Timothy Holtz

I spent 10 hours in a "ride-along" with an OPD officer. By the end, my head was pounding. 5 shocking lessons about why it takes cops days to respond to 911 calls: - Rules prevent police from doing their job. e.g. There's a 19-factor (19!!) test for police to run through their head before they can chase a criminal. Most of the time, even if they see a crime, they will not chase the criminal. - Criminals know the rules. At one point, 3 cars sped past our fully marked police vehicle going 80+ mph on city streets. They even looped around and passed us a second time! Criminals know they'll get away with crimes such as burglary, car theft, and reckless driving. - Massive backlog of 911 calls. During my shift, there were 150-180 calls outstanding at any given time. The vast majority will be completely ignored or receive a response days later. - 80% paperwork. Ever seen an OPD car just parked on the side of the road? They aren't idle, but they are doing paperwork and only stop for the highest priority 911 calls. They spent 80% of the shift on their computers, often 1-2 hours of paperwork per incident (usually split across 4 officers). - Only 35 police officers on patrol at one time. On top of everything else, Oakland has one of the lowest police officer to crime ratio in the country. This is so self-inflicted. The people making the rules aren't cops, have no experience with law enforcement, and don't care about ensuring the police can do their jobs. If we vote in officials willing to focus on public safety, some things can change quickly. Other things (like increasing the # of officers) will take a long time. The full story and a link to Empower Oakland, a voter education org we started to help elect better public officials, is below.