uh people from the community colleges to go into the academies.

I just think there are many other ways to recruit that we have not engaged on.

So we're in an aggressive mode right now.

My office and with the police department to begin this new method of recruiting also to supplement of course what they're doing.

Also we have you know the issue of the NSA.

We we know that uh and I'm told from within the police department that many police officers leave because of the over the stringent requirements of investigations.

Well you know we have to have accountability within the police department so we have to look though at what is taking place and what the facts are uh and how to make sure that uh police officers we have that balance between accountability and and over investigating but I believe that given our history here in Oakland we have to have a very uh important cultural shift in the police department and police officers who join I think want to do the right thing so we have to make sure that we stay on track with that and look at what's taking place that may or may not be a hindrance for retention.

So it's very complicated and comprehensive but uh this is a big deal for myself with Reverend Demita as my public safety chief in my office and just know that we want to meet all of the requirements of Measure N and uh we are gonna do everything we can do with you to meet those requirements but no one says it's easy because we have an as you know a budget crisis we balance the budget this time around but we have uh cost of living is pretty excessive here in Oakland still we have uh you know to address housing and you know all of the social determinants of policing and what the environment is in terms of the it being a conducive city given the the quality of life and the cost of living here so it's it's it has many many legs that we're dealing with as a city all departments are also yeah definitely it's gonna take everybody yeah to address but everybody's committed to it absolutely mayor I'm gonna check with Pastor Dixon if he has any questions and then I have one last question.

Let me just say forgive me for being late uh we just celebrated 30 years of ministry in East Oakland with my father myself and uh we've been getting our guest out of town and it slipped my mind.

But I do have a question to ask uh Madam Mayor when I think about uh our police force and I've grown a little attached to them in a different way being a pastor and talking to them.

My thing is extra help.

How many of them will be willing to come back as extra help officers and do we allow that.

Ex say that again Pastor Jackson after they retired after they retire right on some hours can you put your mic on your reserve officers to help out with our current officers I don't know what that looks like having researched it I will be going in further research.

But we know other cities have reserve officers but they come out and volunteer their time of course they would have to go through what Oakland says they need to go through to their FTO their trainings and all that.

And going through that before uh the reserve program I understand what that takes to be a reserve is basically academy you give up your own time and all that.

But I think that's something we should we we have to start looking at new ways of making sure we get help and if we get somebody that can pass the background check past financial check past everything and they want to donate their time that can do traffic or do the little jobs where the our main line officers do their jobs that's something we should start looking at maybe have a talk with the um police association and everybody to see what that looks like.

Right and also non-sworn uh security uh ambassadors for example there's some functions that they may be able to pick up as uh or use that uh track to enter the police force also uh because they've already been part of a security and safety strategy to keep neighborhoods safe so that's another way also to to recruit but yes uh and I've talked to the police and uh chief about this and we are and we'll set up a meeting with you and the rest of the folks to drill down a little bit on it.

Thank you, Mayor I have one last question and promise we'll let you go after that but just wondering about the public safety I believe it's a work group you set up as you took office are we able to meet with these folks collaborate with these folks hear their input on our responsibility as the commission.

Oh sure they have done a phenomenal job too and have done a draft report which we're looking at and uh I'll find out when the next meeting is going to be but it's a really uh I think important uh moment to look at their recommendations which align probably ninety-five percent with what uh all of us uh care about here in terms of the strategy that's aligned with uh measure in and but also in terms of looking at uh workforce training job training housing health care you know some of the other issues that really dovetail and are part of the public safety strategy yeah absolutely thank you that would help us a lot okay and we're always here if you have more ideas and then where to find us thank you to you and your staff well thank you all oh uh we have a we have we have a request our uh public facing page is looking a little bit uh anemic a little scant I wouldn't mind I was wondering if you wouldn't mind taking a quick photo with the members of the commission to put it up there where do you want to do it okay y'all hang tight we'll be very quick I promise more about you want to have a phone okay mayor will you take one question from the public the mayor graciously asked um agreed to let me ask a question.

Yeah we were just about to take um public comments and the mayor is welcome to stay or you can ask her I wanna I want to make sure okay I want to make sure uh my name's Jose Antonio Dorado I was a member of the um public safety working group and one of the things that uh my I guess you could call it a subgroup uh presented to the mayor was a request in fact we had three uh three recommendations one of them that particularly uh concerns me is the uh community policing department's policy that the police commission passed uh two years ago and then again recently uh this really needs to go to the public safety uh I'm sorry the um uh yeah the public safety committee of the council and then to the full council for ratification so uh this one of the recommendations we made and I just wanted to ask the uh the mayor to see to it that uh she put her yes all right thank you wonderful thank you Mr.

Jose um we actually have um public comment right now on this agenda item the remarks of Mayor lee.

So if any of you would like to speak now by Reverend the Mirror by Mayor, you're welcome to um and then we have public comments shortly after that um on just in general your vision for the city.

I got it.

That's mine.

Oh, I should have fine.

Thank you.

Thanks for checking that.

Thank you, sir.

Okay.

We have um several people signed up for open forum.

And then we also have people on Zoom who would like to speak.

Okay.

So should we go in the order that you have Felicia?

Paula, have you signed in?

Okay.

Yes.

And Paula Hawthorne.

Paul Hawthorne.

Go first.

And I want to add that each speaker call for open forum will have two minutes to speak.

Okay.

But I do wish I could see the timer.

Because it always surprises me.

So yes, Paula Hawthorne.

I'm here today representing the violence prevention coalition.

This is a coalition of grassroots groups, community-based organizations, who are on the ground dealing with the violence in Oakland.

I'm an ally.

I'm not actually on the ground dealing with violence in Oakland.

But since I'm unemployed, I can help out, because I have time.

And what I was asked to talk about today is a concern of ours, which is that there is this very good in a way emphasis on ceasefire.

Ceasefire is a well-proven great gang violence reduction program, but it is not the be-all and end-all of violence reduction within Oakland.

We have entirely too many people who are killed as a result of other issues.

That's going to be the lid on what ceasefire can actually do.

And what we need to do beyond that is to work with the community-based organizations to make sure that they're not defunded.

There's not enough money, and we know that.

But for sure, we cannot forget other programs other than ceasefire, although it is of course very important.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much for this reminder, Ms.

Hawthorne.

I agree, which is also why I asked the mayor about other things beyond ceasefire.

Um we can go to the next comment.

The next speaker is Mark Evil.

Hello.

Uh I'm Michael Yu Bill.

I'm representing Open Oakland.

Uh Open Oakland is the city's volunteer civic technology organization.

On September 20th, we'll be hosting uh city camp in in here in City Hall.

We previously hosted this event for six years ending in 2018.

Um this is an unconference where attendees can pitch topics for presentation discussion, brainstorm um topics with enough interest get scheduled into a one-hour slot during the day in the hearing rooms here in City Hall.

I think this would be great opportunity for members of this commission to bring your plans for implementation of NN and get feedback from attendees.

I encourage everyone listening or watching to attend to propose your own topic or to join the discussions.

Members of other city commissions and departments can participate as well.

This is a free event.

You can go to open oakland.eventbrite.com to register.

Here's a QR code for those people watching.

And for people here, I have some handouts also.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much, Mike.

I think we have the handout here, and we'll definitely consider attending.

Thank you.

Okay, Commissioner, your next speaker your next speaker is Lisa Watkins Taylor.

Tanner.

Hello, everybody, my name is Lisa Watkins Tanner, and I'm with Atamika Village, but I'm representing um Oakland Violence Prevention.

I'm one of the s we're one of the smaller CDOs with them.

And so I'm just gonna um I'm just gonna speak.

Um so in Los Angeles, um, they have the gang reduction and youth development um program.

It reassesses its violence prevention strategies every single year, and it's backed by about three point three 30 million flexible budget.

They show funding based on community feedback, on um neighborhood data and the changing needs of the community in Minnesota uh Minnesota uh okay, um in uh Minneapolis, they do the same thing, requiring biannual reviews so that the underperforming programs can be corrected midstream.

But Oakland, we lock ourselves into four years, right?

Uh with the measure in end plan, even as violence shifts, even as a need grows, we can't pivot.

Uh right now, over sixty percent of measure in N fund goes to um crisis response.

Just 17% is allocated to prevention.

The imbalance can't be readdressed until the next um cycle, right?

Funding cycle.

Um and violence doesn't follow a schedule.

Neither will our solutions.

We see patterns emerging before they even hit headlines, but we're told to wait.

We're told that the budget catches up and another family's grieving.

We're stuck with asking permission for saving lives.

Um so reform, I'm asking to reform a measure and and structure to allow annual reviews and funding shifts.

Match what other cities are doing already, because rigid planning and um this dynamic crisis is a recipe for failure.

And Oakland can't afford to wait four years um for what happens next month.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Miss Tanner.

That's a really important point.

I do believe that we heard right in the last presentation the DVP contracts are three to four years.

So maybe that's what you're referring to.

Um and I yeah, more more often review might be might be called for.

Thank you for that.

Okay, Chair.

You have um and Commissioner you have um two additional speakers.

And if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand because after the in-person uh speakers.

Well I'll we'll we'll uh pivot to Zoom.

Okay, so the next speaker, Julia Dorado, did you have open comment remarks?

My name is Jose Anton Dorado.

Um I uh am a member of the uh Comunidad de Comerçantes de Provail, uh, the Latino uh task force, the uh African American Latino Action Alliance.

Um, also the uh I was on the police commission.

I was one of the original members.

Um a member of the immigrant defense committee and I'm chair of the B28X uh Maxwell Park Neighborhood Council.

So one of the things that I wanted to mention uh very strongly was the fact that uh 79235 was passed almost 30 years ago.

This is the community policing resolution that was passed back then with a great deal of fanfare and a great deal of promise, and it has not even come close to being realized in all that time.

So uh the Measure N folks yourselves, I think should give a great measure to how that money is gonna be allocated in terms of community policing.

And uh Paula Hawthorne had a great comment about grassroots, about ground level.

Uh that's exactly what should have been uh built.

I call it an infrastructure starting at the block level, it's right out of the uh resolution.

Have uh uh I'm uh uh in my in a former life I was a construction worker, uh German carpenter, and anyone can tell you that a building is only as good as its foundation.

The foundation of community policing is built on block leaders.

Block leaders have to be identified, supported, and trained, and then hooked up with other block leaders, connected with their local neighborhood councils, and of course the neighborhood councils hooked up OPD area wide or district-wide, and then citywide.

That's the infrastructure should have been built a long time ago.

Uh the funding that you have uh that you've been making decisions about uh should reflect that infrastructure, building of that infrastructure.

That in my opinion, my home opinion is the key to violence reduction and increasing the quality of life in our beloved city.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr.

Jose Eduardo.

If you can if there's any materials you can leave about that measure, I don't know if it was a resolution or what it was that was part 20 20 years ago.

I would love to see it.

So if you could give us a copy or a way to find it, you can do so via Felicia at a later point.

Thank you.

I can share with the commission chair.

Okay.

Uh and the next speaker is um Donald Donkey.

Okay, thank you.

Do you see would you your time to this gentleman here, Donald?

Can he speak in your place?

I'm sorry, sir.

You you can complete a speaker card and and speak.

Yes.

And and I I do need you to complete a speaker card.

So prior to you speaking.

I'm sorry I didn't say that correctly.

Um, that I'm I'm sorry, and I'm probably pronouncing your name incorrectly.

Did I say okay, you can speak now?

Um, hello everyone.

Um, my name is Ladette.

I am the community outreach manager for Son of Open District 7 Councilman Ken Houston.

And he um asked me to ask you all, this commission, what your thought processes around the pursuit policy as you're creating the safety um program that will be rolling out, well, at least presented in seven months.

Um so he wanted to hear your thoughts on that, the pursuit policy.

Thank you.

Um, thank you for that, Miss Ladett.

I'm not sure any of the commissioners have a prepared statement or want to share immediately our thought policies and pursuit polic um perceived policy of LPD, I imagine you're speaking to.

Um so unless somebody feels like they would like to speak, I'd like to take that into account, and then maybe at our next meeting we can agendize it and have more of a conversation.

I think.

Um I know there's very many differing opinions, and it's a controversial issue, and I think all of us want to be as informed as possible before we certainly make any decision and put anything into the violence prevention plan, um, but also before we speak to the public.

Okay, Chair, your next speaker is Le John Lagans.

I'm gonna speak, but I heard a couple of things I just want to kind of remind myself about and uh mention so my name is Lee John Loggins.

Um community engagement consultant, crisis responder.

Um, I'm a lumai of Atamica Village, and I help out with the Coffee Washington Foundation as well.

Um a couple of things that was pointed out um that um that one um was about dang, I just went blank.

That's so crazy.

I always got a lot to say.

But uh but uh as far as like uh adjustments as far as some of the violence that's been changing, even though, like they mentioned before about um ceasefire is particularly driven homicides, things has expanded with homeless encampment deaths, um, accidents, people being hit by cars, opioid fit now related deaths, um, and different things like that, and at the Qaddafi Washington Foundation, we provide resources for people who lost loved ones for over 25 years after the loss of Miss Mount Marilyn Washington Harris son Kadhafi.

And so we provide resources and life culture for families, and so we would like to make sure that um emergency support funds are kind of prioritized um within a budget um for specific read reasons other than just homicides as well.

Um, and then um some legislation funds as well for certain bills that should be altered in regards to sex trafficking and um and um in um domestic violence sex trafficking like Senate Bill 5, Senate Bill 357.

There should be some adjustments to maybe um support that in that area.

Center Bill Five was created for um for Uber Lyfts and DoorDash drivers to classify them as employees, and some of the strip clubs and many other industries got affected by that um by classifying them as employees, and so it shifted a lot of girls from inside to outside on international boulevard.

You have Senate Bill 357 that followed along that to where the cops can't harass the young ladies and for loadering in the act of prostitution.

So when you look fine-tune into those bills, you start to see how women of color and trans women and different people in the LGBT community is being um targeted by these different bills and is making it more in inhumane conditions and more um putting them women in vulnerable states because of the laws.

So I'm just suggesting the commission to more look into technical bills like that um to see if there's a way to adjust and support the community and stopping the vibes in those areas.

Okay, thank you, Mr.

Lee John.

I we cannot change state legislature, but we can certainly look at the impact of those bills on Oakland and what we can do about that.

Yeah, and I love the idea around emergency funds being increased.

So thank you for that idea too.

Can I give them a comment?

You may, yeah, yeah.

Uh to everyone that's speaking and says something, I am a numbers guy.

And when you say certain things, I expect you to be able to back it up in statistics.

When we talk about the murder violence in Oakland, when we did have our greatest decrease, is when ceasefire was at its top, but not only did the murder rate go down, but robberies went down, home invasions went down, everything across the board went down because when you understand that only 300 people drive the violence in Oakland.

You understand that if we can take care of those things, so what I need is some statistics from the CBOs showing what you did, how you did it, why you did it, because you may not be let me be real with you because I'm a real and you can come talk to me you may not be the CBO for us, and I know talking to Chief Holly, she's putting some things with some teeth in those CBO, the new CBO contracts, because that was my complaint.

I I didn't do this by accident.

I've been on the streets talking to the young men, talking to the young ladies and doing the thing.

So we need statistics from you.

We need to make sure that you're doing the job because if I'm putting my name on something that says uh we want the city to do this, understand I'm gonna be trusting you because I put my name on you to do that job.

So I just wanted to put that out there so you understand where we're coming from.

We want the best.

We're gonna try with these people that I trust we're gonna try to write the best policy we can write.

And I hear you and I see you.

I want you to understand that I hear you and I see you.

I hear the CBOs because we can't do it without you.

I hear you, and we want to make things better.

And I have personal things, but I'll talk to my partners about the traffic uh things.

I have personal views, but I wouldn't put that out there until I talked to my uh co-commissioners because we have we want to put out a policy and have discussions about where we as a unit where we stand.

So we wouldn't dare answer that question off the top of our heads because they may not agree with me and I might not agree with them, but we could come in agreement, and that's what we're here to do to come in agreement.

We come here to get come in agreement with all the CBOs that do all the wonderful work.

Uh, because I've been around you and you're doing great work.

I just wanted to share that with you.

I know I was late, but I wanted to share that with you that we see you and we hear you.

And being on 89th International Boulevard since 1969, I understand.

Thank you so much, Commissioner Dixon, for those remarks.

Um Chair, um, there are nine attendees on Zoom.

Um, and I wanted to give them the opportunity to speak during open form as well.

I yeah, that's okay.

However, there are no hands raised currently.

Um, if you have a question on Zoom, please raise your hand, or if you want to speak during open forum, please raise your hand on Zoom.

There are no hands raised.

Okay, okay, thank you.

So I think this completes our open forum.

And our public comment on Mayor Lee's remarks.

I think what we'll do is move forward with the agenda to the overview of our work plan where we can share a little more with the community about where we are at in this in the strategizing of how to get to the four years violence reduction plan.

And then we'll go into commute input into vision and goals, and maybe that's when the folks on Zoom are gonna want to speak.

And we invite everybody's public comment, whether you're here or on Zoom.

I just want to note for the record that Commissioner Dixon is here and has been here.

So do we have to do roll call again to establish quorum or we are okay?

We're okay, Chair.

I I added um Pastor Dixon to the Commissioner Dixon to the record.

Okay, wonderful.

Um okay.

With that, we're gonna move to the work plan portion, which is agenda item number five, and I'm gonna pass it past the mic to um our vice chair.

Thank you.

Okay, so um if you have been a regular attendee here, this is more of a um overview of our work plan rather than getting into all the nitty gritty to-dos and printing all of the pages.

Um, so a little bit of an update for August.

Uh, so our bylaws are in process.

We are still seeking final input from the city attorney.

Um, the consultant we received it.

We're actually going to approve our bylaws today.

We have final input.

We've incorporated them.

So we're on we're in good shape.

Fantastic.

Um our consultant RFP is in process, it's ready for review from the city.

Uh, we'll also be adding a technical assistance and evaluation deliverable to support the measure and then grantees.

Uh, one of the major issues that uh occurs across the board with CBOs, it's not specific to Oakland or the size of the CBO is um it's hard to build a data culture, it's hard to prove measurable outcomes, and that's where um technical assistance and evaluation services can provide some support so that way what we know you're doing in the community, we can uh demonstrate and and back it up with proof, and so that way you can back it up with funding.

And then on, let's see, on uh the management of the commission itself.

Um Joanna and I and Felicia meet regularly throughout the month.

Uh we're currently scheduling recurring meetings with um OffSPOC commissioners uh and the deputy city administrator Joe DeFries, and we are currently seeking a recurring time with the mayor's staff to ensure the community violence reduction plan, also C VRP is comprehensive and considers broader public safety efforts uh already in progress.

I also just want to note that our um objectives in measure NN are relatively narrow, and so there's it's gonna have to be a pretty creative um process when it comes to making sure that we're in alignment with other uh public safety efforts.

Um, you know, for instance, we don't list traffic issues in Measure NN, but it's certainly part of a broader sense of public safety, and so we have to go through all the all the issues of trying to figure out how they can all fit together and support each other and support each other's goals.

