Oakland’s community policing program continues to face challenges

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A KALW News special report on living with violence in Oakland.

(Editor’s Note: In an attempt to solve the problem of violent crime in Oakland, voters in 2004 approved Measure Y — an initiative, which funds employment, training and counseling programs. The measure also created street outreach teams — groups of residents and young people from the community who go to Oakland’s most dangerous street corners to try to get people out of criminal activity. The following piece, adapted by The Public Press, in partnership with KALW-FM’s “Crosscurrents Radio,” is another installment in The Fault Line Project. The six-part series explores solutions to violence in Oakland.)

In a driveway in East Oakland, two men are leaning under an open car hood, working on the engine of an old Mercedes Benz. Officer Clay Burch has stopped to see how the car is coming along.

"OK, you gonna have it on the road today, huh?" Burch asks. "OK, do that, do that … See me waving, I’ll go right, you go left."

Developing relationships with people in the neighborhood is part of Burch’s role as a PSO, or Problem Solving Officer.

"OK, we gotta go guys, you know with all that yelling going on … good to see you," Burch said, interrupting his conversation when a call comes in over the police radio. But answering calls isn’t his first priority.

Burch is one part of the three-pronged approach that makes up Measure Y. Community police are complemented by street outreach teams. PSO’s and outreach teams link young people to the actual programs that help create foundations for a better life.

For Burch, improving Oakland’s toughest neighborhoods happens one building, and one person, at a time.

"Community policing demands that I engage you as an individual, that I see you as this human being," said Jeff Baker, an assistant to the Oakland city administrator, who coordinates and oversees Measure Y programs. "That I am there to offer some type of service to help you.

"My job is to evaluate how well OPD is implementing community policing," Baker said.

Baker helped to develop a project database for the Problem Solving Officers. The data collection system has each of the officers listed, by name and badge number, the beat where they are and it tells how they are spending the day. They can access it from a laptop in their cars. And as they take on a project, they have to load that in.

Problem Solving Officers’ projects are different from standard police work — they involve monitoring 911 calls, crime reports and citizen complaints — then watching for trends. An officer such as Burch can then call on the police department and city resources to try to shut down the problems at their source.


Drug-related issues high on list

Sitting in his patrol car outside of OPD’s Eastmont Station, Burch is showing a list of his projects. He has 12 projects that are open on his beat — 27Y. By projects, he means problem properties, "and most of the problems that I’m dealing with in this area, as you can see, are narcotics, and it’s narcotics activity usually revolving around sales of narcotics, and with sales of narcotics comes also violent crime," Burch said.

Beat 27Y was home to the biggest concentration of homicides in the city last year — 16. This beat has suffered the highest murder rate in the city for the past five years.

Burch visits a building on Bromley Avenue that has been a source of problems.

"This property was a classic example," Burch said. "This is the bungalow apartments. This property generated tons of arrests, tons of calls for service … it looks like they’re demolishing it, perfect. So they are finally doing demo."

A small construction crew is beginning to tear down the apartments Burch said were the center of a major drug zone — the selling began at 8 a.m. and didn’t end until late at night.

"There was one surveillance I did here where I could not keep up with the amount of drug dealing that was going … there were three different sellers, there was a group here, right behind the fence here, behind this one little wall on the left," Burch said. "There was another person selling on the steps here, there was another person selling over here, and they were all independent of each other, just selling, mostly rock cocaine, crack cocaine. And it was just a factory. It was a narcotics selling factory."

Burch said a property like this creates a ripple effect in crime and violence. Drug dealing here meant that robberies and crime went up in surrounding areas.

"Closing this property was one of the best things that happened to this neighborhood in whole, just because of the sheer volume of crime that was happening here," he said.

Burch greets construction worker Darren Thomas, part of the demolition team. Thomas said residents have been as happy as Burch to see this problem property go.

"You’d be surprised what we even found in there — scales, needles, Baggies, oh man … ," Thomas said.

"I’m so glad to see you guys here. And I’m telling you, you guys are making a lot of people happy right now," Burch said.

"This is what happens when a community cooperates with the police department and other city organizations to make it a better place," Burch said. "I think my work on this property … a lot of people saw that I actually cared."


Measure Y beset with funding shortfall, lack of accountability

Burch has been a Problem Solving Officer in East Oakland for a year and a half and it took him months to gain trust.

