Public Safety

Cease Fire / Public Safety

Oakland Project Ceasefire Update

Members of the MOBN! board recently met with Oakland’s Project Ceasefire team for a progress update. While the project is moving slowly, it is moving in the right direction.  We are pleased with the team’s care, thought and implementation, with one reservation:  the project still needs a full-time manager to devote his or her full attention to this important project.  Team members also see this need.  At the City Council Public Safety Committee meeting on Tuesday, December 11 at 5:30, they will be asking for an allocation of Measure Y reserve funds for a full-time manager.   MOBN! will be attending the meeting to urge that the committee recommend, and Council ultimately approve, the dedicated management everyone in the Cease Fire process agrees is essential.  We’ve also expressed our views in this letter to the Committee.

MOBN! members know that we and other community groups have been advocating for an effective Ceasefire program for a number of years now.  The evidence from across the country is that when implemented carefully and properly, Cease Fire is one of the few strategies proven to reduce homicides in violent cities.  Point 4 of the MOBN! Public Safety Plan provides:

The City must fully implement long-term Cease Fire programs for gun violence reduction and open-air drug market elimination, based on the Cincinnati /Boston model. The City must regularly report to the citizens on the extent to which these programs are reducing gun violence and eliminating open-air drug markets.

More information is available here, here, here and here.  Scott Johnson’s recent post on the City’s current efforts is available at Oakland Effect here.
(more…)

16 Comments
December 10, 2012
City Council / Public Safety

WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

Make Oakland Better Now! congratulates our elected or re-elected City Council members Dan Kalb (D1), Lynette Gibson McElhaney (D3), Noel Gallo (D5), Larry Reid (D7) and Rebecca Kaplan (At Large).  Running for office is very hard, and we recognize that no one would do it who didn’t sincerely  want the best for our City. In that spirit,  we wish our newly elected and reelected officials the greatest success in making Oakland the city we all want it to be.

Now that the election is over, it’s time for even harder work to begin. The question we hear from all parts of  Oakland is this: what do these election results mean?  Most people seem to think we will see an increase in civility among council members, and that’s a good thing.  But it will take far more than increased civility to make the changes Oakland needs.  City leaders need to do something they haven’t done in many years:  they must align their actions with their oft-stated beliefs in public safety, budgetary responsibility and government transparency.

(more…)

6 Comments
November 19, 2012
City Administrator / City Budget / City Council / Mayor / Public Safety

City to Consider Mid-Cycle Budget Adjustments. Here’s What MOBN! Thinks.

Like most cities, Oakland operates on a two-year budget cycle, adopted to cover two fiscal years running from July 1 through June 30 two years later.  The current cycle runs through June of 2013, which means we are half way through it.

As is typical, the city is about to start looking at its fiscal performance to date and changes in its projections in order to determine what changes should be made in the second year of the budget.  Council will begin considering mid-cycle adjustments on Monday, June 4 at 6:30 p.m. The agenda is here.

The reports containing the City Administrator’s and Mayor’s recommendations are here and here.  For the first time in recent memory, there are no recommended layoffs, closures or reductions of city services.  While there are budget overruns (the largest is in the OPD — either $8.6 million or $9.6 million), there are also some positive revenue developments.

The Administration’s proposal addresses a number of important issues MOBN! has been stressing for quite some time:  increased civilianization of police department functions,  increased police academies, and possibly  a new approach to NSA compliance.  The Administration also indicates it has looked seriously at the Los Angeles Police Department (as MOBN! did here) and hopes to bring in a civilian inspector general, which LAPD has had for more than ten years.

The administration is also recommending implementation of an “unanticipated expenditures fund,” which looks like the first, small step toward a rainy day fund, a practice MOBN! and the City’s Budget Advisory Committee have long advocated.

We have a number of questions about some issues, including the City’s use of one-time sources of income to counter unexpected expenses, the potential shrinkage of its reserve and the reasons for a number of the budget overruns.  We have raised these in our letter to Mayor Quan, City Administrator Santana and the City Council, which is available here (full text also available after the jump).  We will also plan to present those questions at the meeting Monday night and future meetings considering these changes.

To read the full text of our letter, click “Continue Reading,” below.

(more…)

9 Comments
June 1, 2012
Negotiated Settlement Agreement / Public Safety

Oakland Police and The NSA: What Does The Most Recent Monitor’s Report Really Mean?

Local newspaper coverage of the Monitor’s Ninth Report on Oakland’s ongoing efforts to comply with the Negotiated Settlement Agreement contain multiple reports that compliance “has stagnated,” that the Oakland Police Department is that much closer to receivership, and that compliance efforts are moving backward.  Indeed, some of the Monitor’s language supports this reporting.

But not surprisingly, things are not all that simple.  In some ways they are much worse than reported, in others they aren’t nearly as bad.  Part of the problem results directly from ongoing City and OPD malfunctions.  Part of it is caused by overreach by the monitor and problems unrelated to the NSA.

But when all is said and done, it looks as though we are getting close either to receivership or to some other level of Federal Court supervision that is unprecedented in modern American history.  The Court has set a hearing on the receivership question for this December.  Oakland and its citizens may be facing the biggest challenge ever:  figuring out how to operate in a new, more costly and tougher environment while getting themselves past the NSA and making the City a safer place.

We’ve looked carefully at the latest report, and undertaken a detailed analysis (see tables after the jump).  But, put simply, there seems to be a combination of the following factors:  (1) a major problem with OPD’s Personnel Assessment System, barely touched on in the report but posing serious, long-term compliance problems;  (2) a collapse of the City’s review of complaints arising out of Occupy Oakland police actions;  (3) multiple violations of Oakland’s crowd control policy, which are cause for serious concern but are not violations of the NSA;  (4) at least two instances where the monitor declared the OPD to be out of compliance in the fourth quarter of 2011 while admitting there was no supporting evidence;  and (5) continued mission creep, in cases where OPD follows the letter of the NSA, but the monitors find non-compliance because they disagree with judgment calls made by the department in individual cases.

The citizens of Oakland are entitled to Constitutional policing.  They are entitled to a reformed police department and an end to the millions of dollars paid out in police misconduct suits.  City leadership needs to ensure that  the promises made more than nine years ago are kept, that the City brings itself into compliance, and that Oakland moves beyond the NSA.  But the citizens of Oakland are also entitled to live in a safe community.  And so far, no party in the Allen case (the Federal case in which the NSA was issued) is representing the citizens of Oakland and speaking for their right to be safe.

For those who would like more details,  we have a task-by-task discussion, and a chart comparing the 8th and 9th reports, after the jump.

(more…)

6 Comments
May 29, 2012