Comment Archives: Stories
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
It is also a very bad thing that we cannot require Oakland cops to live in Oakland.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Joe,
Your question to Darwin as to what Oakland could be spending money on instead of more police is answered in the IBM study as well. The IBM authors strongly argue that cities should be spending much more money on "infrastructure investments needed to attract and support future growth."
Without such investments, the authors contended, "cities will not be able to generate the future revenues they need to support their operations." The authors go on to state that, without economic growth spurred by municipal investment, cities run the risk of entering a "death spiral" -- in which they don't have the tax revenues to sustain their costs.
With the elimination of redevelopment, Oakland should be spending more money from its general fund on infrastructure improvements and investments -- which not only will help the city attract development and spur growth, but also provide jobs to local residents (provided there are local-hiring requirements in place). Such investments can have a synergistic effect -- more jobs, more tax revenues, more money for services, all of which can help lead to less crime.
Instead, the Quan budget, and the proposals from Make Oakland Better Now!, put almost all of their eggs into one thing -- more spending on police, and yet there's very little good research to show that this idea will have the desired outcome:
Again from IBM (from an earlier study they did, "Smarter, Faster, Cheaper"): "No relationship was found between spending on police services and lower crime rates, which is the outcome that police services are supposed to be driving."
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
I don't think any sane person can maintain we don't need more police in Oakland (and police who take the job seriously and prosecute robberies, grand theft auto, etc. and do decent forensic work); the problem is that in the exuberance of years past when it was hard to recruit officers, the city committed to a completely unsustainable compensation package it now can't get out of. It's not that we don't need more cops, it's that we apparently can't afford the ones we've got. The only either-or aspect of this and libraries, parks, etc. comes from this.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Daniel and Jonathan,
You're reading the IBM study too narrowly. If you analyze the report, you'll see that Oakland is already spending much more than other cities on policing, and more than what the authors think is smart. The study notes that the average city spends about 34 percent of it general fund budget on policing -- but Oakland currently spends about 41 percent. More importantly, the IBM report notes that the average city spends about $295 per capita on policing -- a figure it deems to be too high. Oakland, however, under Quan's budget, would spend about double that amount -- $560 per capita -- on policing in 2015 ($218.2 million for a population of 390,000).
In other words, Oakland is already spending far beyond what the IBM study says is prudent for police services.
In addition, the IBM study does not take into account the fact that some cities, like Oakland, pay very high salaries and benefits to police officers, thereby greatly limiting their ability to have more cops. Instead, the study looks at aggregate spending, and from that point of view, Oakland already has passed the threshhold of what makes sense to spend on police.
Also, Jonathan, I've been a journalist for eighteen years, and Darwin BondGraham and Ali Winston are two of the finest young reporters I've had an opportunity to work with. And your attempt to dismiss their work is silly.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
While there is, indeed, a broad social science literature on the relationship between unemployment, poverty, racism and other forms of inequality and crime, siting such literature does not explain why Oakland--not necessarily leading and certainly not alone in many of these indicators--has such an incredible crime problem. There is no direct relationship that I see between these socio-economic indicators and the extent of our crime problem. Simply put: there are cities worse off that are safer (or perhaps "less unsafe" is a better way to say it).
More importantly, where is the social science research that shows that a municipality can meaningfully impact any of these socio-economic indicators through programming and spending? That is the choice here: should Oakland invest in more police officers (which it is uniquely qualified, indeed authorized, to do) or should it divert resources towards investments in programs with the aim of causing large, meaningful swings in socio-economic conditions?
Despite relatively recent focus on getting more police officers, the dominant political sentiment among elected officials, and Oaklanders generally, for decades is that you have to do both. That is still the conventional wisdom. I look forward to the East Bay Express' analysis of the other "half" of this equation: how have cities' non police spending and programming brought crime down without increasing the number of police officers?