"As a police officer, I have full discretion to look at it as a complete law enforcement problem and take everybody to jail. But as a Problem Solving Officer, I had to step back and take a look at the bigger picture," Burch said. "And, that’s why I like this job. I like this position. It enables me to not just, you know, take bad people to jail, but it enables me to help people.

"I’m someone who has the time to get out and talk to people, get out of my car and take a half an hour and speak to people hanging out on a corner, you know? And patrol doesn’t, patrol doesn’t have that time."

PSOs are an integral part of Measure Y’s approach, bringing police into the process of violence prevention. What makes them unique is their ability to engage young people on the corner — and then, to refer them to Measure Y programs.

"If the goal is to send this officer out into the community, to engage, they have to have services, they have to have tools or tools in a toolbox," Baker said. "Those tools are the Measure Y violence prevention programs."

Baker said that city funding shortfalls have left the toolbox pretty empty.

“So the officer, he’s sort of at a disadvantage because I can’t engage you honestly if I know that there is nothing at the end of that rainbow," Baker said. "So if I tell you to go to a training program and there are no slots or if you go through the training and there’s no job, then I got a problem with credibility with that youngster. And that word is gonna spread throughout the neighborhood so quickly that, ‘oh yeah, that’s the officer told me to go there to go get a job, there was nothing there. ‘"

Baker said another problem is lack of accountability. It’s been five years since Measure Y was passed, and it isn’t clear just how efficient some of the Measure Y service providers have been. Baker said he hasn’t been able to evaluate the programs because of budget cuts and a lack of political will.

"And so the fact that we haven’t had an evaluation for three years of those violence prevention programs is of concern to me, and I think it’s of concern to a number of folks in Oakland because they are relying on those programs to deliver those services, just as that officer is relying," Baker said.

While Baker believes in the potential of community police, he pointed out that even those officers spend a lot of time making arrests.

"They (officers) get taught in the police academy, they get taught community policing, but they also get taught that you always have to be on guard and that anybody can kill you," said police Deputy Chief David Kozicki. He said part of the problem is balancing police training with the danger that officers face on the street.

"So if someone’s gonna teach you that right, you look at your hierarchy of needs. What is your hierarchy of needs? Is it around self-actualization first or is it around basic safety needs? Basic safety needs" Kozicki said. "So first you think basic safety needs — and then you can think about deeper stuff."

Kozicki said OPD follows a simple principle.

"Street to the back seat," he said. "We take you off the street, we put you in the back seat when you’ve done something wrong and we take you to jail. We’re very good at that."


Takes community policing seriously

Although arrests matter, preventing arrests matter more to Burch. He is a convert to community policing. He believes in its mission to create relationships in the neighborhood.

As he drives through East Oakland, Burch acknowledges that he can’t fix everything.

"I can do my part, but usually by the time they get to me, it’s almost too late," Burch said. "You know, proactively, when I am going through these neighborhoods, I like to stop and talk to the kids. There is usually a group of kids that is always here, they know who I am, they call my name out every time I go by, and I stop and I say hi. If they have a football, I’ll throw the football around with them. And for me, if I can get to them early enough, I can hopefully curtail a little bit about what they are hearing, some of the negativity they are hearing at home, about the police.

"The thing that gets me the most is the response I get from little kids, from little children that have no business having those responses. They haven’t been through enough, they haven’t seen enough, it makes me wonder what’s being said to them at home."

Burch said kids as young as 3 will give him mean looks — and this kind of ingrained prejudice against police only means more violence.

"The youth are getting bolder and they are becoming … they are more apt to challenge us," Burch said. "I mean, the abrasiveness and the boldness that I am seeing from people today, I didn’t even see five years ago in this job. They are starting to take us on more, they are starting to challenge us more, they are starting to use weapons against us more."

As a police officer, Burch has a law-and-order mentality, but as a Problem Solving Officer, he strives to understand how inner cities like East Oakland came to be so dangerous. He said that working here can be hard, but it hasn’t made him cynical.

"And it saddens me, and it saddens me because I know there’s good people here, and I see them all the time," Burch said. "Last night, we were at that community meeting and you just met people from the neighborhood. They’re good people and they are really like captives in their own neighborhood. So, no, cynical no, but yeah, more realistic about things, yeah."


 

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Oakland Police Department headquarters. Photo by Chris/Kevin

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