Numbers and Information at OPD… and beyond
[March 22, 2008]

          Looking at the latest Daily Crime Report, the 8 homicides in the past 21 days are regarded as "Average;" as if we are to believe in a new normalcy.  As example, in 1999 when Oakland had only 60 Murders, Oakland had an "average" of 3.45 each 21 day period.  One would think that the current 8.18 murders, at 223% the Murder rate reported in 1999, is actually Critically High!  On the other hand, and perhaps more fair, looking at the 5 year period before the current OPD administration, under the much (unfairly) maligned Chief Rich Word, the average number of homicides over that entire 5 year period (2000 - 2004) was 5.34 per 21 day period.  Ergo, the current rate of 8.18 under Chief Tucker is 153% the rate of Murder under Chief Word's leadership and management... hardly qualifying Oakland's current Murder rate as "average."  Murders in Oakland were up 61% in 2006 compared with the five years previous.  One might note that the entire gamut of crimes, especially Violent Crimes, is similarly and dangerously misperceived in "average" terms today.  Being inoculated as to the severity of the symptoms is not sign of a cure.
 
            What should be done with our numbers?  One can look to the financial world, and particularly any form of the securities, currencies, or commodities markets, where the real experts require the most meaningful information.  They look at "trailing averages" in a variety of short and long term durations, with seasonal considerations, verifiable relationships, and relevant, timely and credible numbers.  Investors look at “fundamental” balance sheet numbers and there are “technical analysts” poring over charts of the empirical numbers.   The best people available interpret those numbers into actionable information.  A lot of money is at stake.  For us, a lot of lives are at stake. Yet OPD has no fundamental or technical analyses.
 
            Take Bob Gammon's current article in the East Bay Express [March 19], "Though Oakland Is Up In Arms About It, Crime Is Actually Down."  I know Bob Gammon to be an excellent reporter, potentially award winning, and Mayor Dellums is one of the most ethical men I've ever met (my own "Socrates").  Yet both are blithely enjoying the placebos of optimism as they are administered by a trusted but unqualified Doctor Tucker.  When they are told by "the subject matter expert" that crime is relatively under control, they believe it in desperation of the reality too difficult to grasp.  The reality must/should be grasped, not to notarize sensationalism, but to prick that most notable character in the human psyche:  We're in serious trouble, so let's do what we gotta do...  We don't need to go into a panic "state of emergency," but rather we need to go into a deliberate high-gear Crisis Management Plan with extra-ordinary efforts.  Americans know how to raise the barn for a neighbor in trouble.  If we want government and private money, let's proudly show them what we need it for and what we can do with it. 

          Tucker did things, identifiably ad hoc and fragmented, in slash and burn fashion.  He shot from the hip with guess work and he dismantled everything he couldn’t understand.  He was way over his head and out of his realm.  His course took us into a sea of violence, and the first thing we must do is reverse.  Then we must take what worked before and make it our starting point.  Simultaneously, we turn numbers of every conceivable tracking consequence into information for internal OPD and external government and citizen use.   We must fully understand the problems and the resources to address them.  Community Policing demands permanent officers on permanent Beats as the backbone of the Department.  A proper balance of CRT’s and specialized units should address fluid issues.
 
            Another thing...  The crime statistics must be read by a COP expert who can find the missing meanings behind and among the numbers.  For OPD, this means a forensic expert with the experience and knowledge to promote engagement in recognition, collection, identification, and interpretation.  These are the prerequisites to real information.  Even then, information is a fruitless branch without the application of analytical skills for germane consequences.  Information contains only the elements of the formulas for solutions. 

          All self-serving cherry picking can be avoided by looking at secular trends in three perspectives:  (1)  Crime statistics should be formatted in terms of meaningful benchmarks - as when comparing the current police administration with those prior of different priorities, methodologies, and policies; (2)  When comparing the same formats more generically with other police agencies locally, statewide over 100,000, and nationally over 250,000, and even more definitively between 350,000 - 450,000; (3) Comparing Oakland's benchmark figures with other agencies popularly included in Oakland's conversations... such as Boston (the "Miracle"), St. Louis (Gun Control), Hartford (The Harnett Report), D.C. and Philadelphia (Chief Chuck Ramsey – the “State of Emergency” cop), New York and Los Angeles (COP Bill Bratton – the numbers cop), Baltimore (representing our argument for more cops), San Francisco (good example of "civilianization"), and others...  Having looked at these perspectives, we will soon discover Chief tucker’s indictment of public safety failure.
 