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Certainly the debate would be better informed by it being started by real journalists who don't omit key parts of a referenced study to make a specious case, or actually call the subjects of their articles for responses prior to publication, and don't see writing for a newspaper as an extension of their participation in the destructive local Occupy movement.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Mr. Tuman,
Those are good questions, and I appreciate that you're them. I would rephrase them, however, to reflect the contradictions that lurk behind the uncritical push to increase police spending. Is the answer more police? Or, does not the city already allocate an unusually large share of its budget resources to the police, thereby preventing investments in other areas that might better improve public safety outcomes?
I also think this whole debate really needs to be informed by a much broader set of voices.
Re: “Your Teen's Marijuana Counselor Might Be A Convicted Pedophile or Thief — Nobody Checks”
Prohibitionism is intensely, rabidly, frantically, frenetically, hysterically anti-freedom, anti-public-health, and anti-economical.
An important feature of prohibitionism (which it closely shares with fascism) is totalitarianism. That means:
A police state apparatus; widespread surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment or even murder of political opponents, mass-incarceration, torture, etc.
Like despicable, playground bullies, prohibitionists are vicious one moment, then full of self-pity the next. They whine and whinge like lying, spoilt brats, claiming they just want to "save the little children", but the moment they feel it safe to do so, they use brute force and savage brutality against those they claim to be defending.
Prohibitionists actually believe that they can transcend human nature and produce a better world. They allow only one doctrine, an impossible-to-obtain drug-free world. All forms of dissent, be they common-sense, scientific, constitutional, or democratic, are simply ignored, and their proponents vehemently persecuted.
During alcohol prohibition (1919-1933), all profits went to enrich thugs and criminals. While battling over turf, young men died, every day, on inner-city streets. Corruption in Law Enforcement and the Judiciary went clean off the scale. A fortune was wasted on enforcement that could have been far more wisely allocated. On top of the budget-busting prosecution and incarceration costs, billions in taxes were lost. Finally, in 1929, the economy collapsed. Does that sound familiar?
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Darwin, thanks for your response--but let me press you on one point: are you seriously suggesting that spending more on other city services (e.g., tree trimming, pot hole filling, two hours more for library time at night, a speedier line to pay a parking ticket, etc) would have greater public safety returns than spending to increase our force and bring the number of police to an acceptable level? Of course, I am only teasing--I know that by "city services," you really referred to investments in housing, or job training programs or perhaps social outreach programs to decrease violence, etc--yes? Okay, let's start there. Which of these services with more of our city dollars invested would produce a better safety outcome than more police ? Now we are not talking theoretically--we are talking real facts and policy. That's the implication you derived from the IBM study--so tease out your argument. As I said in my earlier post, I think we need programs, jobs, education, and police--not just police and nothing else. At the same time, I don't agree that spending more on services and nothing more on police (to increase staffing) is a prudent move when our police force is so badly understaffed. And as to that last point, no less an authority than the Mayor's own expert Bob Wasserman (and Bill Bratton too!) has suggested in recent town hall meetings on numerous occasions that Oakland has the most understaffed and under-resourced police department per capita of any city in the United States. In this environment, is it accurate to imply that spending more on other services would achieve better public safety results?
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Detroit has 360 police officers per every 100,000 residents.
Oakland has 182 police officers per every 100,000 residents.
Yet Detroit's violent crime rate was 2137.4/100k compared to Oakland's 1682.7/100k (2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States…)
The number of police officers does little to explain the overall rate of violent crime in each city.
What does explain each city's high level of crime is the severe inequality and poverty that many of Detroit and Oakland's residents suffer from, which causes some of any population to commit criminal acts, and makes many residents vulnerable to predation.
The point of the IBM study is that returns on police staffing diminish quickly beyond a certain point. Commenters here may very well be correct that Oakland isn't at that threshold yet.
But the key point the authors of that study were trying to make, is that many other city services also exhibit the same impact curve. Oakland currently doesn't really fund any of its services adequately. The police, however, claim the largest share of the city's budget pie, while social, housing, health, transportation, and youth services arguably have no meaningful share of Oakland's budget resources whatsoever.