Uh next up we have is the workshops.

So we have decided to pivot from the original uh goal and strategy development workshops to smaller workshops.

Originally we were going to ask for representatives from um the core departments, OPD, DVP, OFD, uh, to give us a day basically, and it became a scheduling um nightmare.

So we are instead going to be doing more um uh work we are going to work individually with each of the departments uh first with an exploratory discussion meeting where we you know go over what the process will be and um potential policies that we would like to for them to explore and then um we'll schedule more working like half-day meetings so that way we can for the first one do um vision and goal setting as well as um strategies and metrics identification at the second working meeting.

And then um in between those two meetings uh depending on the timing, we're going to bring forward the goals and the vision for the C VRP to the public for your um input and feedback.

Um and then bring that back and have that play a role in how we develop the strategies for the goals that we set forth with the department leadership and uh relevant city officials to make sure that it is a comprehensive plan that uh integrates efforts from across the city.

Um the community engagement events and the community-wide survey will provide accessible opportunities for the public to provide their input on both the goals and strategies for each department, and the feedback will be documented and integrated throughout the C VRP drafting process.

Okay, that was a busy August.

Looking forward to next month.

We've got um hopefully we'll be able to publish the consulting RFP and review those applications in October.

Um we're gonna start with those initial exploration meetings and goal developments and schedule focus groups, core department staff, and then uh go into information gathering and community engagement.

Um, and that's detailed there and how we're gonna seek out public comment October.

Uh we will be hopefully uh identifying which consultants will be working with us and supporting the drafting process.

Um, Joanna and I will be able to onboard them to the work that the commission has done so far.

Um, we're gonna conduct those strategy development sessions with the core departments and um conduct more focus groups and key informant interviews to help inform those strategies, and then again receive public comment on the drafted um strategic plan, and uh then publish the community-wide survey.

So, ideally, people would be able to reply to each department with their um feedback on the drafted goals and strategies.

Take us into November, where it's just drafting, drafting, drafting.

Uh, we'll continue scheduling meetings with departments as needed to uh refine the strategic plan.

Uh December, surprise, more drafting, um, and we will continue with the community engagement events and schedule additional focus groups and meetings as needed.

Um, we're hoping that by the end of January 2026, which is rapidly approaching, um, we will enter a 30-day public comment period and receive city council feedback uh hopefully simultaneously so that they can be integrated simultaneously, and then in February, we will integrate those public comments and submit to um the public safety task force.

Is that what they're yeah, and then public safety committee, and then uh bring it to City Council for approval, and that gives us a bit of a buffer just in case there is not um they don't immediately approve of the C VRP.

Yeah, um, and just because it even caught me off guard, C VRP stands for community violence reduction plan.

I'm a consultant, we love acronyms.

It's a long acronym, and we already have a lot of acronyms.

So I just wanted to make that clear for the public.

Um, thank you so much, vice chair, for putting this together.

I also just want to clarify our offer one more piece and then check with the rest of the commissioners if you have any feedback or questions about the work plan.

Um just as a preliminary matter, this is a living document.

We are drafting it and then we're putting it into action and then we're changing it along the way.

Um since we're not doing our goals as strategies workshops with the different departments, like vice chair said, we would like to do a full strategies workshop with um community members, and our current tentative date is September 27th.

Uh, it will be from 12 to 5 o'clock.

Um we will work to confirm this date once we have a venue and a place that's conducive to a workshop.

So we're not like out here and y'all are out there so we can actually come back and interact more easily.

Um, and then we'll we'll inform you when that happens.

Um we'll inform you once we have the final information so we can put out a uh a notice and a flyer earlier, and we can get more community input as well.

And this will be an opportunity to hear what the goals are the departments have set, and also chime in on those goals and chime in on those strategies.

Um and those that is my comment for now.

I wanted to hear from the other commissioners, yeah.

Commissioner Dixon.

I'm comfortable.

This job done.

No follow-up.

Okay, I do have one additional question.

Um, because I thought we were doing the surveys at a later point, but I'm seeing that we're actually the goal is to publish a community-wide survey in October.

That is the goal.

Depending on the availability of the key staff uh members that we need to talk to to get all the goals and the strategies going, it may um be closer to November, but we can also um publish and keep it open as needed as we go through the process.

Got it, okay.

So just for the sake of community-based organizations, they may be wondering about how to give input, right?

Like, we're still figuring out the exact dates as you can see, but we're going to have September 27th, as I mentioned, as bigger, broader, not just leaders of CBOs but community members as a whole.

Um if you are in interest, a CBO that's working on a particular strategy and you would like to meet with us.

Can we can people reach out so we can have focus groups?

Yeah, absolutely.

Um I can be Felicia's um uh email is on the city website, and I can be reached at Commissioner Owens at gmail.com.

Um, yeah, we still do have to put together the focus group protocols to ensure there's like continuity.

Um in all honesty, it may end up being closer to October that we're able to see like more robust public comment because we don't want to bring you anything that's too um too in draft form.

Uh yeah, and then we'll get those focus groups scheduled, but it would be great to get a uh running list of people who'd be interested in contributing.

Yeah, okay.

So if you'd like to be involved, you can reach out to Felicia or myself or the vice chair.

I think many of you have our contact information already.

Um additionally, I think I think it's worth just mentioning this as a clarification, and I would have to double triple check that this is accurate with the city attorney's office.

But you know, when we're putting together this four-year violence reduction plan, we're gonna be outlining strategies and tactics for reaching the goals that are um indicated in measure and and we are not gonna be deciding as a commission which NBO uh which CBO that works on a particular strategy is gonna get funding.

So while it's very helpful to hear from all of you and to know your associations with CBOs, you know, to Commissioner Dixon's point, we're not gonna be deciding this CBO versus that CBO that that's a uh you know, a contracting um procurement process that the city goes through.

Um and um we still would love to hear data obviously for because you know best, right?

Doing this work on the ground what strategies are working, um, so you can inform us of what's working and we can you know then consider those ideas as part of the plan.

Okay, anything else on the work plan?

No, okay.

Um, Chair, we do have public comment on item five.

On item five.

Okay, let's take it.

Okay, down donkey.

Uh I'm a member of the Maxwell Park Neighborhoods Council, and I've approved before you before about community policing, as Jose Dorado also talked about.

Your work plan totally ignores the proven violence prevention strategy in 7935, and you really ought to look it up.

I'll quote some of the warehouses.

Whereas two decades, cities and police departments have shown that that uh strategies for reducing 9 1 1 response and utilizing the process known as community policing.

Police departments, the experience of police departments have that have adopted community policing strategies, demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach in both reducing crime levels and increasing the sense of public safety.

As you know, there are the the program consists of 45 neighborhood councils.

They develop strategies through coordination with the police department, who used to have uh community resource officers and still do, who work with the community who identify hot spots or identify crime spots, work them either through the police department or through city staff if other departments are required to close down those houses.

Uh those those are called uh community resources.

I mean uh community service.

Uh what is it, Paula?

Community service, neighborhood services coordinators for the city.

So they coordinate the city response and police response.

And in terms of uh documentation, no longer have anything.

You don't longer have it, it should be refunded.

This is the program that should be considered a violence protection.

In terms of data, there's a SARA database kept by the police department.

I don't know whether they they still should do it.

So every priority that's identified by a neighborhood council, and there are 45 of them, these are all volunteers working that system.

The police take it through a process of identifying the process, finding the solution, and solving that crime issue, or neighborhood issue.

So there is data that the police have to show the effectiveness of this system in addressing problems in neighborhoods.

So your work plan totally ignores this violence prevention strategy, and I think you ought to really take a closer look at 79235, two other points.

The community policing advisory board, which monitors that is currently revising this policy to keep it in effect and updated it.

Yeah, I think that I think that's all I have to say, but there is data.

Okay.

Well, thank you, Mr.

Lacey.

I understand your point about the importance of neighborhood councils to be clear.

Down on donkey.

Donkey.

Sorry, so sorry.

Um we this this what we have before you is the work plan is just our strategy for the next few months.

The actual violence reduction plan obviously has not been drafted yet.

So what uh might be what I'm hearing you say might that we can consider is to meet with neighborhood councils that are functioning, right?

Like there are many that you know, many of the beats they didn't come together or they fell apart over time, but there's some that are very active, maybe like yours.

So that's a lot more than I think, but just okay.

Thank you for that idea.

So I could community speaker.

Hey, I just wanted to follow up on what you just brought up about community policing.

I was a community community policing officer in uh East Oakland from 1997, 98, 99, 2000.

Now, I'm sure you remember uh those were the best years in Oakland as far as the homicide rate.

Uh my B was B 32, which is ninety-eight, to uh San Diego from uh I believe Mc MacArthur all the way down to uh Subrani.

Um, and those were probably I was there for about two to three years, and probably the best two, three years of my career.

Uh we worked very close with the community.

They had community members going back to UN CPC and all that.

They had our direct back then we had pagers, we didn't have phones, so they would page us and we go no laughing.

So they would page us, and then we go to the pay phone or back to the station, make a phone call, and eventually towards like 1999, we did get some cell phones, so we would call them back directly.

Um it was very uh one-on-one, it was intimate, it was very uh covert, um, and they and the citizens were able to call us and and knew that they were not gonna get burnt for from uh the folks that were involved in the community activity.

Um again, so I agree with it 100%.

I will see what I can do on my part, and I don't need to look at stats.

We I knew those stats because it was my own experience.

Um I wish you could go back, but for that to happen, in my opinion, the department has to be stable, stable so there's not a whole lot of movement.

So that means that that one officer that's there, he's gonna be there three years from now.

That next six months he doesn't get transferred or resign or get fired.

Uh, you need some consistency, some some stability for that to happen.

And back in 1998, we had that, 97, 98, 99, 2000, we had that.

Uh there was not such a big exit of officers like we we have now.

So I agree with you 100%.

And I don't need to look at stats.

Um to don't.

So thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Carson, for sharing your experience.

It's very helpful to hear.

And yes, the resource officers were constantly being were being moved a lot over the last many years.

So that was an issue that many of us faced going to the neighborhood council meetings.

Okay, more public comments?

Yes.

Think three more speakers in the room, and then we'll check on Zoom.

Uh Jose Dorado.

Well, not just uh what a great asset on your board, uh, your commission to have a former uh CRO in my respects, because that is uh the the linchpin of community policing, uh the CROs and the collaboration with the neighborhood councils.

I would suggest that the um that the commission uh set up um the meetings regarding the questions that you have and the feedback you're you're soliciting, soliciting uh with the different um OPD area, neighborhood council chair meetings that I understand are happening throughout the city.

Um I'm in OPD District 5.

I understand the next one will be the second Tuesday of September.

Is that correct?

Uh I have to look at this.

The point being that if I'm not mistaken, each of the OPD areas have meetings with the city and OPD and the neighborhood chairs.

It's an excellent opportunity to meet in one room, a great deal of of uh of experience and passion uh in regard to the kind of questions that you have.

So I would very much uh uh suggest you do that.

Um, and also uh I I gave I gave uh Felicia a copy of 79235, uh, and one of the things I would point to and always have is the last whereas, and it talks about community policing assists in the empowerment of neighborhoods.

That's a key concept, empowerment of the neighborhoods, and that's what would come from the building of the infrastructure that I spoke to I spoke about uh previously.

The other the last thing I will mention is that the police commission passed this community policing department policy twice unanimously.

We worked six months every other Saturday, not just commissioners, but we had eight to ten good solid community people, and we worked hard on this for over six months to knock this out, and there's another copy there with you.

So please take a look at that, uh particularly in terms of the duties of the CROs.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay, um, the next speaker is uh Lisa Watkins Tanner.

Okay, so I just want to, and you you have to forgive me.

I just want to speak on something that's critical that we're not talking about enough, and it was one of the main things that brought measure in dollars to us, and that's dispatchers, 911.

Um, dispatchers are the first voice that someone hears when the world's falling apart.

They direct the right response, come the chaos, keep everybody safe, including uh the police, firemen, and EMS.

But right now, they're stretched way too thin.

Oakland received over a million uh numbers for you.

911 calls in 2022, almost half were answered within the 15 second standard.

Um, and just this past year, we're averaging about 34 um seconds per call.

Uh that's 34 seconds of fear.

That's 34 seconds too long when somebody's life is on the line.

We keep talking about patrol over time, but if that call isn't picked up, none of it matters.

So I'm asking this commission to make sure that dispatch staffing, training, and tech upgrades are in the plan because when dispatch falls, so do we?

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you, Ms.

Tenner.

It's one of the goals of Measure and N for sure.

And actually, I'd like to check in with our vice chair if we can include we can ask OPD to include dispatch leaders in our meetings.

I was just thinking that that's excellent.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Okay.

Public comment put into action.

Thank you.

The next speaker, Paul Hawthorne.

Yes, Paula Hawthorne.

Um, I am uh still very confused about the uh DVP spending plan, which will result in um contracts being given to uh CBOs for three to four years, and that will be committing the measure in and money for three to four years.

And my question is, how does that interact with the strategic plan?

Does the strategic plan not include um strategies that the uh DVP is um advocating?

The DVP has four strategies, they don't include many of the strategies that um you will be hearing about later.

People have other ideas for what strategies to include.

Um, and of course, we knew do know that you will not be giving money, giving contracting directly.

On the other hand, if a strategy is not funded, it's not funded.

And and so the strategic issue here is very important.

I have not seen on your agenda any consideration of the spending plan that was given to you that has those four strategies already laid out.

If that means that you just agree with them and you're gonna go along with it, and the money that is spent there is just fine with you for your four-year plan, then that's one thing.

But otherwise, I'd like to see a little discussion around how that's going to actually interact.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Ms.

Hawthorne, for that input.

It's very important.

We need to discuss.

Okay, if you're on if you're on Zoom and you have um if you would like to speak during public comment on agenda item number five.

Please raise your hand.

Chair, I don't see any any hands raised on Zoom, excuse me.

Okay, so we don't have any more hands on in person or in Zoom on agenda item number five?

Yes, correct.

Okay, so I'm thinking y'all that we should take a little break for 10 minutes and then come back and move to agenda number item number six when we're gonna hear more from you, um, and from the folks on Zoom.

Um, and then we'll go from there.

Does that work for the commission?

It does.

Okay, so it's 726.

Let's reconvene.

It's 736.

Thank you all.

We have to run one.

So, we're not drawing schedule.

Oh, just respect.

Um, it's a good one.

I know, but it's like, if you have a cheapest here, like you can just go.

I don't know if it's a little bit of a lot of the exports.

I need to go back to the end of the country.

Oh, I don't know what that would be just a little bit.

I think we're going to have to get out of here.

I do that.

But you might think so.

I don't know.

Um, I would be discussing it just to help the work, like, well, uh, support.

So I don't know, but they don't get it.

Um, that's a little bit more.

Um, I mean, I think we've got someone, but sure about the library, and I think we can make it away.

So, it's not a right.

So, you probably have to use the channel.

Well, you know, I say, I think it's hard.

So, I'm sorry, I mean, I was in 77, you know.

So, I'm declaring it.

So, I'm checking the right.

Um, that's what I have to do.

So, we put it in, like, we did that.

I would say one of the open numbers, like, because that's hard to do it.

If you're captured by that, so you should still have a lot of people.

Yeah.

So, I think what I'm going to do.

Well, no, no, they have to do it.

I don't know if I'm sorry.

I don't know.

I don't want to go.

Okay, I think that's the key.

So, you know, it's a good one.

I think that's a I think.

So, I'm going to go to the U.S.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a whole line.

But I know when you have to swim down, like, so I can promise it, I don't know.

Oh, um especially like one of the first.

Oh, yeah, I got this.

Oh, that's right.

Oh, well, I think that's a good one.

I think I've got all the one.

Oh, it's one.

Oh, we need to go.

Oh, okay.

I don't know.

Okay.

So, yeah.

Definitely.

Oh, we can't do it.

Oh, I thought it's right.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

And I really need to go to my phone.

I'm very powerful.

If you are on the side.

Oh, I'm going to come back.

Okay.

Okay.

I just want to.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I don't know.

I don't think it's one.

Oh, obviously.

Oh, I'm going to get a little more tasty for the first time.

I was trying to catch up.

I'll be able to get the so I will try to catch it myself.

Yeah, we're just going to see you.

Exactly.

So we reverse it.

So we need another one.

I thought I don't have to make it.

All right.

So you know, that's one of the things that we just want to do that.

So we need to use that.

I don't know.

So it's all about that.

So what I'm trying to say is that the first problem is to be able to work.

And the problem is that the main factory is the control.

I mean it's one of them just larger number of.

Download all those.

So I think that's a good one.

Sounds like we want that.

So I did not say that.

So it's not going to be a good thing.

So I have to have a good one.

I have a lot of people who have a lot of people who are not here.

I hope you had some good conversations.

A little bit more pizza.

Next time we gotta get more pizza.

May the agenda slightly and have the OPD presentation go before the community input section because our two folks from OPD have to go soon and they've been very patient with us.

So I'd like to make that motion for the commission to consider um that we um basically switch the order of uh agenda items six and eight.

Do we have a second?

Yes, okay.

So uh Commissioner Dixon is is um raising a second, so we'll take the roll call.

Okay, we have a motion um by Chair Chukleva and a second by uh Commissioner Dixon to move um agenda number eight to six and vice versa, and I will call the roll.

Ummissioner Dixon.

Aye.

Commissioner Carson Boom, Vice Chair Owens, aye, and Chair Chukleva.

Aye.

Motion passes unanimously.

Okay, wonderful.

So um Captain U.

I you're up in the to the podium uh whenever you're ready.

I think you have a presentation for us.

Maybe some questions and answers.

Let us know.

Of course, thank you.

And the I'm sorry, um Captain Yu's presentation is in the agenda packet.

Um on page 14.

Uh, good evening, everybody, commissioners, everybody here.

It's a pleasure to meet everyone.

Uh gives me an opportunity to come um say hi to the uh public safety committee and everyone who volunteers their time out here.

So thank you so much.

Uh as as introduced, I'm Captain Alan U.

Uh, um, normally I'm the area three commander um in charge of pretty much the lake over to the fruitville area.

Um currently, as today, I am trying to fill in for uh Chief Tedesco as acting deputy chief, actually acting assistant chief.

Uh so and present his report.

Uh it was submitted.

Uh I believe the um the commission had uh multiple questions for the police department uh that were scheduling out, kind of getting the information back so the commission is uh fully briefed.

Um hopefully everyone had opportunity to go through the uh questions and answers provided by Chief Tedesco.

Um also with me today is our uh fiscal manager, Miss Uh Raja Marshall.

She can assist us with answering question number seven.

Uh a couple of the line items that the commissioner had question uh the commission had questions about last time.

Um, and I'll invite her up now.

Okay, thank you.

Welcome, Miss Marshall.

Thank you.

Through the chair, my name is Laranja Marshall, fiscal services manager for the Oakland Police Department.

And for question number seven, it pertained to the breakdown of the contracts.

800K versus what 800,000, sorry, versus 175,000 for the previous year.

And so the 800,000 is going to fund three contracts.

