[Sixstrings]

Oakland's police chief is making some dire claims about what his force will and will not respond to if layoffs go as planned.
Chief Anthony Batts listed exactly 44 situations that his officers will no longer respond to and they include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism. He says if you live and Oakland and one of the above happens to you, you need to let police know on-line.
Some 80 officers were to be let go at midnight last night if a last-minute deal was not reached. That's about ten percent of the work force.
"I came her e to build an organization, not downsize one," said Batts, who was given the top job in October.

That deadline has been extended to 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Here's a partial list:
burglary
theft
embezzlement
grand theft
grand theft:dog
identity theft
false information to peace officer
required to register as sex or arson offender
dump waste or offensive matter
discard appliance with lock
loud music
possess forged notes
pass fictitious check
obtain money by false voucher
fraudulent use of access cards
stolen license plate
embezzlement by an employee (over $ 400)
extortion
attempted extortion
false personification of other
injure telephone/ power line
interfere with power line
unauthorized cable tv connection
vandalism
administer/expose poison to another's

Negotiations are going on at Oakland City Hall in the mayor's office. Batts said the 80 officers slated to be laid off - mostly new officers - are "pretty sad and pretty depressed," and those feelings are shared by the Police Department as a whole.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/Suffer-These-Crimes-in-Oakland-Dont-Call-the-Cops-98266509.html

Pretty stunning.. that list is the bulk of everyday police work.

[Plantagenet]

Oakland doesn't have enough money to pay the pensions to retired police officers AND the salaries of the actively serving police officers ---- so the active officers are getting laid off.

Oakland: police pensions vs. police salaries

[eastbay]

It's just a bleak proposal painted as part of the OPD negotiating tactics. Nothing has been decided yet, so you can all just move along now. We'll let you know when something's been decided....

[Pops]

Pretty stunning.. that list is the bulk of everyday police work.

That's the bulk of everyday work in Oakland!

[eastbay]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 1EDUCC.DTL


Ok. The city just dumped 80 cops. Cops will now respond only to the most serious crimes. The fun is about to begin.

[Ayoob]

When the cops stop showing up, I'm guessing a couple things will happen. The ghetto will get worse. Lots of ghetto in Oakland, when the bottom drops out it will be like NYC in the 70s. Lots of street crime.

In response, neighborhood watches and ordinary people band together to form something like the Guardian Angels or something like that. Neighborhood fathers get their CCW and go to the park to provide security for their kids while they play basketball or softball or whatever.

In some places the neighborhoods will organize, in others crime will go rampant.

In the neighborhoods that organize, you'll see vigilante justice. In the criminal-controlled neighborhoods you can pay for protection or get blown out by the hoods. There are recent articles about the black middle class in Detroit just totally getting blown out of their neighborhoods by street crime.

I used to hang out in a couple of black neighborhoods in Chicago years ago. Some of them banded together and created neighborhoods with cement barriers on the streets, all one way streets, one way in and one way out. They had neighborhood organizations and rules for which days you could wash your car and when you lawn had to be mowed. The idea was to drive out people who couldn't follow rules. Those neighborhoods improved.

The ghetto, which I also had the opportunity to burn some time in, got a whole lot worse.

Black people aren't all the same. There are some black neighborhoods in LA that I could not afford to move into. Ladera Heights, for example. White people aren't all the same. There are ghetto ass white people who have given up on themselves and who are just shitty neighbors.

There's a great book out there called The Big Sort that goes over these kinds of things.

Little Italy in Chicago still runs a protection racket. Let me tell you something though. I would GLADLY pay that five dollars a month to know I could leave the keys in my car without fear, and I would GLADLY pay that five dollars to know the moolies would be kept on the other side of the busy street. Hell yes. Even though the most dangerous ghetto for miles in any direction was right across the street there was muscle in my neighborhood that would keep all the babushkas safe. The cops simply don't present that way.

[pup55]

Loud music? Vandalism? There is a frat party going on, and everybody's invited!

[ian807]

Sounds like Houston now.

Called the police a few years ago. 25 shots were fired close by (I counted). I called the cops at 3 am to report it.

The response? "What do you want us to do about it?"

I guess figuring out "sending a police car to check the neighborhood" was just too damn much effort for her to figure out.

[Sixstrings]

Sounds like Houston now.

Called the police a few years ago. 25 shots were fired close by (I counted). I called the cops at 3 am to report it.

The response? "What do you want us to do about it?"

I guess figuring out "sending a police car to check the neighborhood" was just too damn much effort for her to figure out.

