Mission Statement

The Oakland Police Department is committed to reducing crime and serving the community through fair, quality policing.

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SERVICE IMPACTS &

EQUITY CONSIDERATIONS

Enhancements

Affordable Housing & Homeless Soltuions

1. Adds augmented overtime for Police Officer escort of the additional encampment cleanup crew in OPW to ensure worker safety. This investment fulfills a request by City worker labor representatives.
   • Equity Consideration: BIPOC and especially Black residents of Oakland are significantly more likely to be unhoused. Housed BIPOC residents are also more likely to suffer from the effects of poor sanitation at nearby homeless encampments. This augmented overtime will help to ensure OPW cleanup efforts run safely.

Public Safety & Violence Prevention

1. Builds a realistic police budget by aligning the number of budgeted positions to the number of actual officers that will be available upon completion of budgeted Police Academies, and accurately assessing the overtime expenditures required to maintain services. The changes adopted over the full two years will strategically preserve core OPD services while accurately budgeting expenditures at levels consistent with past spending.
   • Equity Consideration: With the high cost of policing, the Police Budget has been rebuilt from scratch to clearly show how many services its pool of existing officers can fulfill through on-duty positions and different kinds of overtime. This transparency supports the current discussion on what kind of public safety Oakland residents want because it provides the public with accurate costing for the different kinds of OPD functions, which ones OPD has chosen to prioritize, and why.
2. Substantially increases the investigative capacity of OPD in May 2023 contingent upon sufficient Sworn staffing increase from the budgeted Police Academies. This increase represents filling the previously authorized positions of 5.0 FTE Sergeants and 39.0 FTE Officers to the department overall, but also is a significant increase to the Investigations Division. Specifically, this proposal will add: 2.0 FTE Sergeants and 14.0 FTE Officers to Homicide Investigations; 1.0 FTE Sergeant and 9.0 FTE Officers will be added to Felony Assault Investigations; 1.0 FTE Sergeant and 8.0 FTE Officers will be added to Robbery Investigations; 1.0 FTE Sergeant and 3.0 FTE Officers will be added to Special Victims - Missing Persons Investigations; and 5.0 FTE Officers will be added to Special Victims - Child Exploitation/Child Trafficking Unit. These additional positions represent more than a doubling for the department’s capacity for homicide investigations, robbery investigations, felony assault investigations, and child exploitation & trafficking investigations. They represent a tripling of capacity for missing persons investigations capacity.
   • Equity Consideration: Black residents and other residents of color are disproportionately impacted by violent and serious crimes, especially unsolved crimes. The additional resources dedicated to solving these crimes through increased capacity in several investigation units will prioritize these residents and their families. It will be important to collect data to measure OPD’s effectiveness over time at resolving the cases of Black and other residents of color who are victims of crime.
3. Transfers in FY 2022-23 the Vehicle Enforcement Units within the Traffic Division to the Department of Transportation (DOT) for better integration with the City’s overall mobility strategy and as part of the process recommended by the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force to move traffic enforcement out of the Police Department. These Units include Abandoned Auto Detail, Scofflaw Detail, Commercial Detail, and Taxi Detail.
   • Equity Consideration: The transition of these functions to DOT may facilitate deemphasizing criminalization of outcomes related to poverty. This is a pro-equity strategy and aligns with the recommendation of the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force to redirect services the Police Department provides to other departments that can fulfill them.
