XPost: alt.california, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: harris.intellectual@failures.com   
      
   However, this playbook is not grounded in data about our streets or law   
   enforcement. Oakland’s elected officials cherry-pick incomplete data that   
   suit their political objectives, and much of the public accepts their spin   
   at face value.   
      
   If the electeds did take a deep look, they’d find that the data were full of   
   issues that could impair correct interpretation, because data gathering,   
   management and curation are difficult and systemically underfunded.   
      
   Instead, they base public safety policy on political expediency, which in   
   recent years has disrupted and dismantled the resources needed for fair and   
   just policing.   
      
   Take the Oakland Police Department’s crime reporting system, which is more   
   than 20 years old. It’s so degraded that the department can no longer use it   
   to track investigation documents centrally. Instead, employees use Microsoft   
   Word, save files on desktop folders and share them by email.   
      
   That system is supposed to automatically transfer uniform crime reporting   
   data to the state for its annual crime compilation. But that too is broken.   
   The state recently released 2023 data showing 11,169 aggravated assaults in   
   Oakland — a 3.4-fold increase over 2022. But OPD’s own report shows about   
   3,500 aggravated assaults in 2023. The state data are flawed because of an   
   unresolved bug in transmission discovered a month ago.   
      
   Police sources say OPD is beta-testing a $12 million computer-aided dispatch   
   system for 911 operations, funded by a state grant. The new system has a   
   records module, but police can’t use it because it won’t communicate with   
   the myriad of archaic OPD data and reporting systems required by local,   
   federal and state oversight policies.   
      
   As record-keeping gets worse, it invokes a downward spiral. Trust plummets   
   as a skeptical public demands transparency but does not get it. OPD is   
   inundated with more than 10,000 public records requests each year, fulfilled   
   by the same overtaxed workers — primarily the investigative staff of about   
   40 officers and administrators (excluding the homicide division), who are   
   also tackling a caseload of more than 40,000 crimes.   
      
   Poor records and technology infrastructure are just the tip of the iceberg.   
   In the past decade, policy changes and decisions have upended policing in   
   Oakland. These include reducing police stops by about 80%, limiting criminal   
   pursuits, intensifying oversight, limiting crowd control and closing the   
   jail. In parallel, the city reduced police staffing to the minimum required   
   by law and may go further.   
      
   We’ve made these changes like an uncontrolled clinical trial, using Oakland   
   residents as guinea pigs — except this “trial” has no principled design,   
   no   
   measurement of outcomes and no guardrails to ensure the experiment does not   
   harm. In 2020, a small but prescient group of individuals foresaw this; they   
   implored the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force not to replace proven   
   policing methods without proving that alternatives will work.   
      
   It’s clear the experiment is not working. The state of lawlessness is so   
   severe that Oakland has become a destination for crime tourism.   
      
   Adding to the pain, OPD  has been under a federal monitor’s control for more   
   than two decades — the longest federal oversight of any police department in   
   the country. Its 50-plus requirements have fundamentally reshaped   
   operations. Officers are constantly scrutinized by the monitor, an   
   investigator general, a police commission, a review agency, a media machine,   
   a public primed to expect misconduct and those who may profit from   
   maintaining the public perception of misconduct.   
      
   The department was about three months from ending its oversight when Mayor   
   Sheng Thao fired Chief LeRonne Armstrong in February 2023. Subsequently, an   
   independent arbiter cleared the chief of wrongdoing, but the oversight   
   continues.   
      
   Many in the city believe in hopeful theories about police and criminal   
   justice reform — theories based on nice-sounding labels like “violence   
   prevention” and “police alternatives” or on shame-inducing phrases like   
   “mass incarceration” and “police militarization.” But these are words,   
   not   
   data, evidence or rigor.   
      
   Oakland’s Department of Violence Prevention (previously called “Oakland   
   Unite”) has produced only one report on its efficacy in its 20-year history.   
   It showed that the department’s practices didn’t reduce arrests or   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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