So 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).
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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