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The month-old administration of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums did something this week that the predecessor administration of Jerry Brown failed to do in eight years of office, hold a full-blown City Hall press conference to which all media was invited and questions were raised and answered with equal access to all areas of the press. 

The subject of the late Wednesday afternoon press conference was a problem that the Brown Administration often fiddled with but never was able to fix, how to organize and deploy Oakland Police Department officers in a manner that puts a significant dent in Oakland’s crime problem. 

Saying that this was part of a “major reorganization” of the Oakland Police Department in order to bring “100 Percent Community Policing” to the department, Dellums, OPD Police Chief Wayne Tucker, and OPD Deputy Chief Jeffrey Israel announced Wednesday a plan to bring the department’s patrol division up to something approaching full strength, at the expense of immediately staffing the district’s Measure Y officers. 

Specifically, Tucker and Israel said that all of the graduates of the next two Oakland Police Academies would be sent directly to patrol duty, rather than having some of them assigned as problem solving officers as called for in the anti-violence Measure Y. 

Since Measure Y, passed by Oakland voters in 2004 to address Oakland’s soaring crime rate, had specifically called for the hiring of 63 new problem-solving officers with defined “community policing” responsibilities, Deputy Chief Israel took pains to explain how siphoning new officers away from these specific community policing assignments would actually move the department closer towards community policing. 

Community policing cannot be confined simply to a handful of community policing officers, Israel explained. “We have to move to reorganize the department so that all of our officers are involved in community policing.” 

Speaking in support of the reorganization, Mayor Dellums added that “community policing is not an officer or a unit. It is a mindset, a broad concept that has to be embraced by the entire department.” 

The city currently has no written definition of “community policing,” however, so it was not clear what exact model the department is moving towards. Dellums promised at the press conference that he would provide a written definition. 

Israel said that reversing the department’s past practice of pulling officers from patrol duty for other assignments will “increase response time and provide more opportunity by patrol officers to engage in meaningful, long-term problem solving” in the neighborhoods to which they are assigned. 

The deputy chief added that fully staffing the department’s patrol division “is necessary for implementing the geographic restructuring of the department.” 

That geographic restructuring—in which the city will be divided into five jurisdictions overseen by an individual commander—was announced by Chief Tucker late last month. Presently, OPD operates under a shift-based watch commander structure in which commanders oversee activities in the entire city on eight-hour shifts. A consultant’s report commissioned by former Mayor Brown while he was still in office had recommended the change. 

Tucker has said that under the new geographic division, officers will be able to hone in on issues of “quality of life, crime, and the social needs within the geographic areas they are patrolling.” 

Tucker said that because the restructuring does not involve the hiring of more police than previously anticipated, he is “not anticipating a significant increase in cost” because of the reorganization plan. What new costs will occur, he said, will be principally in the purchase of automobiles and radios. “We haven’t completely figured out the budget for all of this,” he said. 

Also appearing at the press conference was Oakland City Councilmember Jean Quan, one of the Measure Y co-authors. Quan said that while Measure Y supporters “are nervous about the fact” that hiring of specific Measure Y officers “will be held back for eight months, it is a step forward towards community policing. Often, right now, when you place a 911 call, the officer responding doesn’t know your neighborhood. 

“Moving to a geographic division-based department means “the officer is more likely to know your neighborhood,” Quan said. She added that the reorganization was a positive step, and said that while predictions are dangerous, “I am predicting that over the next couple of years, this will bring the crime rate in Oakland down.” 

Oakland City Council Public Safety Commitee Chairperson Larry Reid stood in the back behind the media at the press conference, but did not speak at the conference. 

The restructuring received warm praise from the man who holds hiring and firing authority over the chief of police and who will pay the political price if the project fails, Mayor Dellums. 

“The chief gets it, he understands the problem completely,” Dellums said. He called the patrol staffing move “the first step in a series of steps. This is an important day in the civic life of Oakland, in the community, and in the police department. This step turns a corner.” 

Meanwhile, the mayor showed two distinct and opposing sides to his personality at the first press conference of his administration. When a reporter asked why anyone should believe the new police deployment would work when there has been a series of failed reorganizations and redeployments and anti-crime plans in the recent past, Dellums snapped back that, “I know it’s your job to ask cynical questions, but I don’t accept the premise of your question. I don’t see that level of cynicism out in the community. People are hoping that we come up with something that will work. They desperately want us to succeed.” 

The mayor was considerably less snappish, however, when it was pointed out by his own staff members that several times during the press conference, while clearly intending to say that he had conferred with the chief of police, he said, instead, that he had conferred with the mayor. 

Once, when Dellums said that “I’ve talked with the mayor about this and he has my full confidence” and a reporter called out, “if the mayor doesn’t have your confidence, the rest of us are in trouble,” Dellums joined in the laughter from the rest of the media representatives.