our Lake Day is June 9!), as well as crime prevention, subsidized housing and all sorts of social programs, while cutting the number of police. And crime has gone up dramatically. If cities didn't need police, someone besides Occupiers would have figured that out long ago. Oakland's need for more police is apparent to virtually everyone in the city except this newspaper, it seems.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Personally, I cannot wait for the airport "boondoggle" to be built, because it is what passengers want, a seamless connection from BART to the airport, and is likely to go a long way in making BART a really viable option for airport transit. Both AirBART and AC Transit's airport run are miserably unpleasant and inefficient, and the new system bypasses everything that makes them that way. It would have been better to have a BART station AT the airport, but no one had the sense to make that happen.
Re: “Outdoor Drinking Guide”
Telegraph, the sausage place, has a nice beer garden area. Dog friendly. Smoking allowed.
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2318 Telegraph Ave
Oakland, CA
Re: “Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0”
I am beginning to believe that Yelp IS (emphasis) being paid to filter out negative critical reviews. I have established a credible profile on yelp, and my visits to the various Ford dealers appeared for a time, and then they got filtered out, while newbies came on with no profile pic, only one or two reviews, but because they were 5-star (obviously fake) reviews, they got posted while mine got shoved to the back and filtered out. I have proof of this because while my reviews were showing I got an owner comment. Then a few days later, all my Ford reviews started being filtered out again. This leads me to logically conclude that the Ford Dealers ARE paying Yelp to BURY my critical reviews, which are actual experiences I had. Before I didn't believe it, but now I have PROOF!
Sound Ford deceptive, fraudulent, bait-and-switch, failed spot delivery, Bill Pierre Ford, Evergreen Ford, all lied and balked at a signed contract because they did not get lender approval first. I have lost a lot of respect for Yelp today because of this. I mean, if you can't share your honest experiences, whether good or bad, what's the point? When Ford Dealers pay to bury negative reviews that are completely legitimate? Now I know I will not buy a Ford again!
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Joe,
I agree that the BART-connector is a boondoggle, and a poor use of public funds for infrastructure investment. Remember, however, it was the BART board that was in charge of approving that project, not the Oakland City Council. And I think that if the recent additions to the BART board had been on the panel back then, the outcome might have been different.
Regardless, Oakland is awash in smart infrastructure improvement projects. The Lake Merritt upgrade being completed right now is just one example. The upcoming MacArthur Transit Village is another. Still another is the Fox Theater. Although expensive, it has been a major catalyst for the revival of the city's Uptown district, helping attract bars and restaurants to the area. The success of Uptown is also one of the reasons why the city's tax base is rebounding.
As far as fixing potholes, tree trimming, and cleaning up garbage -- those issues are important to fund, too. They add to the quality of neighborhoods, help residents feel better about where they live, and help create stability. Those are all issues that can impact crime. Plus, these municipal expenditures employ people -- typically Oakland residents -- and thus feed back into the local economy.
That's another advantage they have over police spending. As Mary Eisenhart noted in this comment string, one of the big problems with spending so much on police is that most of the the money leaves Oakland -- and ends up in outlying areas. Darwin and Ali had an excellent cover story on that topic last year ("The High Costs of Outsourcing Police"). It found that 90 percent of Oakland police officers live outside the city.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
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Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Jonathan,
Again, you're over-simplifying and thus misstating the IBM report. You need to reread it. For example, the report also examines (page 14) cities that have high crime rates (where rates are not going down) and higher than average expenditures on police (like Oakland). The IBM report contends that these cities are spending too much on police as well, calling it the "Vicious Circle of Crime."
In those cities, the IBM authors note, "high spending on police services is crowding out other types of investments necessary to eliminate conditions conducive to crime. For those cities, their failure to shift resources from police services to economic development and public infrastructure is proving costly."
As you can see, the report is clearly not only about cities that have successfully reduced crime -- it applies to cities that have not as well.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Hi Bob--and thanks for that explanation re: infrastructure investment. I don't have any argument against infrastructure spending; indeed, in Oakland there is much which qualifies as deferred maintenance in our infrastructure which needs serious attention. I do question, however, how much public safety benefit this yields? In that spirit, permit me an example. In Oakland, some public projects for infrastructure investment come from dollars outside of Oakland (county, state and federal). One such project is the train being constructed to connect the Coliseum BART station with the Oakland Airport. That has been a huge infastructure investment with, I believe, federal dollars. (if memory serves, this was stimulus money). Supposedly this was going to create transit oriented development (development around transit systems). In the rush to accept these dollars, however, we created a rail line that runs directly to the BART station with NO stops along Hegenberger Road. No stops at any hotels. No opportunities for stops at other businesses that might develop there. Instead, the train has the opposite effect--it encourages passengers to get out of Oakland quickly by going to the BART station and then continuing somewhere else. This was a huge infrastructure project--and outside of temporary construction jobs for trade unionists (a good thing), I am unclear what development or new tax base it promoted. More to the point, I fail to see a public safety benefit here. I realize I am only giving one example, and I would welcome a counter example from you to demonstrate the opposite here.
Re: “The A's Belong in Oakland”
The o.co stadium is an embarrassment & terrible stadium for the spectator experience. Simply put they need a new stadium. Oakland is broke and ought not contribute money towards that effort, though some contribution of land is reasonable. We're i Wolfe I would doubt whether Colisseum City will be built in the near future. What other proposals are out there? You can say you want the A's to stay but they need a new stadium and taxpayers should not be footing the bill.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Unlike most of the participants in this thread, Mayor Quan subordinates reason to money. For her, "more police" is an opportunity to swindle. In particular, she knows that the Measure Y taxes expire next year. She will put a measure on the Nov. 2014 ballot, desperate to revive it. After all, Measure Y/BB finances the agencies that help her at election time.
Quan was the lead campaigner for Measure Y in 2004, insisting, "This Measure guarantees that the current budgeted number of police 739 must be funded before Measure Y is enacted. In short this brings the total number of police to 802... All of us have to run for re-election – none of us would break such an obvious promise." ( http://www.orpn.org/MeasureY_802quotes.htm ) The measure passed; she and City Hall immediately broke the promise.
If Quan runs for re-election on the 2014 ballot, a vote to give her more Measure Y money is a vote to be swindled again.
If a new Y continues to divert a chunk of the tax revenue to failed social programs -- like Youth UpRising run by an executive director who has paid herself $250,000 a year -- a vote for Measure Y is a vote for more waste.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Bob et al, first you guys ignore the entire context and point of the IBM study - which is that AFTER crime rates have declined substantially, increasing policing is not as effective as increasing other kinds of spending - and then you attempt to extrapolate some rule from the study that there is a specific percentage of general fund spending, across diverse cities, that should be spent on police. Your facts are just plain wrong, and your conclusion - that Oakland doesn't need more cops - is absurd.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
It seems there is some amount of talking past one another here. One question is the percent of its budget Oakland should spend on police. The second is how many police officers Oakland should hire.
Of course they're intimately connected. But it doesn't follow that because Oakland devotes too much per capita to public safety, it therefore has enough police. It seems pretty clear -- whether you're looking at private security in Oakmore, or massive service delays across the city, or OPD's depleted robbery and homicide investigative squads -- that it doesn't. Mr. Winston has reported as such, in his November 14th, 2012 article on the department's homicide clearance rate: "OPD's inability to solve crimes is due in part to understaffing."
Understaffing which, of course, goes back to the matter of compensation. So, if can we can agree OPD needs enough officers to investigate and solve crimes, we can better ask the next question: what's a cop worth?
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.