Upcoming Public Safety Events
By Mike Ferro
MOBN! Public Safety Committee Co-Chair
There are important meetings in Oakland this coming week and the week following on public safety. Attending these meetings will be very helpful for you in understanding what is going on and what we might expect in the future. And your attendance will be very useful for helping us develop MOBN!'s perspective on public safety policy.
First, if you haven't yet attended an Oakland Police Department Strategic Framework public meeting, there are two this week:
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Willie Key Recreation Center
3131 Union St., Oakland
6:30 - 8:00 pm
Thursday, March 11
Manzanita Recreation Center
2701 22nd Ave., Oakland
6:30 - 8:00 pm
The Strategic Framework documents are also available on the OPD website. The framework is a good, very promising, piece of work, which says all the right things. I attended the first of these meetings which was held the same day that the framework was announced and thus was poorly attended. However, in attendance were some citizens who had been involved with finding and hiring Tony Batts as police Chief. I learned a great deal from what they said.
Second, there will be a community leadership meeting on Tuesday, March 9, 6 pm, at Imani Community Church, 3300 MacArthur Blvd. I will be attending along with at least two other MOBN Board members. This meeting is an Oakland Community Organization effort with the following purposes:
A. Focus on and attend to the community (-ies) which are most directly involved with violence in Oakland.
Note: OCO’s groups are essentially minority and faith-based or school-based. These are not the secular political activist groups which we, or other MOBN! sorts, are accustomed to.
B. Build community understanding of and support for nonpunitive interventions with young people who are at risk for criminal behavior.
Note: This is the real community side of community policing. Unless this understanding and support is well-built, Oakland cannot get very far away from old-fashioned military-style policing, crime suppression, profiling and the inevitably destructive reactive response to police activities from the violence-dominated minority communities.
C. Build strong, emotionally resonant, lasting social relationships among community members who do not yet know one another.
Note: Oakland’s poorer minority communities are not bound together, nor are they bound to the more affluent communities. Dealing with Oakland’s crime problems will take a new sort of overall community spirit in Oakland which can overcome the boundaries of our current fractionated and socially disaffected urban culture(s).
Third, there will be community meeting held at St. Columba Church, 6401 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, on March 18 at 6 pm. This will be an Oakland Community Organization "action" whose purpose is also to discuss the community side of community policing. Chief Batts and City Council members will attend. This meeting is designed to inform the violence-afflicted community as a whole about evidence-based policing and nonpunitive interventions to reduce crime. In the OCO style, it will be all top-down, with any questions to the officials attending predetermined and no direct audience Q and A. We will be announcing this meeting on the MOBN! website.
Where is MOBN now with regard to public safety? In a process of rethinking our role. We had planned a series of website postings and a meeting (in April) on the topic of community policing. The announcement of the OPD Strategic Framework has in some ways co-opted our planned outreach efforts so we need to retool. We do need more members who are informed about the realities of public safety in Oakland.
Please feel free to contact me at MOBNpublicsafety@yahoo.com with any questions.
Mike Ferro
Upcoming Public Safety Events
By Mike Ferro
MOBN! Public Safety Committee Co-Chair
There are important meetings in Oakland this coming week and the week following on public safety. Attending these meetings will be very helpful for you in understanding what is going on and what we might expect in the future. And your attendance will be very useful for helping us develop MOBN!'s perspective on public safety policy.
First, if you haven't yet attended an Oakland Police Department Strategic Framework public meeting, there are two this week:
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Willie Key Recreation Center
3131 Union St., Oakland
6:30 - 8:00 pm
Thursday, March 11
Manzanita Recreation Center
2701 22nd Ave., Oakland
6:30 - 8:00 pm
The Strategic Framework documents are also available on the OPD website. The framework is a good, very promising, piece of work, which says all the right things. I attended the first of these meetings which was held the same day that the framework was announced and thus was poorly attended. However, in attendance were some citizens who had been involved with finding and hiring Tony Batts as police Chief. I learned a great deal from what they said.
Second, there will be a community leadership meeting on Tuesday, March 9, 6 pm, at Imani Community Church, 3300 MacArthur Blvd. I will be attending along with at least two other MOBN Board members. This meeting is an Oakland Community Organization effort with the following purposes:
A. Focus on and attend to the community (-ies) which are most directly involved with violence in Oakland.
Note: OCO’s groups are essentially minority and faith-based or school-based. These are not the secular political activist groups which we, or other MOBN! sorts, are accustomed to.
B. Build community understanding of and support for nonpunitive interventions with young people who are at risk for criminal behavior.
Note: This is the real community side of community policing. Unless this understanding and support is well-built, Oakland cannot get very far away from old-fashioned military-style policing, crime suppression, profiling and the inevitably destructive reactive response to police activities from the violence-dominated minority communities.
C. Build strong, emotionally resonant, lasting social relationships among community members who do not yet know one another.
Note: Oakland’s poorer minority communities are not bound together, nor are they bound to the more affluent communities. Dealing with Oakland’s crime problems will take a new sort of overall community spirit in Oakland which can overcome the boundaries of our current fractionated and socially disaffected urban culture(s).
Third, there will be community meeting held at St. Columba Church, 6401 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, on March 18 at 6 pm. This will be an Oakland Community Organization "action" whose purpose is also to discuss the community side of community policing. Chief Batts and City Council members will attend. This meeting is designed to inform the violence-afflicted community as a whole about evidence-based policing and nonpunitive interventions to reduce crime. In the OCO style, it will be all top-down, with any questions to the officials attending predetermined and no direct audience Q and A. We will be announcing this meeting on the MOBN! website.
Where is MOBN now with regard to public safety? In a process of rethinking our role. We had planned a series of website postings and a meeting (in April) on the topic of community policing. The announcement of the OPD Strategic Framework has in some ways co-opted our planned outreach efforts so we need to retool. We do need more members who are informed about the realities of public safety in Oakland.
Please feel free to contact me at MOBNpublicsafety@yahoo.com with any questions.
Mike Ferro