Oakland crime up 20%
Matthai Kuruvila (San Francisco Chronicle) | October 17, 2012
Crime in Oakland is 20 percent higher than it was a year ago. One hundred people have been slain in the city – including five within an 18-hour period this month.
So on Tuesday, when Police Chief Howard Jordan delivered a report to the City Council that read in part, “Oakland does not have a citywide crime reduction plan,” several council members were not pleased.
“Something has got to happen in real time, not a year from now, to stop some of the violence that’s taking place in this city,” said Councilwoman Desley Brooks, who represents East Oakland. “If we have a 20 percent increase in crime, when do we look at what we’ve been doing?”
Councilwoman Jane Brunner concurred.
“I’m really concerned that we don’t have a crime-reduction plan,” she said. “I’ve lived in this city for 40 years. Crime is off the hook right now.”
Notably missing from Jordan’s report was any mention of the 100-block crime-reduction plan that Mayor Jean Quan unveiled a year ago to much fanfare.
The mayor, who attended the meeting, remained silent as Jordan told the City Council that he didn’t have the resources for a citywide crime-reduction plan. He added that publicly disclosing all of a police department’s strategies would be counterproductive.
Nonetheless, he told the council that the department is working on a number of initiatives, including a youth curfew, a gang intervention program known as Operation Ceasefire, an initiative to track ammunition sales in Alameda County and a robbery-suppression plan in certain hot spots.
The criticism of Jordan comes as he and the department are facing pressure from a number of different directions: a federal judge will be hearing arguments about whether to place the department under receivership; a court-appointed monitor criticized the department leadership’s failure to abide by reforms; the police union believes Jordan is unfairly disciplining officers.
Read more at: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-crime-up-20-3958245.php#ixzz29lsP0Hpp
Photo credit: Michael Macor, The Chronicle / SF
Tags: crime reduction plan, Oakland crime, Operation Ceasefire, robbery suppression, youth curfew
Posted by Lora
on Oct 17 2012. Filed under News.
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