Cops, More or Less, or What?
[September 16, 2008]

            "An Oakland City Councilmember said Saturday that the Chief of the Oakland Police Department has a plan to almost triple the number of police officers on Oakland streets at peak crime periods..."  by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor Tuesday, March 7, 2006  Berkeley Daily Planet

            "'We presently have 803 sworn OPD officers,' Tucker said, 'that’s pretty rich staffing for a city of this size. I won’t stand up here today and say that we are understaffed. We’re not. The problem is in the way our police are being deployed.' "  by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor Tuesday, March 7, 2006  Berkeley Daily Planet

            "...our new Police Chief, Wayne Tucker, will discuss his vision for the Oakland Police Department, and will give us the specific strategies the Department will take to get North Oakland's crime numbers down."  Jane Brunner's Newsletter re:  Saturday, February 4, 2006.

"Tucker said that 265 officers are needed to run the current 10 hour shifts, while only 200 would be needed if the shifts were set at 8 hours, and 178 if the shifts were set at 12 hours."   .. by J. Douglas Allen-Taylor Friday September 22, 2006  Berkeley Daily Planet

            "Obfuscation" is defined: to confuse, bewilder, stupefy.  We Oaklanders are confused, bewildered, and stupefied about Chief Tucker, his words and actions, and the horrific degree of violent crimes terrorizing in our City.

            There are several accounts in various newspapers during 2006 when Chief Tucker was quoted as saying OPD is adequately staffed and doesn't need more officers.  Yet, Chief Tucker has been expending the equivalent of 200 full-time officers in overtime costs.  He has hired dozens of retired cops to fill desk jobs.  He has turned over the Jail, the airport, and much of our streets to his Sheriff's Department.  He has brought in the CHP to work our streets.  He has appealed to the FBI, DEA, and other Federal, State, and local agencies to please help OPD.  The Guardian Angels and increasing private security guards are taking over.  Desk cops, walking cops, research cops, crime analysis cops, youth cops, vice cops, investigator cops, bicycle cops, airport cops, special duty cops, jail cops, wagon cops, motorcycle cops, CRT cops, and Beat cops are all gone... missing today from Tucker's OPD.  We are on the threshold of super-agency take-over.  There are rumors rampant that Chief Tucker plans to ask the National Guard to step in.  No other city finds itself in such straits.

            In 2008, Chief Tucker apparently panicked about recruiting and drained the Measure Y bank account of $7.7 million for a recruitment effort that might have been a sham.  After all, attrition at OPD for the time he was in office was actually less than in previous years.  The cry that the sky was falling because of "baby boomers leaving" was a blatant falsehood.  Besides, there were more than enough approved police applicants in the pipeline already by the time he stirred the tempest in a teapot in April of this year to more than fill the 803 slots.  Although authorized only 803 cops in the budget, he bloated the academies enough to produce up to 853 OPD cops when/if they graduate.

            Worst of all, the recruiting folly caused him also to imbalance an OPD that he already severely disconnected over his tenure.  Motorcycle cops and CRT's are now denuded [gone] in an effort to collar enough Field Training Officers (FTO's) to handle the extraordinary oversupply of new cops.  Cars are bulging with cops, but not nearly adequately responding to calls.  There are more cops than ever, and the Beats are sorely understaffed.  Why the crisis in recruiting this year?  We were only about fifty short in 2004, three and a half years ago and attrition has been at normally expected rates.  Do the math... if we were short 50 police officers three and a half years ago (50/3.5), then proper sighting and planning would have meant a very reasonable target of only an additional 14.5 cops needed per year.  Even if we were 100 short, that would have meant only 29 more cops each year on top of the 50 normally needing to be replaced.  OPD's Training Division can easily handle this .

            In the meantime, there was never a "plan," any plan.  The arbitrator who properly confirmed that a (qualified) Chief of Police should have the management prerogatives to deploy his public safety resources also acknowledged that all he was able to discern was that the current Chief had a "work in progress" [no plan].  Kozicki, the only yes man for the Chief's version of 12-hour shifts and "geographic policing," apparently made it up as he was going along and daily worked with all his might, from the Eighth Floor, to cram the square peg of unsubstantiated non-planning into the round hole of confused field forces.  Even today, in all the turmoil, there is no plan, no defined strategies or tactics, and all that exists is a maelstrom of confusion, bewildering and stupefying disorientation on the part of officers and citizens alike.