700,000 is allocated for the enterprise contract, which was recently approved the resolution 90768, which allows the department to spend up to 800,000 per year for enterprise for rental cars.

The additional 100,000 is for cell bright and for trackers, and then we have an additional 40,000 for online subscription, which supports the trackers.

And so that is what the 8400 is allocated for.

The whole OM, like the maintenance is a million dollars, which was allocated for fiscal year 25-26.

And I can submit the actual, I'm not sure if it was submitted last time, but I can submit the actual spending plan and the net's agenda report.

Yeah, the spending plan was submitted, but those allocations were not included in it.

It was just like a general line item.

Okay.

So if you can submit um just like a table with what you said, that would be helpful and just for our for our learning.

You said sell bright sell bright, yes.

What is so bright and trackers?

It is a tracking mechanism for cell phones.

Okay, um, and then you said the biggest item within that is the 700k that goes to rental cars and enterprise correct per year.

Correct.

Okay.

Um, I know Commissioner Carzboom had some questions around the rental cars.

Would you like to ask the financial manager?

No, I'll just um email me as a request for the next meeting because I'm I mean it's not planning.

I'm sure you won't have that specific information.

Okay.

Which units are gonna have rental cars?

I can email it so you don't have to.

Oh, yeah, then you have a month to uh to get the the uh the questions and we're going to celebrate it's a machine that basically downloads the phones, uh yes.

Um yes, sorry.

Um, there's too many things.

Um is there a reason why the um 800 grand for rentals, etc.

was not included in the uh general city budget for OPD, and it were you all counting on it being uh just approved by the by the opspoc.

Oh sorry about that.

I apologize.

So during the budget process of preparing, um, it was that ceasefire has always been ceasefire in the chief's office that pays for most of the rental cars, and so this allowed the opportunity for ceasefire to pick up most of the responsibility for this miniature.

It is a pretty substantial increase in what you're asking ceasefire to be responsible for, is can you explain the like threefold increase?

So for the for FY2526, the allocation altogether was significantly higher.

It was 26.1 million dollars that was allocated just for measure in and whereas in the previous year there was 18.3 million dollars, so there was more funds available.

But was there a higher need?

We still spend so how would I answer this for you?

So it's up to 700k, but does it mean that we're gonna spend the whole entire 700K on the on the rental cars?

So we can spin up to 700k, but we'll use like check-in monthly how much we're spending.

So it's just an allowance that we're able to do through resolution through the resolution for the contract.

Yeah, we we hear that we have a lot more questions about the rental cars because there's real concern around misuse of rental cars.

Um also I have a concern around why is the rental car spending coming out of measure and n funds in particular, rather than the broader OPD budget since it's not only community resource officers, right, that are using rental cars.

It's not only positions paid under measure and then funding that uh allow for those officers to use rental cars.

Right.

I can't particularly answer that question at this moment.

It would have to be the project manager that's over the enterprise contract.

Okay, so go ahead, Commissioner.

Do you have the numbers of uh the rent cars the previous year?

Not in front of me, but I can provide that in the email at a later date.

Okay, I'll just I'll just include that all that in those questions or via email.

Okay.

Okay.

Nixon, anything?

No.

Okay.

Um do we have any questions about the union um regulations?

Um I don't have any tooltime.

I don't have questions about the union regulations per se.

I'm glad to hear that there is mandatory downtime.

Um, I do, however, have questions about the response to number 12.

Having looked it over, I don't find it responsive to our question.

Um, we we are very aware how understaffed Oakland PD is, especially compared to other cities.

It's something that we're actively interested in getting OPD up to the um the floor as defined in Measure NN.

However, none of the questions were answered.

Um yes, we know that you do not have the staff, but we it was there is not an answer to which services OPD provides that OPD feels exceeds its resources or responsibilities.

There is also not an answer to how much overtime is used to account for these services that you feel may be best done by a different department.

And um when asked which services you feel could better handle or could be better handled by another city department or CBO, there is also not an answer.

There's um a mention of macro, but not any details about how they may help alleviate the police burden or how macro and OPD may work closer together.

Um I'm a little disappointed in these answers because I it's not responsive and it's something that we need to know to make an informed plan.

Uh obviously this is uh Chief Tedesco's uh response to everyone.

Um so I'm not gonna try to interpret his response on this one.

I do see your your your questioning, the fact that uh the response does not fully answer it does not at all.

The uh the question that you the team posed.

Yeah.

Um I will have to respond with uh uh Chief Tedesco next month regarding that.

Thank you.

I think what we're gonna do is write a response to his memo with more questions, um and kind of reiterating some of the questions that we have that were not answered here.

Um I understand that you prefer requests in writing, so we'll combine that with Commissioner Carsboom's requests um for the rental cars issue specifically.

Um yeah, we hope to get more detailed answers and be able to speak, you know, which of the skull next time or anybody who can we can do actually do follow-up with.

Um then is there anything just from your position, Captain U, because it's our first time meeting you and you seem really great.

I'm just joking, everybody seems really great.

Can you um just let us know just based on the discussion we've had so far with community members with the mayor?

Do you have any input on how community policing policing is something that's brought up constantly, you know, by by our um by our folks in the community who are giving input um and you do you oversee community policing in your area?

Yes, as a special resources commander, normally in area three.

I also had the uh additional uh assignment of um being the commander for all um the community resource officers on the west end of the city.

So they had split them up and and um I was also in charge of them.

Obviously, there's only one squad currently um being divided through three areas.

So pretty much I have two to three officers community resources resource officers per area, and I think um earlier speaker was referring to per beat.

Um ideally, obviously if we have the resources to do that, that'd be fantastic.

I myself I'm gonna speak for my opinion and my experience.

Um I haven't worked with Felicia back then when I was foot patrol in Chinatown as the Asian liaison officer.

Not officially a community resource officer, but pretty much served a very similar function where we attend community meetings, work on beat projects, and um to me policing 101.

Just get to know people, find out what the problems are, and let's work on solutions together.

Um work very well, continues like um Commissioner Carsboom said.

Um during that time, probably the the the most joy.

I'd say I still love this job, but the most joy I've had.

Solving problems, um, getting that kind of the care at and the stick from the community.

Um there's a win.

There's wins every day.

We we we always for our patrol officers who go out there and face the worst time in someone's life every day, 99% of the time.

Um community resources, community resource officers at least get that like that that win because we're meeting people um that that's the reason we're serving yourselves that care about the community instead of seeing the the one percent of negativity every day.

Um so community policing to me doesn't just work, it also helps our officers change their morale um to get some wins during the day.

Um so it's kind of my opinion on that.

Yeah, very strong community resources, but also I understand there's uh many community groups here, and I work with multiple community groups.

It's a it's a it's you we're trying to divide up resources that are very, very minuscule now, and everyone's trying to get a piece, and it's you have uh as a commission a very tough job to find a figure out a policy that makes everyone happy and get results.

Um I'm here to support, I'll give you whatever answers I can give you, and my opinion.

Um if there's any other questions here regarding the budget or overtime, I can also give you my opinion on that.

Yeah, thank you.

It looks like Commissioner Dixon has a follow-up.

Thank you for that.

Let me just back up a little bit on this uh rental car transportation.

Is it possible we could see the policy on how you spin the money and what makes a decision on who can go get the car when they go go get the car and how it's uh how it's checked, how it's monitored for abuse and those things.

That would be probably the best thing to start me off with.

What is your policy?

Because the policy tells the truth, and we want to, you know, be able to look at that if there's measure in and money, does it even meet the policy of measure and that it should be spent that way, and maybe it may have to be moved to another part.

I'm not saying that you don't need it.

I'm just saying let us take a look at the policy.

Sure, definitely the policy.

We do have a rental car pol uh rental car policy.

Uh we'll get that for you on the next next meeting.

Um, yeah, based on line of questioning, it seems like all the entire rental car funds were paid through NN.

I'll follow up on that that that money uh everything's tracked, so um it's easy to follow that money.

I think um Captain, if I if I could um chair, um through the chair, uh I think what the commission is requesting is why.

Yeah, I'm I'm I'm surprised as much as because are in the um measure and in spinning plan.

Yeah, I was surprised it sounds like almost all the because we have we have so many reasons to use rental cars.

Obviously, the community resource officers needed for I I've used them on international to fight human trafficking as undercover vehicles, but we also have a huge amount when we do back then major deployments for protests.

Um so I don't know that chunk should be protest money or so we'll look into that.

But I'm just I'm just trying to explain the different ways we use rental cars and the chunks of if we're looking at funds because for a major deployment for a huge demonstration, I need 20 rental vans, the big ones, and that that's a lot of money from enterprise.

Right, and there's nothing in Measure N or previously in Measure Z about.

So we'll look deeper into numbers and get back to you on that.

Yeah.

I think you understand this, right?

Like the the measures were passed by taxpayers with specific goals.

And funding can be used only for to achieve those goals to achieve the purposes under the measures.

Something like protests is not covered.

Yeah, I'm just saying I would look at if we look into the the funds and where it came from, should show.

Yeah, okay.

One more question, please.

Yeah.

Uh just more of a general comment.

Um, I think as we move forward with the strategic planning process, um, it would be a good rule of thumb to bring every line item with a lot of detail about specifically how it addresses the measure and then objectives and um why there may be an increase or a decrease from previously requested funds.

Um especially since you know, if the strategic planning process is just getting going, obviously, we we uh take into account all the requests and the information that's provided, but given that a lot of our requests for information have yet to be provided, um, it does make it challenging.

So in the interests of efficiency, that would be great.

Okay, yeah, go ahead.

Going back to what we talked about earlier um about the low staffing.

I understand it a hundred percent, and it's hard to recruit retain officers.

Who at OPD currently is in charge of finding ways to increase staffing, not the normal or the way we used to do.

For example, I go back to Santa Claire, San Jose, they use paid reserve officers to do to fulfill certain position concerts.

For example, the PGE detail in Oakland, right?

We have officers fulfilling that PGE detail.

It's a position that could be handled by a res paid reserve officer, right?

So that that beat officer is now working a full week, and then um you know, t tagging on one or two days of PG<unk>E detail or concert or soccer game or event.

So that will help the staffing, but no one, at least not to our knowledge, is looking at other ways to increase staffing, not the traditional way, um, who will be in charge of that task of increasing the reserve program and things like that.

Because we still we don't we ask for how many reserves does OPD have and we didn't get an answer.

Um I know we have two reserve officers listed.

Um are they um able to be deployed?

No.

They they haven't received um the updated training to be deployed.

Uh we'll use them in different other ways.

Um kind of like um Commissioner Dixon said, if we could make them take reports, uh help out, um, and also of course they're volunteer.

So depends on how much hours they're willing to volunteer uh a month or a pay period.

Um but regarding recruiting and retention, um obviously the chief is uh has is in charge of all of it, but uh under Bureau of Services, uh our recruiting department uh and uh deputy um director subtle.

Greg, but uh I'm going back to for example, I believe San Jose has at least sixty to hundreds.

I don't have the exact numbers.

They're looking at about around 62 over 100.

I don't have the exact numbers, and they're paid reserves.

Paid reserves, paid reserves.

As what can OPD look at paid reserves, for example, I know quite a few retired OPD officers that would come back as paid reserve for assignments, paid assignments, for example, PGE uh Coliseum events, parades, and things like that.

Um no one is looking at those different venues or bringing staff back in, or they could do I've even talked to at least one investigator.

He does cold cases as a new attendant and things like that.

I don't I'm not sure if OPD has that a new attendant that does cold cases, uh that works on cool cases.

No, that uh uh definitely those are all a new attempts, uh paid reserves are all additional ideas that we we can be looking into.

Um I will have to come back with uh Chief Dedesco on find out why we didn't or we can't.

Correct.

Because I know San Jose, they're they're they're active.

The reserve paid reserves are active.

Uh Santa Clara as well.

For example, you go to 49er games.

Most of the calls seem is is staffed by reserve officers, paid reserve officers.

Um I mean, that's just something that OPD should, but I'm not sure who's responsible for that.

I don't I know you are you're not that's not your task, but we're just trying to find out who is responsible for looking at different ideas.

Yeah, we uh um and I appreciate the additional ideas and and seeing from other I think we we've looked at it, but uh I will have to get back to you about why we didn't or why we couldn't.

It could be no POA issue.

It could be, but but I I'm not going to say something that isn't true.

Yeah, um it could be, and and it could have been that that they fought against a new a new attempt position, but I'm not sure.

But then at the op at that point, you'll probably have to look at the bigger picture, not just the OPOE.

They have to look at we need bodies and we need these these position fields or these assignments field.

Thank you, Commissioner Chris.

Commissioner Dixon.

Once again, he brings up a good note.

I'm even willing to do the extra help officer that's retired to come in and do 900 hours a week.

I mean, 900 hours a year.

Because if you can still he can retire out, he can you know he gets his extra pay.

He doesn't get what the regular officer makes, but he comes in and do it, and that lifts our numbers up.

There has we we have to get by the, and let me just hit the cow in the room.

We have to get by the union and them wanting to get all the overtime, and I want them to get overtime.

I want them to be well paid.

But at the same time, if we're down to 600 something officers, and I go to Cincinnati and find out they got off their decree because they had 1,200 officers.

And I go to other cities and find out that they had five or six or seven hundred officers, and they raise theirs up to eight to nine hundred officers so they can have the bodies to do the job.

And don't get me wrong, we don't want to be over police, but I understand that we need these type of people in to get the job done.

And we we we're not getting no answers.

We've been asking this question now for the last three meetings.

We don't have a lot of time, and so uh I don't want to call the chief, but we want to we want to get somebody down here who can answer this question because it's important to our strategy and our plan of where we're trying to help you.

And all this is trying to help OPD have the numbers that they need, that they can do their job, that I can have my community officer, I can have my ceasefire teams, I can have everything in place to do everything that we need to do.

When an enforcement action is needed.

But we keep getting a to me, you know, once again, I'm that type of guy.

I don't see the transparency or the stuff that's coming in.

He asks, I've asked, and this isn't the first time I'm not getting on you, but we're doing this again and again, and every time we come, we get we meet with the same resistance, and then the people that's online listening, then the community listen, and then they get mad and they take everything we just said and they go tell everybody Dixon told them this, and and Commissioner said this, and the commissioner said this, and it makes in the end it makes people go, Well, what are they hiding?

I know you're not hiding anything.

I talked to enough of you guys, but we need to help you, so give us some answers to this, or give us what you're going to do to raise the numbers.

Four academies is not enough.

I asked a simple question of this another question.

How many guys are on the classic plan?

That's three at fifty, and how many of those guys are eligible for retirement in the next five years?

Because they're probably gonna leave if they're three at fifty.

And you know what that means.

So how many of those guys are in the classic plan that don't get to retire?

They get to retire at 50 instead of 57.

And how many of those guys are gonna leave and where that's gonna leave us in another five years or six years?

These are the questions we're asking, and we're not getting answers.

I'm through.

I'd be happy to speak frankly about that.

I wish I had an answer for retention for the entire law enforcement profession, especially here in Oakland.

I don't.

There's morale, there's NSA, there's discipline, kind of what the mayor said as well.

Um we have to battle it in so many fronts with no resources.

And three at 50, you're right, sir.

You are predicting a very grim, I would say, result in the next nine years.

Because I'm still on the 50 plan.

And when I get the 50, I'm sorry, I'm retiring.

But we're there it's it's if I had a solution, like we we push morale.

I do I've done Baker to Vegas.

I I I've we try a lot of ways to keep our officers here, and there's a lot of obstacles for them, and um, some of the times it's just money.

If you look at the dollar amount, like the mayor had said, some some agencies are offering signing bonuses.

We don't do lateral programs.

That's another thing.

Um, but are we gonna spend the resources right now on a lateral program that might net us one person when we spent resources that cost more than one person?

Um if you want the numbers straight up, sir, we're attritioning at a five 5.1 to six officers a month, 12 months, 72, about 65 to 72 officers a year.

We run two academies.

Let's say we get 30 officers, and that's very promising.

That's 60 officers a year, we're negative.

We run three, we make about 10 a year.

Run four, now we're making about 40 a year.

Um that's uh that's a numbers.

Um, but our attrition rate used to be three to four, now we're at six.

That's the truth.

Uh, there's so many reasons for that.

We would go on all night about that, sir.

Um, and we could try to solve each one of those, uh, bring in different communities as well, and try to get every piece we can.

And I don't that's what we're trying to do.

Get every piece from the reserve officers from background recruiting.

Um, but the truth is we're not we're we're not getting that right now.

Our academy, what our first our current academy, we ended up failing 26, I believe.

How many?

Uh no, we failed 26 when we were trying to fill about 30.

Sorry, I thought you said fail.

Excuse my.

But yeah, yeah, but when it comes down to it, um we're uh the department is trying to chief Chief Mc Mitchell, myself, Chief Tedesco, uh we're um, and I'd say the entire community is trying to find ways to bring in more people.

That's why you're here.

I wish I could give you an answer, then we would have pushed that button and done it.

Um, it's tough to pick the perfect solution that would give us the most people, qualified people.

Um we've tried so many ways from social media, from recruiting at different job fairs, going out of state, but we're netting what we net right now.

Um I'm always open to bringing better best the guest candidate and the number of candidates back to Oakland.

Um, the cadet program.

I don't know if uh Commissioner Carson Boom remember when I was a cadet.

I remember when you were a baby.

Yeah.

I was a baby in the baby blues.

I went to Cal Berkeley.

Um, and I found out Oakland to me, Oakland was the place.

So Oakland has had me for 23 years.

Um that program is gone.

That's another thing we lost.

If we could that that's another idea for long-term recruitment and retention.

Because my cadet mates are still here.

Most of them.

Um Chief Allison was a cadet.

Uh Chief Figaro was a cadet.

Um, we it doesn't even retain it retains leaders here in the department.

Um so the cadet program, I would say it might not be a four-year results, but that program to me has been fruitful.

Not just our officers.

They're on part-time 900 hours.

And you're paying them cadet rate at like, I don't know, $15 an hour.

Maybe they're at 20 now.

I don't know.

I was making 12.

And that was the most money I made.

But still, those are my ideas.

I hope that helps.

To get it running.

There's really only need one coordinator.

But and one coordinator, but in reality, it takes a whole police department.

I was placed in multiple rotation in backgrounds and recruiting.

Started off making copies.

Making copies on the bottom basement, then property division, then motors.

Yeah, you're able to then wherever you go, you're being um mentored by officers or that are here.

I remember Officer Sai FUFA drove me around.

Then you go on ride-alongs.

This becomes you understand the job because even in this academy that just we're running, two people quit in like the first week.

Because they're like, oh, this job isn't for me.

And they get paid, right?

For those two weeks they were there.

They get paid for those two weeks to figure out that this job is not for them.

Um I have one last question.

Um it seems that a big barrier to recruitment is the public perception of police.

That's not new news.

Um, and it is a dangerous job, it's a hard job, it's often thankless and tiring and sometimes even boring on shift, and you know, people don't realize that reality um all the time.

And so I'm wondering what you think, or if there are any existing programs or initiatives that you can point to that might start to change the public perception of policing within Oakland.