            It takes work by people who know that it takes detailed information, and who demand it, and who can read it.  One cannot articulate policies, outline strategies, execute tactics, without trusted presentations of high quality "real" information.  OPD lost its last vestige of Planning and Research in 2005, and has since only been able to come up with ad hoc planning substitutes - "works in progress."  The so-called OPD Crime Analysis Section has been subordinated into an Organization Chart cubbyhole alongside the Property Section (innocuously under the Identification Section).  It has been reduced from 14 to 2 personnel.  Ask them for information and they'll tell you to fill a request form in triplicate and wait a month [They're well meaning but overworked people]. The meager data gathered is being done in part by someone with a magnifying glass who has difficulty with English as a second language and others who have the source documents frustratingly stacked high on desks.  Outside experts are asked to look at our watches and tell us what time it is.   A college professor has been asked to write OPD's Strategic Plan.  Harnett peeked in our window for a moment and we're following him as a Pied Piper. We send our people all over the country looking for successful templates to copy (“best practices”), and hire outside consultants to give us information on things they and we don’t understand.  Data are the nuggets of value, and OPD is a shallow mine.  The OPD data process is nothing less than a blind man groping in a building on fire. 

          OPD has no real grasp of the data sources available because they languish in unattended piles everywhere.  The Deputy Chief of Services admitted having no idea how many officers were out sick on a typical day, and guessed at 2.  The Deputy Chief of Services, frustratingly, had no idea how many officers worked the Beats, when he tried desperately to design the Chief’s preconceived notions of Area Command.  His administrative assistant offered three hand-counts before it was decided to assume a different number altogether.  Watch Commanders routinely had their individual systems for how to cope contemporaneously as to who would show up for duty – whether regularly assigned or on overtime.  Stop Data forms, cherished by the NSA to watch for “profiling” and full of operationally relevant data sat in accumulating cardboard boxes.  The CAD data used by Freesmeyer for his all important consulting work upon which Tucker relied for underscoring his “new” policing ideas were so corrupted as to reveal absurd conclusions.  But, no matter because Tucker didn’t know any better.  Chief Tucker was incredulous, asking me, “Where did you get that?” when I told him the results of my access to the personnel data base and the formulation of a census indicating a complete profile of over 1,150 OPD staff.  Even the Departmental Organizational Chart was the result of asking all unit commanders how they were organized.  The Department is so disconnected and fragmented, that no one knows.

          Information ignorance can be further characterized at OPD with an illustration of my attempt as Ombudsman to get a computer installed in my new office.  I contacted the IT Tech, as in Information Technology, to have a computer installed in my new office.  He said it would take three weeks.  Probably taking the cue from Chief Tucker, he said his office was severely understaffed.  I asked how long had his office been behind three weeks.  He said, “…over a year.”  I tried to tell the unit chief that if he has been behind the same three weeks for over a year that he is not understaffed, but merely out of synch.  Not understanding, I left him scratching his head.  I installed my own computers, at least three “Moore” generations ahead of OPD’s.

          Just one more illustration, out of an endless stream…  I routinely witnessed Deputy Chiefs frustratingly and frantically trying to bolster the Chief’s requests for justifications of his shoot-from-the-hip methodologies.  These top executive managers were dumbed-down in front of their computers trying to create statistical or historical support out of whole cloth because there is no central data repository or processing at OPD.  It seems the digital age has left each manager at the mercy of whatever information was available within his own computer (There are no women).  Since the managers were frequently reassigned, and their computers left behind, or more often pirated by others who couldn’t wait for IT, whatever documents or data they processed were lost to hyperspace.  At the time, they hadn’t heard of network storage, flash drives, or portable hard drives.  Worse, there was no central R & D that had an interest in preserving data.  My own files and library are infinitely more informative than OPD’s.  The “old fashioned” OPD “Library” on the fifth floor has bare shelves and a desk sits in the middle as a declaration that “headquarters” expansion prevails.  The multitude of filing cabinets on the Eighth Floor that prior Chiefs had meticulously filled with catalogued files of priceless information are now empty metallic echo chambers or filled with office supplies.  OPD under Wayne Tucker is an Orwellian experience.

            COP Bill Bratton, in his five-police-agency experience, always "first" got his information apparatus up and running.  He always put together his "team" think tank with fingers instructed to monitor the pulse of every possible data source.  His brain and Blackberry were constantly and immediately accessing reservoirs of timely data.  But his incomparable advantage was that he could absorb the information and translate it into appropriate action.  That's why Los Angeles has enjoyed a -39% Violent Crime decrease in 2006 compared with the 5 years before 2005 (comparing apples with apples) while Oakland has suffered increased violence by +43%.  New York, using the same benchmark comparative has reduced their Violent Crime -50%.  These are relative success stories, largely because of one person's leadership and management skill sets - while Oakland’s demise has been a failure of ignorance.  To add insult to injury, while Oakland's Violent Crimes were up +43%, California cities over 100k were down -13.4% and national cities over 250,000 were down -14.3%.  What part of "We're doing things wrong" don't we understand?

