The Oakland Police Department laid off 10 percent of its officers last Tuesday when the City Council voted to eliminate the positions in order to help close the city’s $32.5 million funding gap.
Police Chief Anthony Batts says the police will continue to focus their efforts on responding to 911 calls that were life-threatening, while other calls considered to be non-emergencies would be directed to an online system called “CopLogic,” where police reports are filed electronically. These non-emergent crimes include burglary, vandalism, illegal dumping and 41 others.
In the wake of the controversial Johannes Mehserle verdict that led to protests and riots in Oakland just days ago, public reaction on the timing and impact of the layoffs have been mixed.
Michael Snow of San Leandro said he was not surprised by the layoff announcement. “I’m not worried that needs won’t be met for a victim of a crime,” he says.
Holley Hale, a weekday Oakland commuter, disagrees. She is more concerned with how this will affect Mehserle’s sentencing come November. “When the rioting occurred after the [Mehserle] verdict, the surrounding businesses received a brutal attack. Almost every bank in the area I work in had shattered windows. There was vandalism and theft left and right. The police are still trying to track down the perpetrators, and this so-called system was yet to be in place,” Hale says.
Batts said many of the officers who were laid off were on the front lines last week, trying to control protesters after former BART officer Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed black man in 2009.
Perhaps more importantly, the police layoffs come at a time when Oakland is experiencing a rise in many types of crimes. Oakland ranked third in a national ranking of city crime. It’s score was determined based on high incidence of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft.
On spotcrime.com, a Web site that lists crime information in real time, shows more than 100 crimes have been reported in Oakland the last two days alone. Over half of which are crimes of theft, burglary, robbery and vandalism.
Derek Lofgren, an east bay resident, says “Oakland already has a bad reputation” and the layoffs likely won’t help.
The cut leaves 696 officers in a city of more than 400,000 residents, a number that does not include visitors and workers who come in and out of the city every day.
City leaders and police says they are hoping voters in approve a new tax measure and amend an existing 2004 tax regulation in the November election. The election will take place Nov. 2, three days before Mehserle is sentenced. If the measures fail, the Oakland Police Department could lose another 122 officers in January.