I would say it's a combo a lot of things.

We try to put up positive stories, get out to the community, but that also takes putting a pulling an officer off the street.

And you're right, the the perception I would say, since George Floyd or even for here, measure uh the Meser leave the bar shooting, um, the net the negativity toward law enforcement uh is extremely strong.

Um it takes.

To me, it's always taken um, it's like community policing 101.

When I get to know somebody, then it's not it's not this uniform.

It's a person.

Um, but um it's a combo of you are right that that has affected recruiting, but also I think overall, when COVID hit and a lot of people realized they could work from home, because a police officer does not get to work from home.

That also has definitely affected um recruitment uh as well, as well as many other jobs in the whole world.

Um, so when going um and speaking to other agencies, they're running into the same issue.

Oakland has a couple extra barriers, and I say we can attack those, but I say overall the whole entire negative uh law enforcement connotation in America.

Uh that that's uh that's a tough uh wish I had a solution.

So you would point to community policing as the initiative that deserves attention to go towards changing the perception of police in Oakland.

Yes, it does, it does.

I i it's one route to get to know people to show our uh that the the officers are are are just trying to do their part.

They're gonna make mistakes.

Uh, but we're gonna get the wins, and we're gonna have to suffer through some of the pains.

Um, so yeah, thank you.

Um to all the commissioners for this engaging conversation I I think there's a lot to the public perception.

I think the federal receivership Oakland is under continuously is also another barrier for some folks um but I especially want to thank you Captain U.

We put you on the hot spot with not very much preparation I'm sure to respond to questions from your heart and I appreciate how honestly you have spoken with us tonight and I hope that um you know we've we're doing some scheduling right to meet with um to have our first kind of session and then a focus group with OPD.

So you know our areas of interest now so we like to have uh the appropriate leaders in the room so we can continue to have these questions in this conversations.

Um and then Miss Felicia we have public comment I'm sure and do and I did want um I had one more additional question.

Sure um for Captain U regarding the Merit Academy or Merit College.

I don't know if you spoke to the results of of that program and does um do when uh students go through that program does a result and and uh more officers come into OPD because I know that's been another program that's been very important to I think that has brought us uh uh I don't have the exact numbers on which officers came from that program but it it's just uh it's another route that can help us funnel uh possible candidates interested candidates into uh law enforcement so um I don't have direct information with the merit program but I know it has brought us an officers um but I don't have the exact numbers so I can't really speak to a hundred percent to that question what is the merit program uh merit college I think uh a couple um chief jordan as well as chief lindsey it's it's it's a part of that is it a community college I'm sorry yes yes yeah community college they have I believe like a law enforcement program uh taught by some of our retired um officers or commanders and that they've help mentor individuals who are interested in law enforcement and then help them apply for Oakland.

Can I get you to talk to the powers to be that they should uh get that out to the community that they have something like that for young men young women that might want to learn how to be an officer I might want that job because if I don't know about it then I'm just thinking how many people don't know about it.

Yeah um I'll get the full information like I said I don't know I'm not directly involved with that program.

Um there also it could be um I would say monetary fees going into that program like you have to pay to to join that school so as a government um speaking for as a police captain I can't recommend something that or I can't purposely go hey you go here because there's there's money involved.

Okay thank you for that commission.

Yeah thank you Miss Tanner um no you're fine are we complete?

Thank you very much.

And um sorry put you in a hot seat for a quick second.

Um they gave me some bars and stars I'm captain that is my job we thank you.

No we're just trying to find who to have this conversation with it seems like we're not getting there.

Um I mean there's some ideas out there I mean all we can do is try and see uh it's work for other cities um so hopefully we can find out how can we make those changes here.

Yeah, I hope you guys find it and I'll help all you guys.

I hope the I'll do my best to give them whatever information I can um we're well all we can do is try.

Sometimes we miss.

It's like place work.

You know you know Eric.

Um, we'll try our best strategy out there and sometimes we'll miss.

Yes.

But hopefully we we get the win.

Thank you, Captain.

We we're gonna do it.

We're gonna do it.

If other cities can do it, we can do it.

I've had my share of misses.

Okay, we can talk about that.

Bye, Captain, and thank you so much, Miss Um Fiscal Manager.

Okay, do we have any public comment on this item?

Yes, yes, Chair.

Uh we have several speakers on this item.

You know what I'm saying?

Uh I believe we have um Jose Dorado for item number eight, which is now item number six.

And and um if there are if you have um any comments on this item in Zoom, please raise your hand.

And you have two minutes, Mr.

Okay.

Uh well, not just um uh the I would just mention that the the one of the areas that I would definitely uh ask the your commission look at is effective deployment of OPD officers.

And let me just say that again effective deployment.

And again, give you let me give you an example.

Two years ago, actually probably more like two and a half years ago, there was a study done by a gentleman name of David Mohammed and also a recently retired at that time deputy chief by the name of uh Chris Bolton.

What they did was they looked at the 911 uh system, and uh without going into a whole lot of detail, the bottom line was that they found, and uh DC Bolton didn't want to believe it, we went back over the data.

Half of the people go out, half of the cops going out of dispatch or nine-month calls were going to non-violent and non-criminal incidents.

Say that again.

Half of the cops going out of dispatch were going to non-violent non-criminal calls.

How is that possible?

Uh and um the uh the thing that I go back again to uh the CROs, there has to be a commitment by OPD and the city and the mayor to fund CROs.

They are the absolute critical piece in terms of their um, in terms of their own commitment to the community, their beats.

Uh so that has to happen.

Um the um, and uh regarding the public perception of OPD, well, if you haven't read the writers come out at night, you should uh and uh I would mention something very quickly that the CROs doing their jobs, good CROs are the best recruiters that we have for homegrown OPD police officers.

They're doing their jobs and doing them well is the best advertisement out there for being an Oakland police officer.

They have to be supported.

Okay, thank you.

So much Mr.

Do we have more public comment, Commissioner?

No, uh no, not at this time, Chair.

Okay, great.

Um, with that, I think we can move forward on the agenda.

I know it's getting late everybody, 824.

Thanks for hanging.

Um let's do agenda item six, which is more community input.

So if if there's more you want to let us know, we're here for it.

We love your ideas.

We're taking very specific notes.

Um, and after that we'll do a brief update on city attorney's office, and then we'll finish with the bylaws.

Um, um we offered some guiding questions for this section of the community input.

Um you're welcome to answer those or speak from the heart or share your prepared remarks.

But the guiding questions are what does public safety look like, feel like to you, um, in Oakland, and how should we define the goals of our four-year violence reduction plan?

Right, there's the big purposes of the measure.

Of course we're guided by those but you know what are are the more specific goals that we want to focus on.

Those are our questions.

Again there will be more opportunities as well but we would love to hear from you.

So thanks for being here.

Okay.

Um we have Chair there are five speakers on this item and perhaps uh Mr.

Dorado could stay at the microphone if you'd like to go next to speak on um agenda item number six.

And Chair did you want two minutes?

Yeah this is two minutes per speaker please not just again uh my name is Anton Narado um what my vision would be of public safety would be where you have this infrastructure that I speak of and that is that you have a whole you have block leaders identified trained and supported at the grassroots level there's a and have a mechanism by which they connect with other block leaders around them into a network of block leaders and you have those block leaders then connected with their local neighborhood council.

And of course you have the neighborhood councils connected up OPD area wide or uh council district wide doesn't matter and then citywide you have an infrastructure there that's directly based on a foundation of informed and connected block leaders.

That foundation is critical and obviously that's a foundation that then the community resources community resource officers would then tap into and there's a mechanism by which and uh that's part of the material that's included in the community policing uh uh policy that uh you you did give them uh Belicia you gave them the the policy right okay yes well I'm missing one if you have an extra comment okay I'll give you one resolution I would okay I'll definitely give you one thank you uh please take a look at not only 79235 but also the policy we spent so much time on because it in detail talks about the role of the uh community resource officer one of the things that is critic is a critical point in that is that the in our policy our proposed policy the community resource officer should be taking priorities through the SARA process now the SARA process is something that's been around for decades in police work stands for scan, analyze respond and assess it's completely logical totally linear and completely effective in my opinion.

And in fact the OPD does incorporate that but strangely enough all of the Sarah pri uh priorities they call them projects go into the SARA database and no one has access to it except for OPD which makes absolutely no sense at all.

Thank you.

Can I ask you a a follow-up question Mr.

Duardo um the block block leaders right those are community members they're not OPDE that's correct correct okay and there's no better resource for identifying those than the recently uh the recent uh national night outs anybody who would step up and do that is a potential block leader.

Uh-huh okay wonderful and then one more follow-up question if I may and this is also to anybody and I I don't have an answer but um to me this is a very important framework like you said it can build a foundation right for for interconnected community involvement and connection to OPD.

And it's now 20 years later.

30 30 30 years later June of 1996.

So obviously we're in a whole new world with technology and I'm thinking about how can we get more folks involved and how can we leverage technology right because some of the folks who maybe.

Yeah, those two questions.

How do we leverage technology and how do we get more folks in question?

Well, strangely enough, uh Mikey Bell just gave me a flyer that the um open oakland is back together.

They are a group of like you, pardon me, nerds that are more than welling uh and able to apply their skills and knowledge to exactly that sort of a question.

So I would hope that uh that uh Oakland would be um observant enough to take advantage of such a valuable community resource.

They really really are a resource that needs to be tapped.

Uh and um as I said, they're more more than willing to do that.

Okay, well thank you for that.

And yes, I think we're so gonna try to attend at least part of the unconference, and we can learn more and continue the conversation.

Thank you so much.

Yes, you're more than welcome.

Thank you.

You next speaker chair is Donald Donkey.

Okay, Mr.

Donkey.

Oh, okay.

Did you that plus one?

Got you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Um, and the the next speaker is Lisa Tanner.

Lisa Watkins Tanner.

No, I see that you're on you have item six.

No, no, we went back.

We we we get we went back.

Okay.

So again, my name is Lisa Watkins Tanner.

Um, I'm here representing um Oakland uh violence prevention coalition.

And one of the and people like Paula and Joan can tell you the history of how we came together.

Um, but I can tell you one of our missions.

Our missions is for children to be able to feel safe.

That's what we came together to do to keep people safe.

So to me, public safety doesn't start with sirens, it starts with stability.

It's um children walking to school without flinching.

It's looking um it's um neighbors knowing each other's names and not knowing each other's traumas.

It's keeping safety.

Um if we keep thinking safety um means more officers, more overtime, more reaction.

But reality, safe safety is prevention.

You get it before it starts, right?

Uh it's access to housing therapy, food, uh, credible people in the community who intervene before violence breaks out.

As we build this four-year plan, the goal should center around people, not just police.

Let's measure progress, not just by arrest and call for services, but how many young people are kept out of the system, how many families we rec we reconnect, how many community leaders we fund, and not just the same institutions we always defaulted to.

And let's not forget um again 911 services, um, and also I just want to talk briefly because when I was looking over um some of the budgets that were lined out.

Um, and I know you got gender-based violence down there, but um you also it's like uh gender-based violence and trafficking are competing with each other.

And right now we're a hub.

We're a hub.

Um on a daily basis, you can just walk down East 14th Street and see the um the individuals that are being probably trafficked.

Um, you know, um we generally because we deal a lot with um sex trafficking, you know, um sometimes we are called down to Stockton, sometimes we're called down to Sacramento.

You know, we have um sorry, my time.

Sorry, sorry.

It's a tough line.

If you uh I can give you an additional minute if you want to finish your comment.

I'm just gonna say, um, so I would like to see more parity there.

So we're those two because you know um partnership violence is also very important and you know what I mean, and um it traps people in cycles, um and perpetrates I can't say that word, it continues the violence.

Um so if we could just not have them compete and we could lose do a little parody there.

Thank you.

I got you okay, awesome.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Tanner.

Paula Hawthorne.

This is not the first time this question has been asked in Oakland.

In 2019, the Urban Strategies Council.

And if you go on Google and go to Urban Strategies Council Reports, you'll find rethinking violence prevention in Oakland, California.

This was an incredibly detailed study that did interviews of people on the street.

The problem with your strategy is you are asking people to come to you.

They hired people who were credible messengers to go out in the street and interview people to ask exactly this question.

I recommend that you read this report.

It's called Rethinking Violence Prevention in Oakland, California from the voices of the people most impacted, and that's what it was, and it's urban strategies.org.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Hawthorne.

We'll definitely read the report.

I know the report is on your list.

On your reading list.

Yes.

Yes, it is in the hard reading list.

Yes.

And they reimagined public safety task force also did surveys and reports.

We have a lot to read.

Anything else?

We have more comments, right?

Yes, Joan.

Ms.

Joan Hoffman.

And if you have a question and if you would like to speak to this item in Zoom, please raise your hand.

Hi, good evening, everybody.

I'm with the Violence Prevention Coalition and with How to Make a Village.

And I just wanted to kind of build on something that Paula said at the very beginning of this meeting, which has which is a community-based organizations, are um important and deserve a place in the whole um panorama of a strategy to reduce violence.

So I um just wanted to make a little pitch for um the data that we use to measure the performance of grassroots organization.

Um a lot of times the um the um data that they gather is fed into data of larger organizations, which then report on their outcomes.

So, but without independent visibility into what the grassroots organizations are actually doing, there's no way to verify that their specific contributions are being acknowledged or their data is actually reflected in citywide outcomes.

So we know that's that small organizations, grassroots organizations do exceptional work.

They're the boots on the ground and hearts in the neighborhood.

They win the trust of communities, but their form but their performance data um often doesn't get reflected um independently.

And so um we we're asking that the measure and an oversight committee not allow community wisdom to go unmeasured and unfunded.

Um so we're asking the oversight committee to require a public facing mechanism for tracking the work of subcontracted grassroots organization, either through disaggregated performing metrics, independent dashboard, or third-party reviews.

If you're developing a budget, um it's important to see all the parts.

Um we don't want our most impactful voices to be sort of um lost in um the um sort of larger and less granular reports.

So I did want to briefly present some data on the effect of grassroots organizations.

Is my time up?

Um, let's, yeah, you may have one additional minute.

And then also if there's anything you want to give us as as written copies later, we can also receive that.

Um, thank you.

So um, so reach the research compared NYU did a research program comparing crime mates and f crime rates and formation of new nonprofits across 264 American cities between 1990 and 2013, and they found that for every 10 additional grassroots organizations, organizations focused on crime prevention, neighborhood development, substance abuse, workforce development, and youth programming in a city with a hundred thousand residents.

They experience a 12% reduction in homicide rate, um, 10% in violent crime rate and 7% in property crime.

So those numbers are out there, and um I think it's important to take a look at them.

Um as far as what would um public safety would look like, I just want to put in a pitch for um substance abuse reduction, um, assistance, uh, prevention.

Um, I think that that would go a long way towards um reducing some kinds of crime.

So thank you.

Definitely really important ideas.

Thank you, Dr.

Hoffman.

Okay.

There are no hands raised in Zoom.

Okay, so we can quiet this evening.

Oh, I'm sorry.

One person just raised their hand.

Hello, um, Donald Frazier.

Um, Mr.

Frazier, I will allow you to talk.

And you can unmute yourself.

Donald, you can unmute yourself.

Oh, you can begin speaking now.

All right, thank you.

Okay, my name is Donald Frazier.

I'm the CEO of Golden Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, also known as boss, and also the executive director of uh RePAC, uh the reentry providers association of California.

Sorry, um, excuse me, Mr.

Frazier.

Um, K K top, um the volume is very loud in the room.

Can you turn down the volume just a bit?

Oh, it just um about now.

That is that better lower, lower.

Just a little lower, K-top.

Okay, how about now?

That's all right.

Yes, that's good.

Thank you.

Is that better?

Yes.

Okay, I'll I'll start again.

Uh good evening.

My name is Donald Frazier.

I'm the chief executive officer of boss, building opportunities for self-sufficiency.

So building opportunities for self-sufficiency, and also the executive director of RePAC, that's the re-entry providers association with California.

My statement, I just want to start out by saying every crime has a victim with ripple effects that impact the family, the community, and the city.

And we need a whole person, whole family, whole community, whole Oakland strategy.

And from a shared safety perspective, when government and community come together to take joint responsibility for deepening our understanding of who is the most vulnerable, advancing health and healing with the aim of breaking the cycle of harm and to envision a world in which everyone can attain safety.

And safety, I want to say safety is more than just the absence of crime, right?

It's the presence of well-being with resources and tools made available with the intention to build communities of our of opportunity with quality housing, good jobs, life coaching, substance use disorder treatment, and trauma recovery, along with safe parks and walkable streets instead of limited unsafe parks with grocery stores and healthy foods instead of fast food restaurants and liquor stores, with good schools instead of poor performing schools, clean air instead of pollution and toxic exposures, public transportation instead of transportation barriers, strong financial institutions, the local businesses instead of pro predatory lenders.

I think when we take this approach, this whole person, whole community, whole family, whole Oakland approach, I think we're better off.

And it's not necessarily about money and funding, right?

I think there has to be leadership to bring everybody together because we all play a role in this, it's just not law enforcement, right?

And it's just not uh CBOs, and it's just not the community resource officers and and the block, uh, the folks on the block.

It's everybody taking uh uh everybody coming together to make this thing work, but there has to be leadership to bring that uh bring that uh to to fruition.

Uh so I'll stop there.

Thank you very much.

Oh, by the way, I would like to say one more thing.

Because there are some uh uh comments around CBOs and uh statistics, right?

And you know, I'll say, you know, I I think we do a good job uh with that, right?

In terms of from a result results-based accountability perspective, uh, really like looking at uh, you know, how much work that we do and how much uh service that we deliver, uh the number of people we serve, the number of service activities, how well we did it uh in terms of percentages of service activities that were well performed, and then really looking at who's better off as a result of coming through our program.

Really looking at numbers and percentages with improvements of skills and attitudes, behaviors, and circumstances.

Uh I'll stop there and uh probably went over.

Uh and I thank you for uh hearing me.

Thank you.

Thank you, Donald.

Thank you, Mr.

Frazier.

Really helpful um overview and summary and ideas will take them into account.

It's good to hear from you.

Do we have any more input from the zoom world?

No, that's okay.

That's the last one.

Okay.

Um, all right, everybody.

I think that wraps up agenda item six.

Um we have only two more agenda items, and my goal is as usually to get us out of here by nine.

Um so we have agenda item seven is what we're gonna move on to next, and then adoption of the bylaws.

Um, Ms.

Felicia, did you want to do this update?

Did you want me to say a few words?

Uh Chair, I I think um at this the uh the SPOC has requested um has uh submitted questions uh to the city attorney's office in writing.

Um and we are um awaiting response to those questions, and and I will follow up with the city attorney's office.

And and I know that there's also a request from the SPOC to have someone from the city attorney's office here at the next meeting.

So I I will uh make that request a little firmer going forward.

Um I do want to add that um for your next agenda item, the bylaws, the city attorney's office has provided feedback on the bylaws, and you you have that feedback before you and I know that's the next agenda item.

Um so that's the only update I have on on agenda item seven.

Thank you so much.

That's correct.

