On June 4, at an Oakland City Council meeting, Noel Gallo wanted to know how many cops Jestin Johnson, the City Administrator, thought OPD should have.
It was an obvious question, since the Council is considering Oakland’s budget amidst an historic deficit. Gallo, who loves the sound of his own voice, took minutes to ask his question; he kept wandering off the track into the tall weeds of irrelevance. But eventually Johnson was able to reply. “The Office of Inspector General,” he said, “is working on figuring that out, and will report by the end of the year.”
You’d think the answer to the question “How many cops does Oakland need?” would have been resolved long ago. But no, not in a city where the City Council can spend hours debating whether the sun rises in the east or the west.
Anyhow, we’re going to have to wait six more months for the official number, but it’s worth asking how we got to this inconclusive and ambiguous point. In 2016, the voters of Oakland in their collective wisdom passed Measure LL, which established the Oakland Police Commission. At the same time, the measure also created the Community Police Review Agency. Four years later, not yet satisfied with the amount of oversight of OPD, voters passed Measure S1, which established the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), “an independent civilian oversight agency that monitors and audits the Oakland Police Department’s policies, practices and procedures,” and which reports to the Police Commission. It was the OIG that was tasked with determining the appropriate number of cops in OPD.
On 10/26/23, the OIG recommended hiring PFM Financial Advisors, an outside consulting firm, “to establish a baseline for the number of officers and resources needed to properly respond to calls for service within each geographic location in Oakland.” A few weeks later (Nov. 7, 2023), the City Council allocated a no-bid contract of $285,000 “to complete a staffing study of the OPD.”
Now into the new year, on May 23, 2024, OIG officially selected PFM, “to conduct an OPD staffing study and resource analysis.” It was this “staffing study” that City Administrator Johnson referred to.
Another consultant hired by the City Council for this purpose was David Muhammad, “a leader in the fields of criminal justice, violence prevention, and youth development,” according to the website of his company, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR). Muhammad has been particularly active in Oakland, where—again according to his website—"David helped lead a partnership of organizations and technical assistance providers that achieved a 50% reduction in shootings and homicides in Oakland.” It’s not clear when these words were written, but we do know that gun violence, including homicides, has soared since 2019; in 2023, for the fourth time in as many years, gun murders were in excess of 100. So Mr. Muhammad’s boast about reducing gun violence in Oakland appears to be hyperbole.
Can we expect PFM to do a credible job “by the end of the year”? We’ll have to wait and see. What we do know, meanwhile, is that former Chief LeRonne Armstrong, who was unjustly fired for political reasons by Sheng Thao, strongly believed that OPD needs between 1,100 and 1,200 cops in order to adequately protect the city. The current number, which seems to vary by the day, is around 715. So OPD needs at least 385 additional officers to do the minimum job of protecting you, me, our loved ones and the businesses we patronize.
It’s unlikely to the point of near impossibility that this current City Council, comprised of social activists, will ever get serious about staffing shortages in OPD. Instead, they continue to host meaningless meetings where they get to listen to the sound of their own self-important voices and promote their pet causes (usually about race), while Oakland stumbles further into desuetude. We can begin to correct this disaster in November by recalling Thao, recalling Pamela Price and electing Armstrong to the City Council. Let’s aim high: a victory in all three races will constitute a shot heard ‘round the world in favor of moderation and sanity in Oakland.
Steve Heimoff