Huh.. well anyplace else 25 shots fired is noteworthy, but Texas.. heck, you all have guns and shoot them off at the drop of a hat don't you?

[efarmer]

The secret is in the reporting.

"I saw the truck from the donut bakery go down the street, and he was riding low on the tires like he had a full load and was on his way to deliver. Then I hears all the shots. I bet we have a donut truck full of holes by the side of the road chock full of fresh baked evidence that needs to be kept out of the hands of looters in the pursuit of justice."

[Pops]

Neighborhood fathers get their CCW and go to the park to provide security for their kids while they play basketball or softball or whatever.

For the most part in Cali, anyone who carries probably isn't going to be standing guard at the playground.

In fact that's probably the nicest thing I've said about CA in a long time.

[Fishman]

Another city with what is now called "Blue State Disease".

[Pretorian]

Oakland's police chief is making some dire claims about what his force will and will not respond to if layoffs go as planned.
Chief Anthony Batts listed exactly 44 situations that his officers will no longer respond to and they include grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism. He says if you live and Oakland and one of the above happens to you, you need to let police know on-line.
Some 80 officers were to be let go at midnight last night if a last-minute deal was not reached. That's about ten percent of the work force.
"I came her e to build an organization, not downsize one," said Batts, who was given the top job in October.

That deadline has been extended to 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Here's a partial list:
burglary
theft
embezzlement
grand theft
grand theft:dog
identity theft
false information to peace officer
required to register as sex or arson offender
dump waste or offensive matter
discard appliance with lock
loud music
possess forged notes
pass fictitious check
obtain money by false voucher
fraudulent use of access cards
stolen license plate
embezzlement by an employee (over $ 400)
extortion
attempted extortion
false personification of other
injure telephone/ power line
interfere with power line
unauthorized cable tv connection
vandalism
administer/expose poison to another's

Negotiations are going on at Oakland City Hall in the mayor's office. Batts said the 80 officers slated to be laid off - mostly new officers - are "pretty sad and pretty depressed," and those feelings are shared by the Police Department as a whole.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local-beat/Suffer-These-Crimes-in-Oakland-Dont-Call-the-Cops-98266509.html

Pretty stunning.. that list is the bulk of everyday police work.

yet they are only 10% short. I wonder how many are sleeping to make some overtime. I have a distant relative cop who showed up at some urgent call with a bunch of other cops with his neck pillow still on.

[fonzcad3]

What's equally hilarious is they are spending 5MM to prevent people from killing themselves on the GG bridge.

[Pretorian]

COC violation. Not the place for this talk fella's.

[efarmer]

... or this.

[Dreamtwister]

grand theft:dog

LOLWUT?!

injure telephone/ power line
interfere with power line
unauthorized cable tv connection

Yeah, this isn't in any way short-sighted and dangerous. Anyone remember what happened in Silicon Valley a couple of years ago when someone severed the telephone trunk lines? Hospital staff went nuts trying to find their shortwave radios!

[Sixstrings]

In a basement office that serves as a police headquarters and community center, Oakland Chinatown leaders pored over maps of the neighborhood with representatives from a private security firm last week.

(snip)

“Eventually, we will be hiring security guards to patrol Chinatown.”

In the wake of the city’s laying off 80 police officers last month, Chinatown is leading a new trend in the crime-ridden city: an increase in privately financed public safety. Mr. Chan has asked every business owner to install a street-facing camera. A new Chinatown security force, perhaps staffed by armed guards, could be on the streets as soon as next month, he said.

(snip)

The affluent Montclair District in the Oakland Hills and the Kings Estates neighborhood in East Oakland are also looking into private patrols.

Experts say the combination of police and private security that Chinatown is pursuing reflects a new approach to public safety.

“We’ve been doing policing more or less the same way for a couple hundred years,” said Barry Krisberg, a criminologist at the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’ve reached a point financially where we have to start exploring new ways to deliver law enforcement.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/us/13bcsecurity.html?_r=2

I love how the criminologist spins this as a "new way to deliver law enforcement." That's how every privatized government service will be spun, just a new and better way to deliver services. I'll tell you something about privatized public services, the county next to me sold its water utility years ago. Well, not surprisingly maintenance went way down and they have boil water notices all the time. Water in my county is public, it's well maintained without profit and I never get a boil water warning.

Back to private police forces.. what's going on in Oakland is a peek into the future of Third World America. The affluent gated communities will have their private police force, the business districts will fund their own, and if you ever have a need to travel outside these green zones then good luck to you.

[Dreamtwister]

Funny thing is...people might hesitate to shoot a cop. Paul Blart wannabes? Not so much...