We've we've made a few requests now, and we really do need city attorneys' input so we can better understand our legal mandate and uh the scope of our work under this plan.

So um we're gonna continue to follow up.

And any public comment on this item.

No chair, there's no public comment on this item.

So moving on to our bylaws.

Um, so I have a little update here.

As Ms.

Britain said, um, we had submitted our previous version of the bylaws to the city attorney with the changes that I made based on the commission's conversation at our last meeting.

The city attorney finished her edits, um, and then I went through and um made some revisions based on her edits, um, and I highlighted uh and you can see through track changes, like the most updated version, right?

Of of the bylaws, um and everything should be in accordance with the language of the act that uh was put in place by measure and then um and um I would love to hear if any of us have questions, just as a note to us and to the public, the question the the whole issue of Zoom participation in our commissions, the city attorney recommended rather than us updating the bylaws every time that that those regulations update, we just include um the MOU that the city you know has put out.

Sorry, MOU, my bad.

The memo that the city has put out to different commissions about what those rules are, and so that's why Ms.

Britain emailed that to all of us as well.

It's like an attachment to the bylaws.

Um, and uh with that.

If I would love to hear if there are any questions.

If there are none, we can move to adopt.

Questions?

Okay, so Commissioner Dixon, we adopt this.

Okay, we have a motion.

Do we have a second?

I second.

Okay, great.

Um, can we take roll call?

Yes, Chair.

Uh, we have a motion by Commissioner Dixon and a second by Vice Chair Owens to approve the minutes, and I will call the war.

To adopt the bylaws.

I'm sorry, to adopt the bylaws.

It's getting late.

To adopt the bylaws.

Um Commissioner Dixon.

Commissioner Carson Boom.

All right.

Vice Chair Owens.

Aye.

And Chair Chicleba.

Aye.

The motion passes unanimously.

Okay.

We have now adopted our bylaws.

Congratulations to us.

Um we, unless there's public comment on this, we can move to on to new business, Ms.

Verden.

Do you have anything there?

Uh no public comment on this item.

Okay.

Do we have anything for new business?

We have lots of new business that we discuss all the time, but is there anything that needs to be shared?

Uh at this time I will say no, Chair.

Okay.

Um, though, although I'm looking forward to meeting with you and the vice chair regarding next steps from this meeting.

Yeah, so we have some next steps and we have some next steps with the rest of the commissioners that we meet to separately because of the Brown Act.

I also just want to um note that we were going to have a training with the Department of Race and Equity on the 21st.

It's not happening on the 21st.

We're waiting to hear from the department alternative times.

Right, Ms.

Vernon.

Yes, um, I did um communicate um with the Department of Race and Equity, and they are available to um attend your next meeting on Monday, September 15th.

Is that when they want to do a training or they want to attend?

Chair, I think can we talk further about it offline?

Yes, let's talk about it offline.

Question Did we change that to the 22nd?

Um September date we mean.

Yes.

Yes, we did.

We changed.

Um right.

So the third Monday, we meet the third Monday of the month, which in September falls on the 15th, but at our last meeting, we changed that to September 22nd.

So is that ref can we make sure that's reflected in the materials?

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you for the reminder.

Okay.

I won't be late.

Wonderful, I just want to thank everybody, the commissioners, all of our community members who are still here and those who left.

Everybody who is there on Zoom and who may have left, we really learned a lot tonight, and we could have done it without you.

Thank you.

And with that, we move to adjourn.

Second, we don't need a motion, okay, we adjourn, and I'm not gonna use the gavel.

I'm not a judge.

Thank you all this evening.

Meeting is adjourned at 8 50 p.m.

I've spent the past four months studying in the San Francisco Bay Area in California as part of my freshman year program in college.

My campus was in the eastern half of the bustling city of Oakland, directly across the bay from San Francisco.

If you're from the East Coast, I'd say that the relationship between Newark, New Jersey, and New York City is kind of akin to the relationship between Oakland and San Francisco, basically the younger sister city.

Being a university student without a car and living in a heavily urban area, I naturally gravitated to public transit as my way of getting around the bay.

The San Francisco Bay Area and its surrounding areas are notorious for the lack of unification between transit agencies.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, one of the overarching authorities that runs the clip record, reports that there are 27 recognized Bay Area transit operators and a multitude of others providing private and paratransit operations.

One of these is the long-standing Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART.

BART is the Bay's primary rapid transit operator, creating strong links between the San Francisco Peninsula and the East Bay, including Oakland, Richmond, Antioch, Dublin Pleasanton, and Berriesa, North San Jose, with an eventual extension to downtown San Jose.

For today's video, that'll be the focus.

The uprising of BART and how it managed to transform its public image.

BART is a fairly young transit system in comparison to East Coast systems.

It was first envisioned in 1957 by the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, or the SF BART District, a union of five Bay Area Counties, Alameda, Contracosta, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin Counties.

Santa Clara County, which is where San Jose is, was invited but refused to participate, and San Mateo County later left the district on the basis of voter concerns.

In 1972, passenger service began after almost a decade of construction, including aerial structures in the East Bay in Oakland, subway-like tunnels in San Francisco, and the Trans Bay tube, which brings BART to and from San Francisco and Oakland.

Service at that point was between Daily City, Concord, Richmond, and Fremont.

BART was one of the first systems to automate many of its signals and operations, which led to controversy with incidents like the Fremont Flyer.

A failure of the ATC or automated train control system led a train to fly off the elevated end of the terminating Fremont station, injuring dozens.

After four years, BART was eventually able to weed out the major issues.

One major turning point in BART's history was the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, which decimated the vehicular Bay Bridge, the primary crossing between San Francisco and Oakland, as well as the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland.

BART was cleared for operation within five hours of the earthquake, acting as the primary link between the East Bay and San Francisco while the roadways were repaired.

Ridership levels jumped by 17% and did not fall again until the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mirroring Bay Area growth, BART grew rapidly over the next few decades.

BART eventually needed extensions, the first of which being northward towards Pittsburgh Bay Point for the Yellow Line, and an extension past Daly City on the San Francisco Peninsula to Colma.

In 1997, the Dublin Pleasanton branch was created, adding a new line to the system for the first time since its creation.

The agency's next two expansions created crossroads with air travel, connecting BART to San Francisco International Airport near San Bruno and Oakland International Airport via an automated guideway transit spur line known as the Oakland Airport Connector.

In 2018, BART was extended westward to Antioch, past Pittsburgh Bay Point via the EBART, a diesel multiple unit railroad using conventional infrastructure as opposed to the electric third rail BART's unique gauge.

BART's most recent and most impactful extension is known as the Silicon Valley BART extension, which brings BART service down the East Bay through Fremont, Milpitas, Berriesa, and eventually downtown San Jose.

BART served the Bay well until about 2015, but as gas prices fell, rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft became prominent, and the entire country experienced a turn away from mass transit.

BART's ridership fell sharply over the next four years, experiencing a 4% ridership drop per year.

The dropping ridership hit a new low when the COVID-19 pandemic entered the playing field.

California's aggressive policies to eliminate mass infection resulted in record numbers of people staying home from work and school, eliminating the need for public transit, as was seen across the entire country and entire world.

As a result, ridership dropped by over 95%, forcing BART to run razor-thin services during the day and night.

Additional entrances at larger stations like 19th Street and 12th Street Oakland City Center were closed to improve safety while trains were deserted.

But even during the years of 2020 and 2021, BART still had excess funds to operate trains for the foreseeable future, and many of its capital improvement projects had already been funded.

But from 2021 and onwards, BART took hit after hit.

The pandemic exposed the system's reliance on commuters, as downtown San Francisco stations like Embarcadero, Montgomery, and Powell saw just 28% of their pre-pandemic ridership.

The worldwide economic downturn caused by the pandemic saw many low-income households become homeless, breaking new records for the bay's already bloated homeless population.

Since shelters and homeless centers had to be restricted or shut down for distancing purposes, homeless and mentally affected people made their way onto the second safest place they could find, BART.

With a lack of security forces and empty trains, homeless and mentally affected people made their way onto the BART trains, occupying the legacy cars.

As workplaces began to open up again and regular life made somewhat of a resurgence, regular riders were turned away from the BART for safety reasons, both on a health front but also a personal safety front.

With roadways largely empty because of the work from home culture of the Bay Area, these commuters made decisions to drive instead, leaving the BART empty well into 2022 and 2023.

Empty Fairgates forced BART to continue its reduced service and forced the transit authority to dip into emergency funds and federal financial aid.

One interesting point to bring up about BART is its relatively high fare box recovery rate.

BART was one of the most profitable systems pre-pandemic, largely due to the fact that its ridership profits covered a large portion of the operational expenses.

This is unusual for a public transit agency.

Systems like the New York City subway and the T in Boston cover most of their expenses through government grants.

As such, BART took hard hits financially when their ridership dropped during the pandemic.

With BART facing a shallow emergency fund, dangerous riding conditions, and dilapidated equipment due to its lack of funding, action had to be taken to prevent BART from falling further into dismay.

BART's resurgence in my eyes is attributed largely to the quick action taken by officials to make it a safe way to travel the bay again.

One of their first moves was to reduce train lengths and increase police presence in stations and on trains.

This meant reducing 10 car services to eight and six car services on most lines, still in effect today.

A smaller train means less cars to cover for an officer and less operating costs.

BART also began upgrading and renovating many of its stations, including the core stations in downtown Oakland and downtown San Francisco.

Newer cleaner stations and improved lighting, as well as additional security helped shoe away any lurking dangers to passengers.

One of the more recent improvements they made was a full reset and refresh of their fleet.

With reduced train lengths, BART took the opportunity in the last year to completely overhaul their fleet, bringing in their new fleet of the future trains and retiring their legacy fleet entirely.

These new trains, fitted with LED information screens, audible announcements, and bright lights helped make the trains feel and seem far safer.

BART's latest effort for enhanced security and safety is the addition of new reinforced full body length fare gates.

They've been tested at stations in Oakland, Hayward, as well as the San Francisco International Airport, and have been proven to reduce fare evasion rates.

Not only does this result in additional revenue for BART, but since much of the troublemakers on BART evade the gates, enforced fare gates help keep out the dangers and ensure that the system stays safer.

BART of 2024 is night and day compared to how it was just a few years ago.

Seeing videos of the system in 2022 is a stark difference to the BART of the future, and it is largely down to the action that the officials took to secure the system.

While BART is still struggling in terms of passenger recovery, there has been a large uptick in the ridership in recent months.

I, for one, took BART at almost all hours of the day, including past 9 and 10 pm on weekend nights.

While the trains are by no means packed, there are considerable number of riders, whether it be travelers from San Francisco International Airport or Oakland International Airport, commuters or just people taking it to run errands and do things like I did.

At no point did I ever feel unsafe or uneasy, and a large part of that is down to the bright lighting, emergency assistance tools, and cleanliness of the systems.

Even the stations in the middle of Oakland and San Francisco were bustling at the after dinner hours of the night.

BART's complete and total refresh of their system has absolutely been game-changing.

While their ridership is still considerably below pre-pandemic numbers, people are beginning to ditch the highway for the railway, and it's visible in the number of people on the trains.

Even in the short four month stint that I had in the Golden State, I noticed a clear increase in the number of BART users as trains became more and more crowded, but never uncomfortably packed.

I also foresee BART getting considerably more popular once there's a direct connection to San Jose from the East Bay.

I think that's all that is missing at this point from BART.

BART's Refresh is absolutely something hopeful, and I'm very optimistic that as more and more people travel to San Francisco or the East Bay, they'll choose BART instead of suffering through the endless Bay Area highway traffic.

Thanks for watching today's video.

This is one of the few videos I have lined up about California transit.

Reflecting on my four month experience where I almost entirely depended on it.

I thought it was really important to share the revision that BART has experienced, especially considering the stories you'll hear in the news about BART.

If you enjoyed the video, please like and subscribe to continue learning more about the best public transit has to offer.

If you've taken BART, let me know your thoughts about Bart's resurgence efforts in the comments below.

Once again, thanks for stopping by and have a fantastic day.

Thank you for joining us here at Montclair Presbyterian Church for this teach-in on the subject of uh our ceasefire strategy, our city ceasefire strategy.

The ceasefire uh program in Oakland is I actually don't know when it started, but I do know that I came to serve as pastor of Montclair Presbyterian Church in 2014, and it was already happening.

We were already doing the ceasefire program eleven years ago, and our congregation has been part of the ceasefire program since at least 2014 because you were already part of the congregation was already a part of it when I got here.

And one of the things that I have really liked about the ceasefire program is that it has helped to connect our congregation here in the hills with other congregations in Oakland, and it has made this connection by unifying us around a common cause, and that common cause is a desire to live in a safer city, a city where all God's children can walk on the streets and be safe.

And I have really appreciated that opportunity to get to know folks from different congregations and different neighborhoods within Oakland.

So as we gather today for this teach-in, my prayer, because I am a pastor, my prayer is that we will all be blessed with a spirit of neighborliness, with a spirit of kindness, with a spirit of community, and with a deep sense of peace, peace that comes to us as a gift of grace.

So again, welcome to this teach this teach in here at Montclair Presbyterian Church.

And I would like now to uh invite Ketzale Beruman to come up and lead us in a land acknowledgement.

Good afternoon.

I'm Ketzali Beruman.

I've had the privilege to enter in at the mayor's office, and I'll be offering the land acknowledgement.

Let us take a moment to acknowledge that we are gathered here today on the territory of the Weechin, the ancestral and unceded land of the Chechenio speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the Sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County.

This land was and continues to be of great importance to the Moekma Lone tribe and other filimal descendants of the Verona Band.

It is vitally important that we not only recognize the history of the land on which we stand, but also we recognize that the Moekmaalone people are flourishing members of the Oakland and Broader Bay Area community.

Thank you.

And now it is my job and my pleasure to introduce to you someone who I really don't think needs a whole lot of introduction.

Barbara Lee has been our mayor since May of this year, and before that, she served as our representative in Congress for something like 27 years.

Am I getting the numbers right?

Yes.

And uh if I can do this introduction a little bit differently, I'd like to say a couple of I'd like to say something personal to you, if I may, and that is that you have had a profound impact on my life even before I moved from San Jose to Oakland.

Because unlike most Presbyterians, I am a pacifist, and I am writing a book on pacifism right now, and it's hard to be a pacifist in the United States because we are a highly militarized society, a society which equates patriotism and the ability to kill.

Objecting to the war in Afghanistan, and you spoke with passion and you came from a place of deep and profound faith, and I am grateful for that.

And that gave me the strength to speak publicly about my commitment to pacifism, something I'm still doing now.

And so thank you for that.

And our congregation, yes, let's give her a round of applause.

Our congregation has taken a commitment to peace which is born of your speech and even quotes your speech in Congress.

So thank you for that.

And thank you for bringing that same passion and dedication to the work of making peace in Oakland, the work of restoring pride in our city, helping us to keep our city clean and beautiful and safe.

Anyway, thank you.

Mary Lee has been hosting listening sessions.

Did anyone here uh attend the the listening session?

Uh uh Italian colors.

I believe there was one.

I was supposed to ask that question.

Thank you for continuing to show up for these listening sessions.

Um anyway, we're here in a spirit of neighborliness and community and peace to hear our mayor, uh, and so friends, neighbors, our mayor, Barbara Lee.

Thank you so much for being here.

Well, well, of course, and my faith tradition is I'm giving honor to God who is the head of my life.

Pastor Ben, let me just uh say first of all, thank you all for being here uh this afternoon on a beautiful day here in the town.

Uh, Pastor Ben, let me uh also say to you, I had the privilege to worship here uh during the campaign.

And the spirit of this congregation neighborly neighborless community and peace.

You don't know what it did in the midst of a very aggressive and very active campaign.

And I want to thank you so much for welcoming me here in during the midst of the campaign, but also uh for your leadership and for keeping peace alive, because when we fight for peace abroad, when we fight for peace throughout our country, we fight for peace right here at home.

And that's what this is about.

It's about creating peace for every single neighborhood, every single resident here in Oakland.

And so thank you so much for your leadership and for coming out today and allowing us to be in this beautiful sanctuary.

You know, just a couple of things before we get started.

Um, one is public safety is top of mind of everyone in the city, regardless of where you live.

And you mentioned um coming together for a common cause.

Well, I talked about one Oakland, and I believe that um fighting for peace in Oakland brings us together because everywhere, deep east Oakland, all the way to the border of Berkeley, all the way this entire region cares about public safety, cares about peace in their neighborhoods, and so it is a unifying issue, but it's also important that we know who's who, what's what, and what we're doing, so that you can understand the strategy of the city.

And many of you, I'm sure, voted for Measure N in uh last during last November's election, which set forth a course of public safety and agenda for Oakland, which called for a comprehensive public safety strategy.

It called for us to get to 700 police officers, not enough, but we've got to get there first.

Also, it required us to develop and support a comprehensive public safety strategy, which included uh funding and supporting the Department of Violence Prevention, ceasefire, and for the first time we put uh human trafficking in as a public safety issue because you all know what devastating uh unfortunate moral disgrace and and a real sense of um for me as a woman anger about what's taking place with with our young girls on the streets here, and so human trafficking has got to be an issue that we address in our overall public safety strategy.

And so, because of what we're doing, um, believe it or not, because more a lot of people don't feel this because we still have crime like every other city in the country, don't feel that um we're on the right track, but I can tell you it's working, and I wanted to bring our um wonderful people here in Oakland, our leaders, our grassroots organizers who are here to make sure you know what we're doing, how we're doing it, and what we need to know better, because we want to hear from you, but also um believe that uh what the city is doing is uh is representing the aspirations of each and every resident in Oakland, and that is to have peace in our communities.

And so I'm very proud of our panelists here, Dr.

Joshi, who heads up the Department of Violence Prevention, Barbara Oluwoli, who um was uh with OCO, now she's a later leader in faith and action.

Of course, Pastor Hopkins with Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, who's been on the front lines for so long, probably all of his life and service at Lakeshore with regard to ceasefire, and our assistant chief, uh Anthony Tedesco and um Chief Tedesco has has been with us throughout this entire process.

We've held what five ceasefire teach-ins, four or five, and we're gonna continue doing this because it's important that not only uh here in Oakland we change the narrative, but we've got to change the narrative in the country because we're not sweeping any um issue under the rug.

We're telling the truth, we engage with you with transparency and accountability, but we want to know what the challenges are, but also what the good news is, also, and you all are such a part of that, but we have to communicate directly to you because oftentimes the word doesn't get out, or half the truth gets out, or partial truth or misinformation and disinformation.

So this team is committed to talking directly to residents so that you can hear from us directly and know exactly what your city is doing, and hopefully you'll leave here knowing that um at least your city's working for you, and we want to make sure that the quality of life and what every single resident deserves here in Oakland is recognized and is adhered to and is as uh part of uh every single city official in this city.

So thank you all again very much.

Uh may there be peace in the world and in Oakland.

Thank you.

I've been really been enjoying these ceasefire teachings, and every single one we've been at.

I've met amazing Oaklanders that I've never met before.

And at every single one, I see folks that I've known for 25 to 30 years.

So there's some folks in here.