            At last look, there was an OPD budget request for three civilian R & D positions.  As the administration knows, among the discarded staff reports written by this Ombudsman, there are 40 personnel currently working ad hoc and disconnected at OPD who can be reorganized immediately into an Office of Police Management and Budget at no additional expense.  This is holism in action.  Tucker’s constant cries for more staff should be a clue.  OPD already has a higher proportion of civilian personnel than all but 9 of the 50 largest national cities, and 80% more civilians on staff than the average of 62 cities in California over 100,000.  It's time to stop talking about civilianization per se and balance our current personnel efforts.  It was said that COP Bratton raised employee efficiencies from 20% to 50%.  What good does it do to add more employees to a “20%-efficiency” OPD organization?  Won’t we have merely a larger “20%” organization?
 
            Keep in mind that information needed to run a police department is much more than crime statistics.  Highest on the list for intelligent numbers scrutiny is "Follow the Money."  This is not intended to encourage "Enquirer" sensationalism, but rather in the best spirit of "Performance Evaluation" [Hello City Auditor Courtney Ruby].  OPD wasted $28,000,000 of overtime to be sure, the equivalent of an additional 200 full time seasoned officers.  Finances are the lifeblood of any enterprise organism.  It must flow in the correct proportions, at the right times, to the right parts of the body.  OPD's money is spent more akin to a family with serious, uninformed, and compulsive overspending problems, desperately needing professional financial management.  Oakland can have (has available) a "Plan" to fully staff 35 Beats for 911 responses, plus 57 PSO Officers working on the ground, all with permanency and purpose, and all within the current budget [again proposed by this Ombudsman].  There has been no excuse, except perhaps the same as the Captain of the Titanic had, for not having Measure Y fully in place and funded from the start in 2005.  In fact, even in our circumstance today, it is affordable for what must be done.  We can have our officers assigned with permanency in the neighborhoods every day of the week, as we would expect of any business or professional offering neighborhood services.  I offered a temporary Crisis Management Plan, focused on an ever-presence of neighborhood officers, with field officers working an average 10 hours overtime during the duration, at a cost of only $5 to $7 million dollars to be absorbed in other savings.  That's real Measure Y with money left over.  We must reject the litany of false and baseless excuses - like "too few cops," the “red herring” obstructionist OPOA, trashing “old-fashioned past practices” that worked, or all the other Chief Tucker senselessness. 

            "Leadership and Management" seem to be all important in professional sports and private business.  It is about getting it done with what we've got - and winning.  Redesigning a new car doesn't mean taking the tires off, scrapping the engine, and draining the gas tank, just because these concepts are old practices.  When the current Chief addressed the Public Safety Committee of the City Council, he said that the OPD Beat System was 50 years old and dated back to the days of O.W. Wilson, the expert noticed by him to exemplify "old fashioned practices."  Actually, he should have given the credit to Sir Robert Peele, who in 1829 took the police out of "headquarters" and stressed "omnipresence" in the streets and neighborhoods.  Not a bad idea for OPD to consider.  When Deputy Chief Kozicki declared that the Patrol Division (Beat System) was no longer the backbone of OPD, he might well have been taking credit for carving the epitaph on OPD’s tombstone.

          When Chief Tucker told the action-starved City Council that he was steering the most dramatic OPD reorganization in memory he was quite right.  For the past three years this administration has replaced the “old” priorities of Response and Investigation -- with "Big SAC" & CRT's and “Team” Deployments.  The Tucker/Kozicki so-called "new" Area Command […tried previously as Geographic Command (1994) and Precincts (1911)] is a "headquarters" oriented model favored by Tucker.  OPD used to marshal all its forces out of a single headquarters, but that was old-fashioned for Tucker who now has seven headquarters and counting. Remember, every office and desk, every square foot of “headquarters,” means someone is not “on-the-street.”  They simply didn’t now of the prior attempts at “Team Policing” that were legitimate experiments.  The difference is that Tucker doesn’t experiment.  He invented the square wheel of Beat-less Area Command, non-Geographic Policing, the 2-2-3 chaotic shift pattern, and replaced all of OPD in one fell swoop with a maelstrom of dazed confusion.  Sure, he must have thought, they’ll buy it if I put on labels called community policing, team integrity, unity of command – all terms by their obvious absence that he doesn’t understand.  But he was right, they bought it.
Talk about “headquarters,” all CRT’s, all Problem Solving Officers, all Field Sergeants, were given desks at “headquarters.”  Where desks in the old fashioned OPD were shared by those on-duty at the moment, a multitude of offices is now the rule, replete with personal effects as if living rooms or private dens. The old large Crime Analysis room was remodeled to provide dozens of headquarters desks for Field Officers.  Anyone can pass by the rear of headquarters at 7th and Broadway or Eastmont and wonder if all those police cars at all hours are parked there unattended, then who is in the neighborhoods.