Following the IBM authors' claims, we could hypothesize that increases in spending in these non-police categories would actually produce much larger public safety returns than would police spending, even if investment in police spending would also still produce returns all the way up to 900 or 1200 officers.
All of this, however, is just theory, as is the theory that by spending more on cops to beef up staffing you'll somehow reduce crime in Oakland.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Gosh Bob, I have to agree with Daniel Schulman on this. The study you cite to critique the other point of view (arguing for investment in more police officers) assumes that a city has already reached a desirable threshold for staffing--established by virtue of the fact that crime rates are at a moderate or modest and acceptable level. That clearly is not the case here in Oakland. Our rates of crime across the board are very high (check the most recent FBI data for this). Moreover, these numbers have occurred in a time of reduced staffing.
In context, if we assume that the preferred staffing level was 1000 officers for Oakland--then the IBM study you cite would be relevant IF our staffing was currently at 950 officers or so (in the ballpark), and our crime rates were down. But neither of those reflect the reality today.
Our Mayor right now seems to be trying to re-set the bar for staffing by claiming she can get us to between 700 and 800 officers in 5 years. That would be an improvement--but it would still be LESS than we need. And even if we accepted 800 as the desired number--650 or so officers (what we have today) is not close enough for one to invoke the IBM study and say we are close enough, and therefore that more officers will not improve safety.
Let me, however, challenge the assumption that even 800 officers would be adequate.
There have been no shortage of legal and law enforcement experts who have opined that Oakland needs approximately one thousand officers. Currently, we are in the mid 600's--thanks to the most recent academy. But we still have to wait for the current academy to graduate cadets in September AND THEN subtract from these additions, any cadets who do not matriculate out of field training, post-academy. Then we have to take this number and measure it against normal attrition for Oakland officers due to lateral transfers, retirement, disability, etc. Historically that number is about "5"/ month (averages between 4 and 6). Currently it is about 4.5/ month. At this point that would translate to a loss of 54 officers for this year--but if the normal pattern re-emerges, it would be attrition of 60 officers. If we graduate 78 officers from the year's 2 academies for 2013 (38 for the class in March, and being generous, 40 for the class in September), we then subtract 54 (again, being generous) from 78 and get a net of 24 officers added to the force this year--which still keeps us at less than 650 officers for the year. We are understaffed, and even with 2 academies/year we are not making up much ground. If the goal is 1000 officers, it will take 10-12 years at this rate to get to full staffing.
In that sense, the IBM study is not an apt comparison. We are not at or near capacity on staffing.
To take this a step further--consider some other points. First, how safe do you think most Oakland residents feel today? Recent poll evidence suggests they/we do NOT feel safe. Many of those same residents will tell you that their perception of diminished safety is directly tied to the fact that the police do not/cannot always respond to calls UNLESS a gun is involved. There is a reason, after all, that Oakland's robbery rates are off the charts--and it has to do with more than just lousy arrest rates. It is also because the robbers do not fear a police response.
Additionally, if our residents felt safe and that police staffing was adequate, why would they be making efforts at privately purchasing cameras for neighborhoods? Or for that matter, going to the extreme of hiring hiring private security to patrol their streets? Or, even more to point, why would parts of the hills area be engaged in discussions about trying to create a special assessment district just for them, to raise a separate parcel tax and provide police that would patrol their area? Would any of these occur if people felt safe and our department was fully staffed?
Common sense tells us that we do not have enough police. I am not someone who believes that more officers alone will solve every problem. In point of fact, if all we did was only to hire more police--and nothing else--we be doing little more than a suppression strategy. Pushing down on the problem will not make it go away. Programs are important as well. So is business development and jobs, and education, etc. It all matters. It is all relevant.
But let's not kid ourselves that we live in some kind of Utopian Oakland where less cops are fine, and more cops aren't part of the solution. Cops do matter. Not only for arrests--but more,
because their visible presence (with constitutional policing) deters crime, by discouraging people from making bad decisions.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
The underlying point of the article is that there is no body of peer-reviewed, comprehensive research (statistical, comparative, or otherwise), showing any causal relationship between the number of cops a state/city deploys in its territory, and its crime rates. There are a few criminologists who claim such a causal link.