There's a retired Alameda County judge that I see in here.

You didn't think I knew you.

There's a retirement.

I see Glenn Upshaw, raise your hand.

Known you for 25 years.

He's been in the gun violence prevention world for a very long time.

I see a school board member.

See, I see folks.

I see folks.

So I'm Holly Joshi.

I am obviously an Oaklander.

My family has been here since 1949, and we've been through some things here in Oakland, right?

I mean, all of us that have been here for decades, all of us that have even just been here for the past few years.

Those of us that lived through the pandemic, those of us that lived through the rise in violence associated with the pandemic, those of us that just lived through all of the leadership transitions at the city.

Thank you for continuing to believe in Oakland.

Thank you for taking your time to be with us here today.

Thank you for your faith in us.

And of course, we're all hopeful now because with Mayor Barbara Lee, right?

So I worked for the city from 2001 until 2015 at the Oakland Police Department and left for 10 years to run community-based organizations and was asked to come back 18 months ago.

And the reason I said yes, mainly, of course, love working with all these amazing people, but it was about this particular strategy: ceasefire.

Ceasefire is known as ceasefire in Oakland, around the country, it's known as the focused deterrence, gun violence and intervention strategy.

And it was first brought to Oakland in 2012.

So you had just come in when we were getting getting started and really figuring it out.

But it had been in Boston, it had been in Chicago, you all may have heard of the Boston Miracle.

It had been around, and the community came to the city and demanded that we look at it and implement something similar.

They wanted a gun violence prevention and intervention strategy that was community driven, that centered a social services response and an offer of support, and that utilized the police department resources very surgically.

And of course, all of those things are in alignment with Oakland values.

So we implemented the strategy very well with Fidelity from 2012 to 2019, and we had independent evaluators come in and say that the strategy was responsible for very significant reductions in violent crime.

We had a 50% reduction in violent crime during those years that we were implementing the model with fidelity, and then we essentially walked away from the strategy.

COVID happened and everything went wild, and we got pulled in a bunch of different directions, and then we had corresponding surges in violence.

And yes, the country experienced surges in violence during the pandemic, but not like Oakland, right?

We're always suffering the most when things go awry.

And that was the case.

And once things started to go back down and level out in 2022, we did not get the benefit of those reductions, and we stayed very high through 2023.

And then we brought in the California Partnerships for Safe Communities to look at number one, what is happening with violence.

So we call that a problem analysis.

Can you please tell us what's going on with gun violence in this city?

And then let us know, based on what you find out, if the ceasefire strategy should still be working.

And they said your gun violence, the drivers of gun violence in the city have not changed that much, and the strategy should be working.

So let us take a look at the strategy, and that is what they spent months in 2023 doing.

And we got the report and recommendations from them at the end of 2023, and we began working on those very quickly.

Both Department of Violence Prevention and the police department re-implemented the strategy in the first quarter of 2024 and immediately started to see violent crime go down.

So what exactly are the core components of this strategy?

It really is about our true belief.

It is based on a premise that most people that are trapped in cycles of violence want a way out.

So as long as we all believe that most people trapped in cycles of violence want a way out, then we're all on the same page to start with with ceasefire, because that really is what the strategy believes.

And so to that end, the strategy directly communicates with those folks that have been identified through deep data dives and intelligence gathering from both the police department side and the community side to identify the gangs and groups and individuals that are most responsible for driving violent crime in this city.

And when we mean most responsible for driving violent crime in the city, we're talking about in the immediacy.

There's a lot of prevention programs.

Those are also important.

Ceasefire is an intervention program, meaning it's not upstream, it's not focusing on people that might get involved in gangs and groups in five years from now.

It is looking at those individuals that are most tied to violence that is happening now, and that we believe are going to continue to engage by either driving or drawing gun violence in the next 90 days.

So it's an intensive intervention.

And the first step, as I've outlined, is the deep dive into data and evidence and the identification through crime mapping, shooting reviews, and conflict mapping so that we understand what are the root causes and who are the people involved.

From that point, two lists are essentially created.

There's one list that the police department keeps, and that is a list of folks that we believe are driving violence that the police department is confident that they can build probable cause on fairly quickly.

So it's not a program that takes away police power or tells law enforcement to not do their job.

They go after the individuals that they can go after.

And then list B is really important because we all know that policing and public safety doesn't happen like it happens on law and order.

So we don't get fingerprints and ballistics back in 20 minutes before the show's over.

And so list B are the people that we believe are responsible or very involved in violent crime, but we are not confident that we can get probable cause on.

In the past, pre-cease fire, that list would just linger until the police department could build probable cause, and to be quite frank, sometimes until people were killed.

Because if you have intelligence that people are at risk of being involved in violence, that also means that they're vulnerable to being victimized by violence.

Victim and suspect, perpetrator and victim, most oftentimes when you're talking about gang and group and gun violence are the same folks.

And so the vulnerability was not addressed.

And so now what happens every single week when we walk into a meeting together, run by the mayor's office, is that the Department of Violence Prevention, which is the City of Oakland's social services arm, gets list B.

And we get to relentlessly pursue those individuals.

And my colleagues will talk a little bit more into depth about what that first initial, what we call custom notification or call-in, but a direct communication with those individuals, letting them know that they're on our radar and we really want to offer help.

That occurs.

Once the direct communication happens, our number one mission is to connect those individuals with services and supports.

And those services and supports live within the Department of Violence Prevention.

I have a team of 60 people, a deployable resource of case managers, violence interrupters, street outreach workers, and gender-based violence specialists that are there solely to work with the most at-risk populations in Oakland.

We have a credible messenger model, so I'm hiring people that have lived experience of violence themselves, folks that are from Oakland, folks that have been involved in the criminal justice system, they're at least 10 years removed from that.

So they act as living and breathing examples that you can get on the other side of violence.

And of course, for those individuals that do not decide to put the gun down, those individuals that decide to continue to engage in violence, the Oakland Police Department steps in and continues to do their job.

So I think the most important things for today is that ceasefire really is a studied evidence-based strategy.

It's been studied across the nation and it's been studied specifically in Oakland because I'm from Oakland and I know how we are.

We're like, okay, you did this in Chicago.

What did you do in Oakland?

So the independent review that came from the University of Pennsylvania looked at Oakland ceasefire specifically, and again said that as long as you implement the strategy with fidelity, you will experience reductions.

It is alignment with Oakland values of a holistic, comprehensive approach that the mayor spoke about.

We want to offer people chances.

We're a second and third chance place.

We believe in people's ability to redeem themselves.

We believe in people's capacity to heal, and that is what ceasefire does.

It offers many individuals the opportunity to do that.

The other thing is to know that ceasefire very much reduces the imprint of law enforcement and the footprint of law enforcement in our communities because it is intelligence driven.

You're not deploying a resource all over community, you're focusing the resource.

And it's very much about again offering those 350, 250 to 350 people that are driving violence at any given time.

It's that small of a number, the off-ramps to do better.

And so, with that being said, I'm gonna turn it over to Miss Barbara to talk about the origins and the community-driven work that it took us to get here.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Before I start telling you my story, I want to give you a prayer.

I have a friend who is an double amputee, and he sends me a prayer every day.

And I just want to share the prayer he sent today because it's for the end of July and for going into August.

So I just want to share it with you.

It's Thursday, July 31st, 2025.

Dear God, bless my last day of July with miracles and blessings.

Help me walk into the month of August with a better approach, mind, and attitude.

I pray today, you do the impossible in my life and others.

Heal bodies, change lives, and turn situations around.

And the last one is one of the biggest things we need to happen, right?

In this country, in our city, is turning things around.

And I feel like what we're doing, coming here and talking about ceasefire, and my hope is that we are going to be together turning things around.

Before I tell you my story, I want to ask you something.

Raise your hand if you've lost anyone to gun violence, someone you know personally, a friend, a friend of a friend.

Yeah, almost every hand is raised.

You're not alone.

This pain is shared in so many homes across our city and across our country.

My name is Barbara Lafitte Olawale.

And I'm a district three resident for over 40 years.

And I've been a leader with Faith in Action East Bay, formerly known as Oakland Community Organizations for over 20 years.

We were tired of sitting on the sidelines while our communities struggled with violence and despair and neglect.

And we wanted to be with others who believe change is possible.

But nothing prepared us for what happened on June 14th, 2003.

That was the day our younger son Tokumbo, we called him Tokes, was celebrating his 22nd birthday with some friends, and suddenly a man approached his car and opened fire with an assault weapon.

An assault weapon in the streets of Oakland.

It was a retaliatory shooting.

He had done nothing wrong.

He was simply there when a neighbor got shot weeks earlier.

He died instantly.

Let me ask you another question.

As a parent, can you imagine getting that call?

Just think about it.

Can you imagine not being able to hold your child one last time?

We never got to say goodbye.

And just like that, our baby was gone.

Never to hold him in our arms again, never to kiss him good night, never to see him alive again.

And like so many other families in Oakland, we were traumatized.

We're still traumatized.

It's been 22 years.

And we still experience that pain every day.

That kind of pain never fades.

But here's the part I want you to really hear.

We couldn't sit still.

We took our anger and our grief and we turned it into action.

We, as people of faith, we knew that God had not abandoned us.

Instead, we believed that God was calling us.

He called us to be a part of a solution.

So we began searching for answers.

And together with other community leaders in OCO, now Faith in Action East Bay, we learned about something called the Boston Miracle.

A program known as Operation Ceasefire.

It had helped reduce youth homicides by over 60% in Boston.

So we asked ourselves, and I ask you now, if it worked in Boston, why not in Oakland, right?

So we brought leaders from Boston to Oakland and we listened and we learned.

Many of you in this church was a part of that.

And then we got to work.

In 2006, we launched a local campaign called Lifelines to Healing, inspired by the ceasefire model.

And that year, Oakland had 145 homicides.

The need was urgent, and the time was now.

Let me ask you one more thing.

How many of you believe that everyone deserves a second chance?

Well, you know that's what ceasefire is all about, Dr.

Howley said it.

And I believe it.

Between 2006 and 2008, we organized thousands of community members around the ceasefire strategy.

And in May of 2008, we gathered more than 3,000 people at the Oakland Convention Center.

Some of you guys were there too.

We stood together, people of faith, families, community leaders, survivors, all united to say, enough is enough.

Ceasefire must come to Oakland.

We were not just calling out the problem, we were lifting up a solution, a model rooted in community partnership, accountability, and love.

Let me tell you why we do this and why it's so important for us to do this.

We do this because we believe that those at highest risk for violence are not beyond hope.

We believe our children and our neighborhoods are not beyond saving.

We believe that through relationship, organizing, and God's power, we can transform violence into peace.

And I'm here to tell you that it was those beliefs that gave birth to Oakland ceasefire.

When the ceasefire strategy is implemented and executed correctly, lives are saved.

When we stay the course and don't get distracted, those most likely to engage in gun violence find hope.

When shootings go down, homicides go down.

And when homicides go down, so do burglaries and robberies.

So today I invite you to be a part of this legacy.

And some of you who are already a part, I invite you to continue to be a part of this legacy.

Join a community night walk.

Partner with a local organization, tell your story, or simply look someone in the eye and say, you matter, your life has value.

Because a lot of young people are not told that these days.

So we have to be vigilant about that.

Because when we act together, when we love boldly, and when we refuse to give up on our town, that's when miracles happen.

And I want to join you to join me in making these miracles happen.

Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, all.

Pastor Jim Hopkins, Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.

Thank you, Ben and Montclair Presbyterian for welcoming us this afternoon, and thank you, Montclair.

I know many of you participate in the ceasefire night walks, a weekly effort to bring the peace we envision into the community.

Thank you to my fellow panelists to Mayor Lee and Barbara Oz for your profound testimony.

Couple of folks from the community I want to recognize from the membership of Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church, Dean Leanne Flesher, the academic dean and professor of Hebrew Bible at Berkeley School of Theology, and another colleague in Oakland clergy, Calvin Soderstrom from Park Boulevard Presbyterian.

Thank you for the good work that you do.

I've been pastor at Lakeshore Avenue for almost thirty-seven years now.

And when I arrived in Oakland in 1989, the high rate of homicides, the number of young, primarily men, black and brown young men dying on the streets of Oakland was unacceptably high.

It's 37 years ago.

There was an organization that was formed early in my tenure at Lakeshore, and every Wednesday, every Wednesday noon, we would gather at the site of a homicide in Oakland to say no life should go unmourned.

Every inch of territory in Oakland is God's territory, sacred territory, needs to be reclaimed for the good.

We would pray for a better day and a better way.

And I think some good things happened, but just because we were exercising our faith, and just because we were praying, and just because we were caring, and just because we were showing up, the homicide rate was not going down.

We needed a program to match our prayers.

Connection to match our caring.

And over time we stopped meeting, but didn't stop caring.

And in time we started to learn something called the Boston Project, the Boston Miracle, an effort where violence was going down, where lives were being saved, where the community was going, was involved, where police went involved, where evidence was being followed.

We said, we need something like that in Oakland.

And through Faith in Action East Bay and other programs, finally, finally, it arrived.

2012.

Essential.

Essential to the ceasefire model, to the ceasefire philosophy, is honest communication.

Honest communication with the, I think last week Chief Joshi used the term the drivers and drawers of violence.

Those twenty, thirty, forty, sixty, young lives, most likely to shoot or be shot.

Ceasefire does not buy into the narrative that in cities like Oakland, it's everybody shooting everybody.

We can identify those most at risk, and with honest communication, caring communication, direct communication, respectful communication.

We can invite change.

We do believe, we do believe that those involved in the life want a way out.

And we do affirm as people of faith that each of us are all God's children worthy of that second chance.

Let me talk a little bit about the communication, the communication forms that are at the heart of the practice of ceasefire.

The core driver of ceasefire is direct communications with those at the very highest risk for gun violence.

Procedural justice, community values, and deterrence are at work in these communications.

As a pastor, I would assert that some biblical principles are involved as well.

Jesus said, You shall know the truth, and you the truth shall make you free.

As practitioners of ceasefire, we want to share the truth, believing that truth will not only keep people free, will also keep them alive and free.

And there's the invitation, those that have ears, let them hear.

So there are direct communications with the right people in the right way.

There's evidence-based risk and opportunity message, and it's done by an alliance of concerned community leaders, civic leaders, victims, survivors, clergy, service providers.

Chief Josie also talked about credible messengers.

I'm an old white man.

Those who have the resources to honestly invite people to say we can make a change, we can offer you the resources to find a way out of this violence that you don't want to be part of.

I believe I have a place in that messaging in the background, nodding.

Yeah.

This person, these people know what they're talking about, and they truly want a better life for you, and they're willing to stand with you in search of that better way, that better day, that better life.

Ceasefire probably has fairly direct communications over the course of a year with two hundred and fifty to three hundred people.

Many of those communications take the form of what's called custom notification.

Custom notifications are a quick tactical tool that's tailored for individuals or groups.

Custom notifications are usually used to manage near-term spikes and violence, including conflicts between groups, interrupt retaliatory shooting, and communicate with groups and individuals offering services.

Custom notifications take two main forms.

The first happens on Mondays at Santa Rita jail, where a team of us, and I'm usually part of this team, where a Alameda County Sheriff working at the jail, an Alameda County probation officer stationed in the jail, tracking a lot of cases, in daily contact with a lot of the folks there.

A representative from Department of Violence Prevention, a life coach, and myself, will go into Santa Rita and try to speak directly with, again, primarily young men, occasionally young women, young men who are incarcerated, probably on a gun charge, but are soon to be released into the community, going back home.

Good news, right?

But a very fearful nervous time.

How's it going to go to go back into a place where I knew so much risk and have seen so much pain?

And the direct, honest, caring communication will be.

We recognize, though, that there's reason to be worried.

How's it going to go for you when return back home?

Wouldn't it be a help?

Wouldn't it be a benefit?

says the life coach from the Department of Violence Prevention.

If there was, if you were meeting daily with one of our life coaches, you were provided with resources for job training, for education, for finding a better way.

Maybe even we're going to help you move to a location 60 miles away, some way to help you find a different life.

And this life coach, who's been there, who is a credible messenger, will say, This is my phone number.

Call me.

Call me tonight between seven and nine.

And we'll talk further about what's going to happen and how we can maybe meet you at court if you have a court date, and we can connect you directly with one of our life coaches who is going to stand with you, who is going to be relentless in the pursuit of a relationship with you.

And it's going to help you find that better way.

It's not going to be easy, but you're going to have some support, some direction, some resource.

The other form of direct communication of custom notifications happens in the community, most Tuesdays and Wednesdays, between 11 and 2.

Get a list of folks that are at risk.

Maybe there's been a shooting.

Maybe someone has been shot and has come back home.

And with a police officer or a representative of the Alameda County probation department, and a community member, and a life coach will have a list of six or seven addresses, and we'll pull up and knock on doors.

And if someone answers the door, they don't always.

Sometimes he is, but they are not saying that he is.

But we want to talk to him.

Here from the Department of Violence Prevention.

And Pastor Hopkins is here to say we're not lying, we're credible, and that if this doesn't go well, there'll be accountability.

They call me an accountability partner.

Basically means that if they offer something that's it'd really like to talk to you about some services.

And we'd really like to talk to you about maybe some job training, some education.

And we'll put some money in your pocket.

We'll put a gift card in your pocket just for showing up.

And I'm just amazed, amazed at the credibility that these life coaches bring.

And I'm honored to be a old white head nodding in the background, saying, Yeah, yeah, this is real.

The other form of direct communication is called the call-ins.

And that's where we're about 12 to 18 young men who are at some risk, are invited to come to a church hall, Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.

First Presbyterian Church also host us hosts from time to time.

Or a park.

And to sit around tables with a young man from the community, someone from the Department of Violence Prevention, a young man, someone from the uh Alameda County DA department, a young man and a service provider, a young man and a victim of violence.

A young man and someone from the uh from the feds.

I'll start those call-ins, Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.

I'll stand up and say, hey, welcome everybody.

Pastor Jim Hopkins, Pastor here at Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.

Welcome to my spiritual home.

We want it to be a house of prayer and a place of peace for all people.

We've been doing work in this community for 165 years.

That means there's been a lot of baptisms, a lot of weddings, a lot of funerals, a lot of sermons, a lot of Sunday school classes, a lot of chicken, a lot of potato salad.

But tonight, tonight might be some of the most important work we've ever done because tonight we want to talk about keeping you and those you love alive and free.

And I just hope you'll listen in on the message this evening.

And now I'm going to sit down.

And I'm going to be praying.

Now my eyes are going to be open, but make no mistake.

I'm going to be praying that in this sacred moment you have ears to hear an invitation that might keep you alive and free.

And then the community members will begin to talk.

Ministers will talk about shootings in front of their church.

Barbara and others will talk about losing family members.

Someone from Highland Hospital will talk about what happens when a shooting victim comes in and how not everyone dies.

Clicking their tongues.

And the DA will talk about how he doesn't want to see them on his list in the courtroom.

And the federal prosecutor will give the same message.

And the police will say we can't arrest our way out of the violence problem, but please take the services that are offered.

