YOs-
It's well known in cog sci & experimental psych, that adverse scrutiny causes a decline in many human performance measures. This should come as no surprise: trying to accomplish any task becomes more difficult when someone in the background is laughing at you, saying you can't do it, finding fault, and ready to impose some kind of penalty for mistakes.
It's also the case in employment situations: employees who are under adverse scrutiny tend to make more mistakes on the job. Some attention that would otherwise be focused on the primary task, is diverted to being aware of the boss who might suddenly impose a punishment.
So here we are in the robbery capital of America, with our police department in a logical double-bind (damned if you do, damned if you don't) between four conflicting demands:
a) stop the crime wave, b) but do it with 1/4 to 1/3 fewer officers than a comparable-sized city should have, c) and don't go overboard on suspects, d) all of this while we keep you under adverse scrutiny.
So is it any surprise that OPD isn't functioning as it should?
The first response of a culture with deep roots in puritanism is to assert moral righteousness and seek to punish. This is true in our response to crime, and it's also true in our response to police misconduct and other faults of LE agencies. These dynamics can become more extreme when their underlying causes are more extreme: Oakland has a long history as a violent town, and America has a long history as a violent culture. Our popular entertainment ceaselessly offers up a river of gore for our "viewing pleasure."
So, a few modest proposals:
One:
A major source of crime is in systematic denial of opportunity to urban youth, beginning with inadequate education, followed by no access to college, systemic unemployment, and no opportunities for small business start-ups. What's needed here is reform on all three fronts.
One thing that can be done from the community level, is microenterprise development: helping people get started in small business that employ a up to a half dozen people. Very often this takes relatively little capital, but much hands-on to educate people who are seeking to start microenterprises, and work with them over time to help them succeed. When it succeeds, it has a multiplier effect: it also attracts conventional capital to an area, as a "good bet" for more conventional small business startups.
Two:
The fact that Oakland needs to hire approx. another 200 officers, is also an opportunity for a culture change at OPD. An incentive structure should be put in place to hire officers who have 4-year college degrees in any field that's even remotely relevant, including history and the social sciences. The same incentives should be offered to current employees of OPD: including payment of tuition as well as higher pay upon completion of a 4-year degree.
If that sounds unrealistic, add up the cost of the crime itself, and compare to the cost of a college-educated police department.
There's one other change that might bring in more candidates from backgrounds that are more suitable to the realities of the Bay Area. This is going to sound like a liberal stereotype, but none the less the reasoning is sound:
At present, OPD rejects any applicant with a history of illegal drug use, and fires any employee who tests positive for illegal drugs. Let's take marijuana off that list, to enable hiring and retaining officers who smoke pot. Even recreational use is quasi-legal in the Bay Area, and ruling out pot smokers from joining OPD is depriving the city of candidates who could otherwise be successful on the job.
Three:
In general, seek to reward good behaviors, rather than seeking to punish bad behaviors. That's also a culture-change.
Four:
As far as surveillance goes, video cameras have not made a significant difference in street crime in England, which has the highest density of surveillance cameras of any nation on Earth. That's the empirical fact, that should be used to put to rest any idea that video is a magical cure for crime. With crime, as with disease, prevention is the best cure: a functional economy with opportunity for all, and a police department that has good relationships with the communities it serves.
-G.
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On 13-05-12-Sun 10:41 AM, Romy Snowyla wrote:
This would be great material for the sudoroom publication rightNot my personal topic or something I am into discussing but all for seeing this conversation live on in letterpressHack the non digital
Sent from my iPadSo right about now, Sudo Room court is in full effect* ...
For those who weren't paying close attention to the news about the Oakland Police Department this past week, let me try to condense and read in between the lines. In case there was any doubt as to the unprecedented mess they/we are in: Two police chiefs resigned; Oakland made first in the country for robberies; news came out that only one person is in charge of coordinating burglary response; and the long-awaited police reform report was pulled from publication. (Raw footage of Fri. press conference - http://news.yahoo.com/video/raw-video-oakland-officials-address-221600024.html)
Our police chief friend Howard "It's Unconscionable" Jordan of LockPickGate (http://oaklandwiki.org/Lockpickgate) announced his retirement suddenly on Wednesday, the same day that the Wasserman-Bratton Report was supposed to come out. Since he's three years short of being eligible for the top pension (75% of salary) for life, he claimed undisclosed medical reasons and getting to spend time with his family (where he lives somewhere other than Oakland). Anthony Toribio was named interim chief on Wednesday, and announced his resignation on Friday. Sean Whent is our new interim police chief as of Friday (https://local.nixle.com/alert/4999940/?sub_id=894092).
Thomas Frazier, who was appointed the Compliance Director by the federal court who fell short of a federal takeover of the OPD, had just announced the re-opening of investigations into police misconduct, including ones related to Occupy Oakland, the week before. Part of the deal the federal judge struck was that the Compliance Director has important authority over the OPD, including the ability to recommend the firing of police chiefs. (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/frazier-to-reexamine-police-misconduct/Content?oid=3541392). Frazier was the one who delivered the scathing report about the OPD response to Occupy about a year and a half ago (http://www2.oaklandnet.com/oakca1/groups/cityadministrator/documents/webcontent/oak036236.pdf).
The press conference for the release of the Bratton Report, which was supposed to come out on Wed., was cancelled and turned into a press conference for Jordan's early retirement. While the full report didn't come out, the six-page summary was posted by local CBS News (http://cbssanfran.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bratton_group_report_051813.pdf). When Oakland hired the Bratton Group to do the report, there was significant protest among Oakland communities because of Bratton's support for "stop and frisk" policing (euphemism for racial profiling) and "zero tolerance" policies. He's generally known as the top cop that brought LA & NY crime rates down significantly during his tenure there. Robert Wasserman ran the community meetings because of the community backlash against Bratton (http://oaklandlocal.com/article/wasserman-lays-out-general-plan-crime-prevention-proposals).
So is there anything that Sudo Room can do? Anything other than what other groups are already doing in trying to bring accountability to the OPD? A couple things in the Bratton Report (reprinted at OccupyOakland.org at http://occupyoakland.org/2013/05/bratton-group-report-may-8-2013/) come to mind. I think folks on this could have a lot of productive things to say about the Compstat Process, a computerized crime tracking system, which Bratton points to as key to improving crime response. The effectiveness of Compstat and how it can be optimally used and the drawbacks in how it is being suggested to be used has not really been discussed anywhere, as far as I can tell.
There is also reference to significantly increasing camera surveillance all over Oakland - getting more info about that will be very useful. Makes me think that now would be the ideal time to finally get our surveillance tours going - identifying surveillance cameras around downtown and taking people on tours pointing them out as they walk around. Before posting such a list on Oakland Wiki or something, we would want to narrow down those listed to ones that are aimed at public areas (or private ones that also capture public space).
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