            Of course, Oakland could use more cops.  But first, let's make much better use of the ones we've got.  Let's provide for a safe city where people and businesses will move in and provide an increasing tax base for more cops.  We are indeed overstaffed in comparison with all other California jurisdictions, whether based on cops per/population, cops/per budget, or whatever.  The only comparative we suffer is one too invalid to apply... and that is when comparing our cops by "workload."  Our OPD workload is not a function of rampant crime; it is a function of rampant disorganization, lack of leadership and absent management.  Bear with me a moment.  Just before Tucker arrived in February 2005, Chief word left him with 5,150 Violent Crimes for 2004.  Chief Tucker's OPD now must struggle to handle 8,300+ Violent Crimes this year.  Does that mean we need more cops, or that we're not providing proper leadership, organization and management to support the ones we've got?

            If mathematics is the logic of choice, and if some Oakland citizens are correct that we now need 1,100 cops to handle this workload, what happens when we get back down to 5,150 violent crimes, and less?  The same math tells us that at the point of 5,150 violent crimes we would only need 683 cops.  Hmmm... that's about the number of cops OPD has had during the decades before Chief Tucker.  Chief Tucker got more cops and surrogate cops than ever imaginable to prior Chiefs, and the violent crimes skyrocketed by 61% in just his few short years - the fastest acceleration, by far, in Oakland's long history.  What's wrong with this picture?

            We got the “Paradigm Escalation” from Word's 5,150 Violent Crimes to Tucker's 8,300 because of the last three and a half year's massive disorientation, disintegration, and considerable dismay.  Yet, for the previous Oakland administration, Word had to go because 5,150 Violent Crimes were simply too many.

            In all this obfuscation, there is a sense to be made.  "Recruiting," "Geographic Policing," and "12-hour shifts" are all complete failures perpetrated on a culturally compliant OPD that obeys orders and a bewildered population that believes any promise.  Note that in 1911, OPD went to a three district (precincts) geographic policing and stayed with it until 1955 when a real reform Chief of Police decided that we now had cars, radios, and enough modernity to coalesce our OPD resources and direct them centrally from a single headquarters.  Chief Tucker now has seven headquarters and no precinct stations.  Just a few years ago, OPD was prioritized into a 35 Beat Call-Response system that is now seriously neglected.  Talk about “geographic policing,” OPD had five Patrol Division Districts with cops working around the clock under the direct 24/7 supervision of Captains and Lieutenants.  OPD had six PSA Districts where residents knew intimately their commanding officers, CRT's and PSO's.  Look around today... they're all gone.

            Instead, today we find fewer cops on the street answering fewer calls and making fewer arrests.  The so-called Tucker "re-organization" now finds 21 separate line-ups (briefings) for officers prior to field duties, as they sparsely meet for seven shifts in each of three "Geographic Area" commands.  The police effort is fragmented, disconnected, and free-wheeling more than ever before imaginable.  Chief Tucker promised that with his 12-hour shifts he could somehow gain another 87 officers who he claimed were otherwise wasted (recall: 265 to 178 above).  Instead, he now has over 350 cops assigned to his Geographic Policing and the Beats and citizens still go begging.  The violence still climbs, and climbs...

            It is an untenable situation for cops and citizens.  It is unlikely that we will have another Riders incident, where similar pressures "to produce" were brought to bear, but there will be other unwanted outcomes from the pressure-cooker circumstances under which OPD cops are working today.  Imagine… more pressure from the top than ever before to "get the numbers down."  At the same time officers are on a razor's edge of administratively misdirected Inquisition-typical blindness that looks for and magnifies not only the minutest thing they might do wrong, but also that holds them to unclear standards as to what they "should have done" right.  They cannot continue properly or effectively to work under such stresses.  Not only is each officer held over-intricately "accountable," but by association so are his partners, teammates, supervisors, and commanding officers, who would've, could've, should've.  Joseph McCarthy seems to have been resurrected.  Just ask any officer what it's like to live in a world without mistakes or allowable ranges of judgment.  Imagine, if you can, the intellectual and emotional fatigue where "staying out of trouble" and "get the crime down" must also subject our officers to constant mind-numbing 12-hour shifts.  Unwanted de-policing is one outcome, as is the rise in violent crimes.  But, the worse potential is that our thin blue line might crack in other ways.

ronoz