And then the law enforcement will clear out, and it'll be judged the young men and the service providers with an invitation to give us an accurate phone number.

So we can call you tomorrow and talk about the services.

Talk about life coaching that will help you find a better day and a better way.

But ceasefire.

Ceasefire is to me clearly one of the most direct examples of what I believe in.

That every life is valuable, that God can make a change in the most desperate of circumstances.

And when the community comes together, people can be alive and free.

What do I believe in?

I believe in ceasefire.

Amen.

Good afternoon.

I'm Anthony Tedesco with the Oakland Police Department, and I want to start by saying how honored and humbled I am to be a panelist with this amazing group.

I've been with the Oakland Police Department for about 20 years.

Started in the police academy in 2005.

And in 2006, I went to the patrol, the year that you heard about earlier.

It was especially challenging area at 145 homicides.

And I remember witnessing the hard work of the men and women of the Oakland Police Department and of the other city departments.

But I could see that we were siloed, that we were working in our own places, and that there was an opportunity to do more.

There must be a better way.

And then in 2012, I had the opportunity to work with a team that would eventually be the ceasefire division in the Oakland Police Department.

And as I studied the strategy, I learned the core principle, I read the material, I met with practitioners.

I understood that there were some core concepts that I think have been critical for me and understanding.

If you want to affect those that are driving and drawing violence, you need to tell them to stop, you need to help them to stop, and you need to hold them accountable if they don't stop.

These are simple but powerful ideas.

Telling someone to stop, it's a basic starting point, but it requires you to know who to talk to.

It means that we have to take the time to invest in gathering the data, looking at the evidence so that we can reach the right people.

That offer of help, it has to be real.

And I can assure you, working with this group, that offer of help is real, and it's a critical to the success of the strategy.

At the same time, there are those that, despite the offering of help, will continue in violence.

And for those we have to bring accountability.

And that trust has to be built, has to be earned in order for this partnership to work.

Part of the reason that we lost ground in 2020 in the time of the pandemic is because we were physically pushed back into our silos, unable to meet in person, and this work really can't be done remotely.

It took us too long to come back, but we are back, and I'm thankful for that.

It also takes time within the police department to build the skills of these teams.

It's critical in order to be successful that we gather the evidence, that we meet the standard of proof, and that we solve the cases that will bring accountability.

This data-driven and evidence-based process, it leads to greater precision.

That precision, it minimizes our community footprint.

It's a surgical approach designed to stop those who are committing harm, not radiate outwards and cause additional harm.

This strategy works.

You've heard today that crime is down, and I want to say again, those reductions are real.

Homicides, assaults with a firearm, down 30%.

Those are on top of the reductions from last year.

And as you've heard, when we stop violence, when we reduce those other those violent crimes, other crimes are reduced.

Robbery is down 41% this year, on top of the reductions from last year.

That's over 700 people fewer that were robbed this year.

That is an incredible testament to the efficacy of this strategy.

I want to end by telling you that the police department is committed to this strategy.

We're committed to this partnership.

It works, and the results are real.

Thank you.

We have an opportunity to ask our panel some questions, and some of you have already given me questions.

But if it's okay, I'd like to ask the first question.

I've been looking at my thing here, and one of the questions here is I think in the spirit of our uh neighborliness, uh, and that is what are the volunteer activities that are specifically related to violence reduction.

How can people get involved in this work?

And I don't know if that's something for, well, I don't know which one you would like to uh do.

Uh Barbara's that you okay.

So we have the ceasefire night walks, and um you all, I think we're given a flyer and Faith in Action East Bay, um, we have a uh public safety committee that anyone's invited to become a part of.

Um we also do actions in the community around um as far as I'm concerned, concerned, grime breeds crime.

We work around illegal dumping and immigration, and all of those issues come to bear with the ceasefire model as well.

So Faith in Action East Bay is open to all individuals.

You don't have to be a part of any congregation or anything to be a part of Faith in Action East Bay.

And then we have the sex trafficking work that we're doing in the San Antonio as well.

One ways that volunteers and congregations can be involved in uh supporting the ceasefire work is through the provision of some resources.

Just an example.

Yesterday a text came out from one of the uh life coaches saying, hey, we're trying to resettle one of the ceasefire clients in a new apartment, and they need bedding and cookware, and you know, can this can your congregation put in a couple hundred dollars?

Can you buy the pans and you buy the blankets for congregations to be on that list of resource providers?

Um, sometimes it's uh meals at Christmas, sometimes just provision of things like diapers.

Uh, but for your congregation to be in touch with uh the Department of Violence Prevention, so the caseworkers know congregations they can turn to for resources when resources are needed.

Someone is is asked about the lifelines program, which uh Barbara, I believe you mentioned it.

How did it come to be and and will you tell us about how it became so robust in 2025?

Do you have any comment on the lifelines?

Maybe that's Dr.

Josh.

Life lines?

Yep.

Oh, lifeline is what in Oakland is uh what we call the social services part of ceasefire.

So it's actually ceasefire lifeline.

I know that Miss Barbara was also speaking about lifeline, but for my part, I'll just tell you that we came up with the name because we wanted this new iteration of ceasefire to really highlight the fact that there are two main prongs, which is the law enforcement, accountability, and force, you know, enforcement side of the equation, and then there's the social services community supports, community-based organizational work.

And so for the lifeline side, we have two main positions in the DVP that work on ceasefire, and that is the violence interrupters or the outreach workers.

And as you heard Pastor Hopkins talk about, I have a violence interrupter that sits on the direct communications team with probation, with the faith-based community, with OPD, and they go out together to do that initial communication.

And of course, the the main point of that initial communication is to ask them to stop, as Chief Tedesco said, is to let them know that you are on our radar and we know that you're involved and yet you're vulnerable, and to ask them to stop.

And then the second most important part of that communication is to offer the supports and services, and those supports and services have to be real.

And so the violence interrupter who is in the field or in the jail house having the conversation is connect wanting to connect that individual to what we call a life coach.

I know it sounds very Bay Area, the life coach.

It's an intensive case manager, and the reason we wanted it to be called a life coach is twofold.

Number one, many of our clients have been case managed their entire lives: social workers, parole officers, probation officer etc etc and we didn't want to have that connotation and because we really wanted it to emphasize that this is client driven it's not system driven and so we really do individualized supports for each client we do a life map within 45 days of the client being in our on our caseload and it's a client driven life map because we know that there are shared drivers of violence clearly um particularly historical oppression lockout of school systems family trauma PTSD etc and then there's individual drivers of violence what is happening in this individual person's life that is pushing them towards being involved in gang and group violence is it lack of employment lack of education lack of safe housing what exactly is it and so our job and the life coach's job is really to come up with an individualized client support system and it's a very intensive support model.

So you've heard us say it's 250 to 350 people a little bit of people a lot of bit of service and the life coaches work with the clients every single day they're required to talk to their clients every single day and to see them at least two to three times a week in person for 12 to 18 months and when we talk about what are the main the big three in terms of lifeline support of course you won't be surprised it's housing employment and healing services and supports whatever those may look like for that individualized client it may be trauma therapy and maybe somatics it may be some type of rehab um substance use issues but those are the really the big three that we're most oftentimes fighting for our clients to have access to and as was mentioned housing can really look different for for all different types of clients but we're usually trying to figure out increased housing stability and safety and it can be moving them out of a particular neighborhood but sometimes it's moving them completely out of Oakland.

We just had a client two weeks ago that was only 16 years old who is at extreme risk for being shot and killed his cousin was killed last year when he was 16 years old and it took us about two months to convince the mom how serious the situation was and when we finally convinced her it was a whole family relocation.

It's the mom a seven year old and the 16 year old completely out of the state so those are the big three lifeline in the context that we use it now in Oakland in 2025 really is to represent the social services side of the ceasefire strategy.

Does ceasefire incorporate any arts based approaches I mean the question of somebody who works with an arts organization called visioning beyond violence and wonders if there's any arts uh use of arts uh might add music or any any kind of other uh kind of humanities approaches uh that are used in the program that is such a great question and something I think we really need to take hold of and do better at um but we do contract with 21 community based organizations out of the department of violence prevention so 13 million dollars thank you measure NN for for continuing that um but 13 million dollars gets pushed out each year to over 20 community based organizations who also provide an ecosystem of supports for our clients and some of them do music and some arts therapy but in terms of it being a core part of the program it's not and it should be so thank you for raising that question.

So now the question is what what efforts are being made to address kind of the root causes or the drivers of crime things like poverty lack of employment opportunities poor poor education broken families etc.

How are those being addressed as part of the broader strategy someone's asking I don't know who's so much a part of uh what we're talking about today, and what uh ceasefire and department of violence prevention and the police department are about, really are looking at uh what of the social determinants of violence.

That means living in poverty, food insecurity, uh abuse, lack of educational opportunities, dropout, you look at the dropout rates, you look at uh racial inequity and economic inequality.

All of those social determinants are what the government, our city government, our state and federal government should be addressing.

And so we have to uh and being a mayor requires me to look at each department, department of public works, the uh housing department, economic development, to look at how we integrate policies and funding priorities that take into account all of the the life experiences of our targeted population, and that's a heavy lift because we have budget challenges, of course.

There's been years of disinvestment in these individuals and in the communities.

When you look at the maps here in Oakland, when you look at um where people live uh who end up in in this other world, uh there's a clear line.

And so, these social determinants and these uh quality of life issues are issues that the city uh must address, and we have to find a way to address them given uh the budget deficit and our challenges of the budget, but I can assure you that um those are our priorities, and it's a quality of life for everyone in this city, which means we have to address all of these social determinants within the city departments.

The next question I have is is uh probably for for you, Chief Jessico, or perhaps for you merely uh it it it asks about uh staffing of the police department, and the question is specifically how are we going to enforce the threat of prison to people who start shooting when there are so few police on the streets?

And I I don't know which of the two of you or five of you would like to address it.

Yeah, let's good call.

Well, I'd I'd like to focus in on what I know that we can do uh because of my experience both as an officer in the ceasefire section as a supervisor and the commander of that unit for some time.

Um, it's a precision-based strategy, and it takes a lot of time to train up those officers to build the skills necessary to do the investigations, the effective investigations that can hold those that continue to cause harm accountable, and that's critical and with a strong relationship with the district attorney's office, we can do that.

And the good news is that it's not a high volume.

There aren't thousands of people driving violence, as you've heard today, 250 to 350 people.

And so, if we stay focused on that group and we stay true to following the data and building the evidence, we can be successful with that group.

And what we've seen then is that reverberates out into other crime types because persons that are causing harm, driving violence, picking up guns, they're often involved in other types of crimes, such as auto burglaries or robberies.

So if we can do the investigation, present a case evidence-based case to the district attorney's office that can hold the person accountable, then we can reduce other crimes as well.

I'll turn it over to you, Mayor.

Sure, and it's it's no secret that we have a challenge budget, which impacts, of course, the number of police officers, which we have.

Again, measure NN required us to get to 700.

We're trying to get to 700, but in the meantime, what is working is a variety of public safety strategies that uh involve non-sworn security officers, such as our ambassadors.

Police need to be freed up to police.

We have uh a variety of strategies, and we fund, we were able to put another million dollars into our ambassador program.

We're in various communities, specifically where there are bids, business improvement districts.

We have such as in Timascow, the crime rate has reduced, has been reduced by about 41% since we've had the non-sworn police, not force, but ambassadors in the community.

So we're trying to build that out throughout the city.

Because until we get to the what we need, which is probably over 700, we're gonna have to all hands on deck in the community with non-sworn ambassadors.

But also we have now uh what is it, five uh academies that we'll be starting very soon.

But one of the challenges we have here in Oakland uh is recruitment, because cities such as Alameda can provide a 75,000 signing bonus, and so jurisdictions around us have more incentives to uh join the force to go into the academies, and so that's another challenge that we're uh addressing by recruiting, trying to find new ways to recruit from within Oakland because there's so many um young people who, if they had the opportunity, would want to stay at home, would want to be a police officer in men, male or female within the city.

So this has to do with recruiting, it has to do with the budget, and it has to do with uh how we try how we which we're doing prevent crimes from happening, but we still need a police force, and so that's kind of a strategy that we all have embarked upon to keep the entire city safe, but also to deal with the underlying root causes of crime.

Yeah, go ahead.

Sure.

Her question was what's the relationship between the Department of Violence Prevention and Macro?

Um, so it the relationship really is very, very loose and very informal because most oftentimes we really are working with different populations, and macro is not set up as I think many of you know to deal directly with incidents of violence, and we are, and so we're really focusing on public safety, but macro is focusing on more of the mental health side of the equation and also mental health incidents that have not reached a crisis level that would facilitate that would necessitate a police response, right?

So I think that macro is a really really important arm of our public safety strategy, but very much focused on mental health crisis for folks who are in need of shelter or in need of um you know an intervention like like a 5150 or a ride to John George or a voluntary commitment or something of that nature.

Uh, if it has a mental health, an intersection of mental health and violence, then that is going to be the Oakland police department for sure.

And and Department of Violence Prevention, obviously, as well, working on violence.

But I don't know if the mayor wants to say anything more about macro specifically.

One example, which I handle a lot of cases.

I'm a social worker by profession, so I do case work, and people call me, and there was a person, an individual, who uh was on the streets unsheltered, and people were about ready to call the police, and I said, Hold on just a minute, let me make an assessment of what's going on.

Uh, and I did, and this person was mentally challenged, uh, did not need to make a call to the the neighborhood did not need to call the police, they needed to call macro, uh, because this person was seriously um having a mental health breakdown of psychotic breakdown.

And so we got macro out there right away.

So instead of the police having to come to pick up this person, uh macro did, we got this individual into services into treatment and what have you.

So that's how it's supposed to function.

We need to have a reset with macro because we need uh more of a streamlined system.

We need more, uh, you know, you call 311 and there needs to be more information about macro, but also we need to build it out more because I think that um we have a very good macro in place, but a lot of residents don't know when to call macro, when not to call macro, so we've got a multi-mount of public information campaign also on macro.

Okay, thank you all.

Um, mindful of the time, I wanted to move.

First of all, let's give the our panel a little bit.

There's a there's a a moment in uh the life of someone who facilitates these kinds of events where you where one might look at one's note and realize that one doesn't know what they mean.

So there's a note here which says special acknowledgments and the name Barbara.

I'm aware that there are two people named Barbara to my right.

I don't know which one of you.

It was planning to do the special acknowledgments.

Both of you, yes, anyway.

Yeah.

Protocol, sir.

Yeah, I don't know.

But I'll go over it.

Okay, great.

Thank you all very much.

I hope that um you realize and heard um that your um public servants, uh, whether they're paid or not, whether they're volunteer or not, are on the job.

And I hope that um we've given you enough information for you to be able to spread the word because it's so important to have you all as trusted messengers in this city.

Uh and when you hear of um issues that concern you, please call and uh ask for clarification, like the macro issue I just mentioned.

But I'm hopeful that uh we continue this engagement, that you work with ceasefire, or there are many other efforts that the city is mounting, like keep the town clean, for example.

We're paying young people stipends to go out, and I go out with them on the weekends, and we're cleaning up light.

And and so there are many, many efforts that we're engaged in because I'm determined that this um city is going to be the cleanest, the safest, and the greenest, and the most peaceful city in the country.

So thank you all very much.

Friends, uh I want to say thank you again for coming.

And uh my prayer for you is that you will go from this place and see the beauty that surrounds us, see the beauty that was that is within us, see the beauty that we may give to one another as gifts of grace.

Friends, be blessed, be filled with joy, be filled with hope.

Amen.

Thank you, and today we are gonna hear from some real Oaklanders.

Individuals that are products of this city, that love this city, individuals that are elected are part of our elected body, uh, leaders, advocates, those that are on the on the front lines of what happens here in the city of Oakland.

So I trust that you're all here because, not for the cameras and not for anything other, but but we're here because we believe in Oakland, we believe in the leadership of Oakland, we believe in the power of Oakland, and we believe that Oakland is not on the decline but on the uprise.

Um, as the pastor mentioned, my name is Eden Chan.

I serve as district director for our congresswoman Latifa Simon, and I'm honored to be here this morning and to read this statement from the Congresswoman.

The president's threat to send soldiers into our city is not a response to need, it is a deliberate attempt to target black mayors, black representation, and the communities we serve.

Victims of crime deserve swift justice, real accountability, and the care that only comes from coordinated local action.

Under Mayor Barbara Lee's leadership, public safety is a top priority.

Violent crime in Oakland is down nearly 30% this year because of a comprehensive strategy that brings law enforcement, service providers, and the faith community together to prevent harm and respond when it occurs.

Federal overreach will not make Oakland safer.

It will undermine the local partnerships that are delivering results.

I stand with Mayor Lee and Governor Newsom in defending our right to govern our city and our own state.

We will continue to protect our residents through trust, collaboration, and accountability, not through the militarization of our streets.

Thank you.

First of all, let me just thank uh Congresswoman Latifa Simon's office, Eden and the Congresswoman, and we will have statements from uh Senator Adam Schiff and Senator Alex Padilla.

I want to thank them for their statements.

Uh Supervisor Nikki for two Fortunato Bass.

She should be here shortly, and our council members.

Let me thank our NAACP, Jamaica Moon for Local 21, IFPTE.

And I want to thank where's Nicholas Brennaker, who uh is from Central Legal and is uh counseled for uh our immigrant communities which are under threat as a result of this uh terrible action that has taken place.

And uh a couple of things uh I hope you all know and believe that uh President Trump's characterization of Oakland is downright wrong.

It's wrong, it's fear mongering, not facts.

Uh we're making real progress on public safety.

Oakland has achieved a 28% overall crime reduction in the first six months of 2025 with significant decreases in violent crimes and 46% decrease in auto thefts.

And of course we have more work to do.

But we're doing the work.

All of us are doing the work.

All of our neighborhoods deserve public safety.

And so what he is doing again is diversionary and it's fear mongering and it's wrong.

Uh and so we're not gonna back down, and I want to thank everyone for being here because uh let me just say no one knows this president's uh playbook better than I do, better than I do.

I was served in Congress 27 years, four years of those 30 uh 27 years were when Donald Trump was the president.

I was sitting on the floor of the House of Representatives on January 6th, mind you, when he sent in those people to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.

I was on the appropriations committee, and I visited all of the detention centers, and I worked to try to make sure that we could unify children with their parents who he had taken away from their parents, and those um memories stick with me today just in terms of our uh immigrant communities, and so our legal team also is uh analyzing the constitutionality of all of these threats.

We're coordinating with state and local allies, and also working with other mayors, uh and we're also who are also dealing with very uh similar circumstances.

We're providing support just as it relates to our immigrant communities, uh, to families affected by ICE and are working with Central Legal to ensure immigrants know their rights.

Oakland remains a city of refuge.

We are a sanctuary city.

Now, Trump is proposing and threatening to militarize cities, which is, you know, unconstitutional.

It's no coincidence, though, that these are cities that are have large populations of black and brown people.

These are cities, all of these cities where the crime rates are going down.

These are the cities that happen to be led by black mayors.

What is this about?

What is this about?

His motives are fear mongering and diversionary.