4. Restore the services of the previously suspended 8.0 FTE Community Resource Officers (CRO) positions through using supplemental overtime to fulfill their duties. These positions will be restored in September 2022 contingent upon sufficient Sworn staffing increased from the budgeted Police Academies. The supplemental overtime will help to preserve, in part, over this 14-month period the CRO services restored through Council’s April 2021 budgetary action. The CRO positions eliminated include two in each of Areas 1, 2, and 3, and one in Area 4 and 5. Fewer CROs on duty will reduce OPD’s ability to interact with the community to solve local topics of concern. These positions also engage with other public agencies, city stakeholders, the community, and the private sector through various community policing programs.
   • Equity Consideration: The positions chosen for suspension deliberately avoid high crime areas in the Oakland flatlands and especially East Oakland that are disproportionately home to BIPOC communities. This mitigates the effect of reduced services on the communities that have greatest need for community policing strategies. Given current budget constraints and the high cost of policing, and a limited number of available officers, this budget reduction helps preserve other City services that are essential to BIPOC communities, their safety and well-being.
5. Adds $100,000 in FY 2021-22 and $200,000 in FY 2022-23 to aid the victims of crimes with the towing cost of recovered vehicles. The Police Department is also eliminating its towing contract for the removal of crime victims’ vehicles.
   • Equity Consideration: Black residents of Oakland are disproportionately impacted by crime and poverty. A memo produced from the City’s Civic Design Lab identified vehicles that are towed and held for OPD investigations pose a profound burden, particularly to this community. Making this funding available is fair, just, and equitable. It will be important to collect data to measure effectiveness over time at reducing impacts on victims of crime.
6. Unfreezes 5.0 FTE investigation positions in the OPD Investigations Bureau Civilian Staffing to facilitate enhanced investigation of crimes committed.
   • Equity Consideration: Victims of unsolved crimes are disproportionately people of color. The restoration of these civilian positions will help improve OPD capacity to investigate and resolve past crimes.
7. Unfreezes 1.0 FTE Criminalist III in FY 2022-23. This supervisory position will support active management of a highly technical unit responsible for investigating cases involving sexual assaults, homicides, human trafficking, burglary and other property crime. It is important to the integrity of the entire operation to provide stable leadership.
   • Equity Consideration: This upper management position increases supervisory capacity in a unit responsible for highly sensitive cases. Having this position will support the unit in making time-sensitive deadlines, including the legislatively mandated turn-around times for sexual assault kits.
8. Maintains the two Immigrant Community Liaison Officers for Fruitvale and Chinatown that were added in the Council’s April 2021 budgetary action.
   • Equity Consideration: Both the Fruitvale and Chinatown have significant immigrant and non-English speaking resident concentrations. These officers will help ensure that the public safety needs of these communities are effectively communicated to allow for problem solving.
9. Adds 1.0 FTE Administrative Assistant II which allows OPD to successfully comply with the new regulatory framework associated with OMC 9.65 (Acquisition and Use of Military and Militaristic Equipment Ordinance).
   • Equity Consideration: There is no discernable equity impact from this action.
10. Increases funding for the maintenance and upgrade of OPD body worn cameras. These cameras are required by the Negotiated Settlement Agreement structure and are a best practice in policing.
    • Equity Consideration: Body worn cameras are critical for police accountability especially regarding use of force. Black residents are disproportionately the victims of police use of force and maintaining modern body worn cameras is a key component of addressing this racial disparity.
11. Adds $195,300 for Shotspotter Phase 4 which will increase the ShotSpotter coverage area in East Oakland. The increased coverage will give patrol personnel real-time notifications of gun shots in additional areas in East Oakland. Near real-time notifications translates into quicker access to gunshot victims and allows responding personnel to find important gun crime evidence.
    • Equity Consideration: Increasing ShotSpotter coverage will allow for quicker police response to gun violence, including quicker responses to gunshot victims, which has disproportionally impacted Oakland’s BIPOC communities.