There is, on the other hand, a vast social science literature on how inequality is the root of the social conditions that lead to criminal deviance. Inequality produces alienation and desperation, among other emotional states that lead to criminally defined behaviors. And perhaps more importantly, racial, gendered, and class inequalities single out certain portions of the population, and make them more vulnerable to acts of violence and exploitation which are again often identified as crimes.
Dr. Krivo's work is a good place to start if you're interested in understanding the root of the problem in the United States - https://www.russellsage.org/publications/d…
If you'd like to sample the wider research on crime and inequality, here's some of what's been analyzed over the past five years - http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=crime+…
Re: “The A's Belong in Oakland”
Yeah, keep our A's in Oakland, but move them to the Waterfront. Get them outta that dump they're in now.
Tho, I do love that dump...
Re: “The A's Belong in Oakland”
Good piece, but Oakland sold out the A's to the greed and ego of Al Davis, and they did it when the Haas family had behaved very generously. Big Al ruined the Coliseum for baseball. As business people the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors couldn't have operated a 7-11 store.
The A's were screwed and they should move. if only to teach local politicians there are consequences.
Re: “The A's Belong in Oakland”
Given the size of events I am in total agreement with the site. All the factors you mention, BART, Freeways, just access, plus the weather is the best in the Bay Area. Today we here the NBA, never an archtype when it comes to public relations in regard to franchise moving, made a statement to the Sacramento owners. That team should stay there as they have buyers for it. The same thing MLB should do to Wolfe and Fisher. Your article captured the fans of the East Bay in particular. We need to keep putting people in the seats, in spite of them moving guys like Gomes, the glue of last years team, which they do every year. The profit sharing agreement makes it profitable for them to lose while not building the team. They said they would keep last years champs intact, but..
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
@Robert Gammon, you are making the same fundamental error in interpreting the IBM study as the authors of the article. It does NOT apply to the Oakland experience.
The main thesis of the report is that if crime is going down and it has been for awhile and your city wants to reduce it even further, spending more on police may not be a very good idea. This is why the sub-title of the article is "Re-Calibrating Spending on Police Services in an Era of Declining Crime Rates."
Are you arguing that crime rates have been down in Oakland? You have to make that case if you want to say this research is relevant.
In fact, let's follow the authors recommendations for first steps in assessing your city's situation:
1. Examine local police spending and employment history.
Go back as far as the data permits.
2. Examine changes in crime rates over that period and see if
any patterns emerge. Is there a relationship between
police spending and changes in crime rates in your city?
Hmmm, Oakland had budget problems, reduced police spending, and crime went up. I think the IBM study indicates that Oakland should hire more police.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Gammon: "not (spending) enough on other public-service programs that could help close the steep inequality gap in the city."
City government simply does not have the financial scope to dent structural income inequalities. Nor do Mayor Quan and her army of social program operators make this argument. Instead, they dangle the hope that "anti-violence social programs" can make a difference. They have sucked money out of Measure Y and Kids First for years, with no documented evidence of results. Their only result has been to build an unaccountable "nonprofit" bureaucracy that supports Jean Quan at election time.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Jonathan,
The IBM study referenced in this report, along with research from Lauren Krivo at Rutgers, whose research is funded by the National Science Foundation, are hardly radical.
Re: “Are More Cops the Answer?”
Bob, this dispatch from the looney left is not arguing that we should reduce police pay so we can have more police, it attempts to argue the laughably absurd contention that Oakland doesn't desperately need more cops. And the fact is that, unfortunately, the City's poor negotiations and weak fiscal management have put Oakland in the position of having to cut important service to deal with out of control crime - not with fatter paychecks to civilian workers (the implication of this article) but with more badges on the street.
If you want to publish nuanced takes on crime and budget in Oakland, I would suggest looking for reporters somewhere other than the Occupy Oakland Tribune.
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?