CHarlene's PUBLIC SAFETY PLAN

Our police department is dangerously understaffed, we rank fourth in crime per capita among 295 cities with populations over 100,000. Yet, we are staffed at below the national average per capita of police – leaving Oakland with some of the highest caseloads per officer in the nation. This not only extends 911 wait times, it forces the city to rely on overtime hours to sustain citywide coverage. On average, our officers work 10 hours of overtime each week, costing the city over $30 million annually. Worse, it’s been documented that officers working this level of overtime are 27% more likely to incur a use of force complaint.

To add officer capacity in the short term, we should invoke a disaster declaration to qualify for regional assistance under California’s Law Enforcement Mutual Aid System. Neighboring cities call on Oakland firefighters during their emergencies, we should call on their law enforcement resources in our hour of need. This declaration would also give us access to Alameda County's emergency dispatch system to improve 911 response times. It’s a short-term fix, but we cannot afford to wait.

In the medium term, we need to fix Oakland’s hiring pipelines. I hear a common refrain that people don’t want to be police officers, but it’s not true. Each year, thousands of people apply to enroll into Oakland’s police academies and yet only 1-2% are accepted each year. We need to ascertain if we are weeding out quality applicants, such as by spending hundred of thousands of dollars on unproven methods such as polygraph testing. Furthermore, we need to make an effort to hire experienced officers through lateral hiring. Oakland PD’s recruitment website makes no reference to lateral hires; compare that to San Francisco PD, which proudly advertises a signing bonus for lateral hires.

Thanks to SB 960, authored by Senator Nancy Skinner, police departments can now hire undocumented immigrants authorized to work in the United States. This could help us fill critical gaps in staffing and improve representation within the department, while also better serving the undocumented community in Oakland, which is estimated to comprise 10% of Oakland’s population, and fear calling police for fear of deportation. My goal is to build a police force that reflects the diverse communities of Oakland. Currently, less than 10% of our officers live in the city. We need officers who understand our neighborhoods and can build trust. I will explore hiring pipelines from Oakland schools, offer referral bonuses to current officers, and create education incentives to attract local talent to OPD.

We need to make sure that our police are using the most up to date technology. We need speed and Flock cameras to capture footage of crimes in the act, and to invest in adequate cloud storage to store the footage for officers to retrieve in time. We should invest in drone technology that can arrive first on the scene and provide critical information back to police for smarter resourcing, such as whether 2 or 10 officers are needed to respond to an incident. Officers aren't broadly using voice to text dictation software that we have already purchased to cut paperwork time in half. We need a department wide technology strategy that makes sure we are using the best available technology for efficient service.

While we expand the police force, we must also ensure independent, civilian oversight of misconduct complaints, whistleblower protections, and de-escalation training. If Oakland cannot demonstrate a real commitment to police accountability, we will never get out from our costly federal monitor. We can build community trust and ensure accountability by investing in independent civilian-led internal affairs. The current internal affairs system has allowed misconduct, including a case of witness tampering, to slip through the cracks. This frays community trust and empowers bad actors on the force. I'll help develop a fair and efficient process that deters misconduct and builds a culture of accountability on the force.

The burning question is how we pay for additional officers when we have a budget shortfall. We need to generate much-needed economic development to grow our tax revenue. With its port, dormant manufacturing warehouses, and workforce, Oakland has every ingredient to be a green manufacturing leader. Our federal taxes have paid for historic levels of investments–trillions of dollars--in infrastructure, jobs, and energy decarbonization through the Biden-Harris administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Furthermore, part of the safety equation is providing better blue collar jobs. More than any social service, long term it’s good-paying jobs that give people a sense of dignity and keep people out of trouble.

Another key component of addressing public safety is reforming our homelessness response systems, which currently has people languishing on the streets on waiting lists for years before they qualify for housing with a flawed system referred to as coordinated entry. People who could have turned their lives around if we intervened quickly, instead accumulate PTSD and turn to drugs as a result of living on the streets, and increasing their likelihood of becoming victims and perpetrators of crimes. I’m running to reform the system, taking the lessons I’ve learned from my work on the homelessness system in Massachusetts alongside lessons learned in Houston and Utah. We need to take people off the streets quickly with rental subsidies, mental support, and jobs cleaning trash off streets and planting trees. We also need to reform MACRO, the city’s non-emergency mental health response, which is underutilized in part because the line between violent and non-violent mental health episodes is blurry in reality. MACRO should be integrated and co-delivered with police response, reducing the number of police personnel needed during an encounter.

By reforming OPD and investing in the resources it needs, bringing in high-quality blue collar jobs, and reforming our homeless response system, we can make our streets safer while building trust with all the communities they serve.