Reductions

Public Safety & Violence Prevention

1. Will not restore the 5 dedicated Foot Patrols and the department’s Supplemental Walking Officer Overtime which existed prior to the pandemic. While walking officers can help build trust and provide a sense of safety in communities, OPD will be requiring Community Resource Officers to walk in their beats more and has determined that the Foot Patrol units are less critical to staff at this time than ensuring safety through than 911 response services, criminal investigations, ceasefire, and crime reduction operations.
   • Equity Consideration: Given current budget constraints and the high cost of policing, and a limited number of available officers, this budget reduction helps preserve other City services that are essential to BIPOC communities, their safety and well-being, and is thus a pro-equity action.
2. Significantly reduces discretionary Area Commander initiated Crime Response Overtime and freezes 2 FTE positions in each of the 5 Citywide Crime Reduction Teams.
   • Equity Consideration: Given current budget constraints and the high cost of policing, and a limited number of available officers, this budget reduction helps preserve other City services that are essential to BIPOC communities, their safety and well-being, and is thus a pro-equity action.
3. Will not appropriate any overtime in OPD’s budget for emergency responses to crowd management requests. Crowd management requires tremendous human resources to manage crowds during civil disturbances or demonstrations to prevent injury, property damage, and minimize disruptions to residents who are not involved. The Adopted Budget does include $3 million in contingency funding in the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) that could offset costs associated with an EOC activation.
   • Equity Consideration: Due to limited available staff at any point in time and Negotiated Settlement Agreement provisions governing the advance staffing of crowd control actions, any significant crowd control event will invariably delay response to priority calls in other areas of the City. Instead, other types of Police overtime will be prioritized for budget allocations to support the department’s response to priority calls in other areas of the City.
4. Freezes 7.0 FTE officers in FY 2021-22 and 41.0 FTE officers in FY 2022-23 who are assigned to Surge 911 Response (TAC) Units that help to reduce high 911 call waiting times and lower overtime usage. Reductions in the staffing of the Surge 911 Response Units will diminish OPD’s capacity to respond to 911 calls as quickly. The officers that filled these positions will be redirected to staff other units.
   • Equity Consideration: Given current budget constraints and the high cost of policing, and a limited number of available officers, this budget reduction helps preserves other City services that are essential to BIPOC communities, their safety, and well-being.
5. Freezes 9.0 FTE officers over two years who are assigned to the Traffic Enforcement unit through maintaining suspension of one of the two traffic enforcement squads. The Traffic Enforcement Units consists of 2 Squads of 1.0 FTE Sergeant and 8.0 FTE Police Officers. The suspension of the second Traffic Enforcement Unit means fewer police officers available to mitigate dangerous vehicular behavior. Supplemental overtime has been allocated to help partially preserve traffic enforcement services. The officers that filled these positions will be redirected to staff other units.
   • Equity Consideration: Pedestrian safety is a key equity concern as there are great racial disparities in pedestrian injuries based on the racial composition of census tracts. This disparity is greatest for Asian American communities. Continued suspension of OPD’s second Traffic Enforcement Unit will reduce OPD’s ability to deter unsafe driving as they will have fewer officers on duty to identify and stop unsafe driving.
6. Reduce 1.0 FTE Sergeant in the Alcoholic Beverage Action Team (ABAT) Unit. This will reduce the Unit’s ability to conduct inspections and enforce the Tobacco Retail Ordinance 13591 with the City’s tobacco merchants to ensure they abide with the Ordinance and do not sell any illegal tobacco products to Oakland residents.
   • Equity Consideration: The ordinances that the City has passed on illegal tobacco products are enforced through the Police Department to remove certain tobacco products from tobacco merchants that public health has identified as being highly addictive and fine them accordingly. The ABAT Unit works to remove these illegal tobacco products in the City’s BIPOC neighborhoods to reduce the exposure of BIPOC youth to illegal tobacco products, many of which are marketed and designed to encourage nicotine addiction among youth.
7. Freeze 4.0 FTE positions in the Fiscal and Human Resources Divisions. The positions were frozen at midcycle, and the Payroll Personnel Clerk III position has been vacant for quite some time. These freezes do not have an impact on existing service levels but continue the under-resourcing of fiscal and personnel functions such as payments processing, personnel actions, and hiring requests.
   • Equity Consideration: There is no direct discernable equity impact from this action.

SIGNIFICANT BUDGETARY CHANGES

FINANCIAL INFORMATION

POSITION INFORMATION