Why increase our police force?

Compared to other cities nationally, Oakland police officers take on an unusual amount of violent crime

Based on 2019 data (the latest national dataset available), before Oakland’s rising crime rates…

Across all U.S. cities, Oakland ranked in the top 1.5% of crime per capita and violent crime per capita.
Out of 295 U.S. cities with populations over 100k, Oakland ranked #4 in total crime per capita and #14 in most violent crime per capita.

And yet, Oakland employs below the national average of police officers per capita according to the Thurgood Marshall Institute.

This means that our police force is unusually burdened compared to police forces nationwide.

In 2019, there were over 31 thousand crimes, and over 5,521 violent crimes. And while as a city councilor I will certainly build on Oakland’s Re-imagining Public Safety Taskforce to offload certain activities such as mental health checks to civilians, violent crimes can only be responded to by police. There are about 7.4 violent crimes for every sworn Oakland Police officer – the fourth highest ratio of violent crimes per officer in United States’ top 100 populated cities.

We are seeing this reflected in our abysmal 911 response times and most of Oakland's homicides going unsolved. This is unacceptable.

Oakland’s Most Disinvested Communities Want to Maintain or Increase the Size of the Police Force

Councilmembers and the people of East Oakland, the most disinvested part of Oakland, have consistently voted for and advocated for more resources for police.
According to a 2020 Chamber of Commerce study, 58% of all Oakland voters wanted to maintain or increase the size of the police force. That percentage increased when they polled Oakland’s Black voters, 70% of whom want to maintain or increase the size of the police force.

Police Brutality Goes Up with More Overtime

On average, the city spends $30 million each year on police overtime. In 2017-2018, 30% of Oakland’s officers logged more than 520 overtime hours each year - or 125% of the typical 40 hour work week.
Meanwhile, a growing body of research shows that there are alarming consequences to police working overtime, including worsening racial biases. An audit of the King County Sheriff’s office in Washington showed that working only one additional hour of overtime per week increased the chance that an officer would be involved in a user-of-force incident the following week by 2.7%, and increased the odds of ethics violations by 3.1%. A study of the Phoenix Police department showed that the number of complaints against officers was significantly higher for those doing longer shifts.

The Solution

The common sense solution here is to invest in high quality community policing by hiring more officers, specifically from Oakland’s most disinvested neighborhoods. With a larger police force, officers will have the time to walk the neighborhood beat and develop positive relationships with Oakland residents.

Furthermore, I want to incentivize joining the police force by creating pathways for officers' higher education by partnering with universities and community colleges to offer waived tuition fees for officers.