          It is consistent with the Tucker/Kozicki model for “teams” to fight their own tails in endless fruitless (overall) exercises.  They huddle at headquarters, hoping the next play will work and then they go on the field to scrimmage.  Unfortunately, the Tucker/Kozicki “team” has badly lost all three of their seasons.  They have indeed rearranged the danger, but Oakland is still escalating into more and more violence. Their failed playbook abandoned the concept of responding City-wide to calls for service, the essence of the “old” Patrol Division 35-Beat System, as Tucker ordained it “old news.”  Thus their game plan has found OPD responding to many fewer calls, taking longer, driving by, and heading “back to the barn.”  Tucker has convinced himself and others that sending teams to “hot spots” is real-time when the numbers they are responding to can be weeks old.  Imagine.

          There is a much better and do-able plan available, but alas it is an evolutionary [i.e. progressive] refinement of "old fashioned practices,” much as Indianapolis racers.  In 1911, the Indianapolis 500 cars hit a top speed of 74.50 miles per hour.  In 2007 the cars hit 227.17 miles per hour.  The new cars still had four tires, an engine, and gas in a gas tank. 
 
            Next on the list is "Know Your People."  Chief Tucker, in a recent email to a constituent, perhaps inadvertently pointed out one of his glaring problems - lacking management awareness and understanding.  It should be stated that it is rare to catch a glimpse of Chief Tucker's writing, as the Chief's "Vision Statement" and the "White Paper" are generally reported to have emanated from City Hall.  Note that in the email quoted below there are several numbers that should strike an alert-erectness of the ignorance involved, rather than a satisfying answer to OPD's absentee problem.  Recall that the City Council demanded an explanation of an outside consultant’s report that OPD’s Beats suffered a 40% vacancy factor due to absences.

          “Ms Kollmann – Thanks for forwarding the e-mail. The statement that half of the department calls in sick daily is not accurate. What is accurate is that a year and a half we did some research into staffing availability in the Patrol Division only.

          At the time there were 256 officers in the division (there should be 300). Our research revealed that on any given day 134 officers were scheduled to work and 39 per cent were absent. Of the 52 absent officers, only 2 were out sick. The other absences were due to vacation, compensatory time off, training, work related injuries or restrictions, and administrative leave. 39 percent is far too high. The number should be between 15 and 20 per cent. Our number is so high because there were only 256 officers in the Division. If there were 300 as there should be, with 52 officers absent our number would be 17.3 per cent. A few other points: first, there are always other uniform and plainclothes officers out on the streets actively
doing police work; second, the Patrol Division is 3/8ths of the department’s sworn strength; third, I am proud to say that year after year, the average sick usage per officer per year is three days.

          “Check back with us in three months and I will tell you how we are doing after we have some experience with the re-organization and compressed work schedule change.”   [Wayne Tucker COP]

          The email mentioned that there should be 300 Officers in the Patrol Division, and presumably during the past year and a half there were only 256 Officers.  At least, one would think that's what is being said.  He must not know that the “old” 35 Beat Plan called for 172 Officers to fully staff all the same Beats he can’t handle with 256.  Tucker’s discussion focuses on the 52 "absent officers."  Startlingly, he states that only 2 officers on any typical day, out of 256, are out due to being sick.  That's only .8 of one percent.  All of public and private industry would love to meet that standard.  But that isn't the main attention we should address.  "The other [50] absences were due to vacation, compensatory time off, training, work related injuries or restrictions, and administrative leave."  Hello... That is a concession that 96% of OPD's Patrol absences, fully 20% of our Patrol workforce, the officers regularly scheduled to work Beats, are out for reasons under management's predictive controls.  The most remarkable statement is, "Our number is so high because there were only 256 officers in the Division.  If there were 300 as there should be, with 52 officers absent our number would be 17.3 per cent." That's the same as saying a 5 ft. 5 inch person weighing 300 lbs. would be thin if 8 ft. tall.

          ronoz