When Donald Trump threatens our communities, we stand up, and I stood up to him before over and over and over again.

And as mayor, I will continue to stand firm with you.

Uh, we'll ensure that Oakland remains a place of refuge, justice, and opportunity, and not allow the possible and proposed militarization and occupation of the cities which he called out to provoke any reaction that gives them an opening to come in here.

And so I want to thank everybody for being here because together, and I talked about this early on during the campaign, we may disagree on a variety of issues, but on our common values and on our common love for this city and our communities.

Oakland is unified.

Um we believe in hope over fear and community over conflict.

So thank you all again for being here, and I look forward to the rest of our speakers.

Good morning, Mayor Barbara Lee, good morning, council members, good morning, everyone.

My name is Nikki Fortunato Bass, and I'm proud to serve as your supervisor on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

I'm also proud to have served alongside many of you as an Oakland council member and council president, and I'm even prouder that I've raised my family here in Oakland.

I want to be clear that I love Oakland like everyone in this room, like many who are watching us today, because we believe that anything is possible.

We stand on the right side of justice, and we are resilient and we have each other's backs.

Trump is wrong about Oakland, and we know the truth.

That truth is that we have been doing the real and hard work together to make our city safe and thriving for our residents, our businesses, and our visitors.

We have built alongside many of you, Mayor Barbara Lee, our city council, our public safety chiefs, we have built a comprehensive community safety infrastructure that combines effective and accountable law enforcement with community-centered violence interruption and alternative crisis response.

And our reinvestment and refocusing in that system and structure meant that in 2024, crime went down.

In 2025, today crime continues to go down, and we recognize that there's more work to do, and we are here standing together because we are laser-focused and making sure that we get the job done under the leadership of our mayor, Mayor Barbara Lee.

And as your supervisor, I want to share that I am working to strengthen the county's partnership with the city of Oakland to address the root causes of poverty and violence, and our fundamental rights to education and housing.

In June, our Board of Supervisors approved a five-year plan to distribute over 200 million dollars in Measure C funding to expand access to early child care and education in Alameda County.

And in July, with the advocacy of our mayor, our council members, and many, many across Oakland and the entire county, our board approved a historic 1.4 billion, 1.4 billion in investments of Measure W funds for homelessness solutions across the county.

And the majority of these funds will be invested right here in Oakland because Oakland has our largest number of unhoused residents, and we are also going to make sure those investments address racial inequities and homelessness.

So let's be clear today that Trump's Trump's threats and his deployment of the National Guard are not about safety or law.

This is about fear and control, and it is a blatant abuse of power.

That is right.

It is shredding decades of progress, and it is leaving local governments just like ours to pick up the pieces as they strip away health care, as they strip away food security, and so much more.

And with the threats to our immigrant communities, I also want to be clear that we condemn Trump's scapegoating and attacks on immigrants.

We will stand with our immigrant community as ICE continues to sweep across the country and our rapid response network.

We will make sure that we stand together and reminding our families that our families belong together.

Everyone belongs right here.

And we all have constitutional rights, the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, the right to freedom of speech.

And later this afternoon at three o'clock, I will be chairing our Alameda County Together for All committee.

That committee is charged with making sure that we are analyzing the specific threats to our communities by this federal administration, its policies and its budget, and we are standing up and we are fighting back and we are protecting our communities and our safety net.

And lastly, I want to concur with the mayor, we will not be misrepresented or bullied.

We will speak truth to power, especially when our most vulnerable are being attacked and abandoned by this administration.

We will fight for justice for dignity and the basic promise of our right to housing, health care, food, and a safe community.

Today we stand together, we will continue to stand together and take action because literally everything is on the line.

I look forward to continuing to partner with all of you to build a stronger Oakland in Alameda County.

Thank you.

And so, as we've heard already from our mayor and our federal leadership, they've really made clear that you know Trump's rhetoric is not by any means representative of who we are.

And it does not define Oakland now or the future that we are working on creating together.

Trump made the statement that Oakland was so far gone, naming us alongside other historically black and brown cities like Chicago and Baltimore.

And as was mentioned, this is clearly no accident.

This narrative draws from a long, harmful pattern where leaders distort the truth about majority black communities to justify federal overreach, aggressive policing, and the erosion of our civil liberties.

And so let's be clear this is not about public safety, it's about power.

But we know that Oakland, like many cities across the country, is making real genuine progress and change for towards community safety.

And each and every one of us in this room are fully focused on advancing policies and initiatives that focus on making Oaklanders safer and uplifting the vital work of our community-based organizations and all of the many government partners that share the same vision.

And so our city, as was mentioned, has never been defined by fear, but is divine defined by ourselves, working together for a brighter future.

And so, yes, um we have some challenges, but you know, all of us are really working to face those head on, and we'll continue moving forward with determination, despite those who seek to underestimate the strength and resiliency of our city that we love so much, Oakland.

Good morning, everyone.

Before I get started, I wanted to just remind people here today and the individuals watching that it is the 90th anniversary of the Social Security Act in the United States of America.

My name is Carol Fife, and I'm the elected representative of Oakland's district three where City Hall is located.

And the reason I mentioned Social Security is because that is the leadership that a president who cares about the interests of his constituents will provide.

A convicted felon trying to talk about Oakland.

I'm offended.

I'm not offended just because the facts are not the facts.

They are the alternate alternative facts he used to talk about years ago, but because Oakland is doing the things to get us on the right track.

Under the leadership of Mayor Barbara Lee and so many community leaders that I see in this room today, we are making real changes.

We, for the first time, as we heard from our supervisor, have funds coming in to deal with the issue of homelessness that we've never had in the city of Oakland before.

We have partnerships that are growing that we haven't had or have been frayed in the past.

So we are making the changes necessary and getting back to the basics of what it means to take care of our communities.

And we have to consider that bringing in the National Guard to the city of Oakland and the other places that the president mentioned.

I even hate saying that.

What could Oakland do with 134 million dollars?

If you care about safety, Mr.

Convicted Felon in the White House.

If you can if you care about law and order, you would know that the safest cities have the most resources.

And those resources come in the tune of affordable housing, which the federal government divested from decades ago.

It comes from protecting our seniors.

It comes from investing in education.

And one of the first things he did in office was to sign an executive order and kick out the Department of Education.

So don't tell me that you care about crime.

And don't tell me that you care about American citizens when you're arresting hardworking American citizens every day because they immigrated to this country for a better life, typically because the United States was involved in undermining their countries.

Let's talk about that.

Let's talk about the United States creating wars and undermining countries and creating coups, which we saw on January 6th, and no National Guard was called in for that.

Can we talk about that?

Can we talk about how law enforcement officers were killed in this country?

And law and National Guard was not called in for that.

So let's be honest.

Yes, Oakland has work to do, and we are doing that work.

And we are doing that work better resource than ever, and we will continue on that path.

But this, what we're experiencing is grooming.

It's grooming.

He knows something about that.

Grooming is to prepare us for an abusive relationship that he wants to have with the American people.

And if you do it little by little, you will prepare all of us by saying, Well, it's for those people, it's for the criminals, it's for the homeless, it's for the immigrants.

When we lose our freedoms in this country, little by little, they will erode for all of us.

So we have to know an injustice to one as an injustice to all.

And we stand united with Baltimore.

We stand united with Chicago.

We stand united with Los Angeles, and we stand united with every single city in America, whether it has a black mayor or not, who is standing on the right side of justice.

And we will continue that fight in Oakland is ready because we stay ready.

So bring it on if you think you want it.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Jenny Ramatran, City Council Member representing Oakland's District 4.

President Trump's attack on strong blue, democratic and dare I say progressive cities like Oakland is nothing but a distraction from the train wreck of an administration that is falling apart at the seams.

Oakland is not your scapegoat, Mr.

President.

And we are not gonna let you use us as a distraction for the things that you actually have to deal with, like covering your name up in Epstein files.

Shaming our reputation internationally, not helping end war, certainly, and fueling the flames of violence in this country and abroad, starting tariff wars and economic wars that are harming the people you claimed to represent, American businesses and workers.

Talk of imposing the National Guard in a city like Oakland that is proudly on the rise is nothing but outlandish.

I am proud, I am so proud to be serving alongside a mayor and council that is actually putting in the real work.

Work that is yielding results, especially when it comes to fighting crime and improving our economy, revitalizing Oakland.

Now we have a long way to go, but the trends, the data, the mood in Oakland, come here for yourself.

Go to our beautiful urban Redwood Forest, take a walk around Lake Merritt, shop, go to a sports game, see for yourself how Oakland is on the up and up, not the housecape that you pretend you would like for Oakland to be.

So if you want to continue, Mr.

President, to support Oakland's rise, help us fund our schools.

Help us fund our roads, help us fund our fire department.

Dare I say, help us fund our police department, help us fund our homelessness services, help us fund affordable housing, help us fund the things we need to continue to be on the up and up, not the things that will step back progress.

So, Mr.

Trump, either work with us with the city of Oakland and the things that we still need help in, or leave us alone.

Thank you.

The NAACP National President and CEO, Derek Johnson released the following statement in response to President Trump's announcement that he would deploy the National Guard to Washington, D.C.

The statements of National President Johnson apply equally to the threat to deploy the National Guard in Oakland.

President Johnson said this.

Deploying the National Guard in this way is not only disgraceful to our troops, but it is a waste of taxpayer dollars.

And it is built on a lie.

Trump says rising violence in the Capitol endangers the public, but the Department of Justice reported that violent crime is down 35%, a 30-year low.

So why would he deploy the National Guard?

You may ask, to distract us from the alleged inclusion, from his alleged inclusion in the Epstein files, to rid the city of unhoused people.

DC has a right to govern itself, and it doesn't need this federal coup.

This president campaigned on law and order, but he is the president of chaos and corruption.

And let me add these personal comments.

Wake up, America.

Wake up and recognize this move by President Trump for what it is, a direct attack on our democracy.

These kinds of actions threaten all of us, not just the cities he's named or identified.

And no real patriot would ever so blatantly trample on our constitutional rights.

Only a person who is intent on destroying America from the inside would engage in the kind of conduct we have seen from this administration.

Dr.

Martin Luther King admonished us, it may well be that we have to repent in this generation, not merely for the vitriolic words of the bad people and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

Who sit around and say wait on time?

Dr.

King told us we must realize that the time is always right to do right.

The NAACP has already brought numerous lawsuits against this administration.

The NAACP will not sit by in silence.

We will continue to fight for justice and freedom, as we have done since our founding in 1909.

We hope all of you will join us in this fight for the very soul of our country and for the very soul of our city.

We will not back down.

Donald Trump is not concerned about the needs of Oakland residents.

Trump's actions are rooted in racism, establishing an authoritarian regime, and white nationalism.

Over the last year, crime rates have significantly declined in Oakland.

And the National Guard is not warranted.

These actions are self-serving and seek to distract residents from important constitutional and budgetary issues.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And um and thank you, Mayor Lee.

I know you've been uh champion for immigrants your entire career, so thank you for um for your work defending immigrants.

Also, thank you, uh Supervisor Bass for uh for championing and um and working with the county uh to to um help us get assistance for for the work that we do.

Um we also invite the city uh to uh to enter a dialogue and continue the dialogue with us to uh build our resources um to be able to rise to this occasion.

Um we have an immense challenge.

Um our attorneys at a CLIP and Centro de la Legal de la Rasa were uh were stretched thin.

Um I haven't been sleeping many hours responding to to the many ICE arrests.

I've been going almost daily to the uh ICE uh field office on Samsung Street in San Francisco.

Um people are just traumatized.

Uh they're being held in deplorable conditions that are completely in violation of human rights and frankly decency and morality.

Um I go there and I talk to people.

You all have heard the story about the child who is uh who was detained along with um five of his housemates and family members, um, and I speaking with a child who's going through that.

I have um it's it's just about as excruciating as you can imagine.

Um he's you know, he was terrified, he was in tears.

Um, when I had to explain that his um family members had been transferred, he just were down in tears um just feeling left behind.

Um it was clear that ICE was completely unprepared to hold a uh to hold a child.

He had to be in this um holding cell, and let me describe it to you.

It's um it's just a bare floor, cement floor.

Um they are just given a piece of plastic to use as a blanket.

Um there are often multiple people held in this holding cells.

I've heard from uh arrested persons up to five in one small holding cell, again, just a concrete floor toilet just exposed there.

Um, so you have to go to the toilet in front of all these other uh people.

Um it's it's inhumane and it should not be happening uh anywhere in the world, let alone in the Bay Area.

Um so I'm here also to answer questions about the um about the arrest uh and the raid of uh of the six uh who uh who were held at the Ice Field Office, including the child, as well as a uh person with down syndrome.

Um a child and a person with down syndrome should never be detained.

Point blank.

They should not be held in a detention center, much less in a detention center that isn't even built to hold anyone more than than a few hours.

Um so I I again I I call on um on the city to continue dialogue with us to build the resources.

We are worried about just responding to the current challenge, but as it was already mentioned uh with the uh the reconciliation bill will uh send seventy-six billion dollars to ICE.

That's it's an enormous challenge, and frankly, we are uh we are worried uh to how we are going to rise to this challenge.

Um we need attorneys, um, social workers, um response staff uh to to be able to uh to deal with this.

We are looking into filing a habeas petition um uh and uh TRO motion for uh for people who have been detained.

We have the tools, but we need the the resources to uh to be able to fight back and to uh to defend our community.

One in three Oakland residents are foreign born.

So it doesn't just affect the um the family of the person, of the persons who were arrested, and I I've spoken with the uh the mother and aunt several times, and and she's you know broken down.

Um she is completely terrified how they are going to make ends meet, how when she is gonna see her loved ones again.

Um it doesn't just affect the family members of the persons who are arrested, it affects the whole immigrant community uh in Oakland.

So again, one in three people are foreign born.

I guarantee you that none of them are going to sleep comfortably tonight, and I guarantee you so many of them will lie awake tonight worried about what's gonna happen with them, with their children, with their neighbors and and friends and family members.

So uh I I can I can take some questions if uh oh not right now.

Okay, my bad.

Um so uh y'all thank you all for for coming here.

Uh it does give us support to see uh it does give us hope to see this this support in the community and uh thanks again to to the mayor uh and to everyone here, Supervisor Bass for for being here, and um yeah, I look forward to to working together with you all.

Hi, good morning.

Is it still morning?

I'm Jamaica Moon and I'm raised in Oakland and currently a public works supervisor.

Um my job, we sweep the streets, pick up illegal dumping, and we keep our neighborhoods clean and safe every day for our residents and for our visitors.

And while we go block to block to keep Oakland beautiful, we see how every block is home to vibrant, hardworking, and powerful communities.

I want to tell every Oaklander that city workers, we have your back.

And let's call it like it is.

Trump's agenda is a disaster for working people.

And now he wants to point fingers and create fear.

We reject his fascist occupations.

We reject his racism, and we reject his lies.

Trump is picking on the wrong city.

We're going to keep moving Oakland forward, and we're gonna keep standing tall.

Thank you to everybody who spoke, and proud to be standing up here speaking with you all.

Thank you.

So again, I'm Danielle Motley Lewis, president of the Pawapa Oakland Berkeley chapter that's black women organized for political action.

I won't stay long.

I'm just gonna continue to set the record straight as my colleagues and friends have already done.

Oakland is not in a crisis.

We are in a transformation.

We all need to share stories of progress, unity, and that transformation.

Not headlines.

As our mayor has reported, violent crime is down twenty eight percent from the previous year, with major drops in homicide, assault, rape, and even robbery.

These gains are real, thanks to community leadership and smart partnerships with law enforcement.

Trump's recent remarks paint a false narrative of our city.

Using the same tired, racially charged stereotypes that have been used against black and brown, black led democratic cities for decades.

Oakland's future depends on facts, not fear.

It depends on unity, not division.

Whether you're in the media, a pastor, a politician, law enforcement, a teacher, a business owner, an artist, or an activist.

Oakland's success is all of our responsibility.

And we are grateful for Mayor Lee's leadership, her courage, and her vision as we move forward together.

Fear does not define Oakland.

We all do.

Thank you.

So to all of you, I want to encourage you, this is the season, this is the time.

This is the era, this is the moment that we all must begin to lift up Oakland.

Promote Oakland, invest in Oakland, live in Oakland, work in Oakland, and most of all, celebrate Oakland.

Thank you so much for coming.

God bless you.

Hello, Oaklanders.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting your health.

It's called the Reusable Foodwear Ordinance.

It applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

And you, there are three main requirements for Oaklanders to know about.

Food vendors can only provide these items upon customer request or at self-service stations.

And say goodbye to those bundled utensils, napkins, and condiments.

The law bans food vendors from distributing them.

That way, you can take only what you need.

Two, for to go orders, you can now use your own reusable containers so long as the containers are clean and can safely hold orders.

This includes using your own reusable mug for to go coffee and your own reusable containers for to go meals or leftovers.

Hello, Oakland Food Vendors.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting human health.

It's called the Reusable Foodwear Ordinance, and it applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

There are four main requirements.

Number one, for to go orders, single use food or accessories like straws, utensils, and common packets must be provided upon customer requests or self-service stations only.gov.

And thanks for doing your part to keep our town clean, healthy, and resilient.

Hello, Oaklanders.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting your health.

It's called the Reusable Foodwear Ordinance.

It applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

There are three main requirements for Oaklanders to know about.

Hello, Oakland food vendors.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting human health.

It's called the Reusable Foodwear Ordinance, and it applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

There are four main requirements.

Number one, for to go orders, single use food or accessories like straws, utensils, and convent packets must be provided upon customer requests or self-service stations only.

No bundling of utensils, napkins and or condiments is allowed.

This way, customers can take only what they need.

Hello, Oaklanders.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting your health.

It's called the Reusable Foodwear Ordinance.

It applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

And you, there are three main requirements for Oaklanders to know about.

Hello, Oakland food vendors.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting human health.

It's called the reusable foodware ordinance, and it applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

There are four main requirements.

Number one, for to go orders, single use food or accessories like straws, utensils, and common packets must be provided upon customer request for its self-service stations only.

This way, customers can take only what they need.

Hello, Oaklanders.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting your health.

It's called the reusable foodwear ordinance.

It applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

And you there are three main requirements for Oaklanders to know about.

Number one, for to go orders, if you want single-use foodware accessories, like straws, utensils, and condiment packets, ask for them.

Food vendors can only provide these items upon customer request or at self-service stations.

And say goodbye to those bundled utensils, napkins, and condiments.

The law bans food vendors from distributing them.

That way, you can take only what you need.

Two, for to go orders, you can now use your own reusable containers so long as the containers are clean and can safely hold orders.

This includes using your own reusable mug for to go coffee and your own reusable containers for to go meals or leftovers.

Three, when you go out to eat at your favorite spot, you can enjoy your food on reusable foodware.

Starting July twenty twenty-five, food vendors are required to use reusable foodware like glass cups, steel utensils, and ceramic plates for dine in service.

How can you help?

Remember to bring your reusable container when getting your morning coffee out.

Only take disposable items you will actually use.

And make it clear if you plan to dine in so that your food is served on reusable dishware.

You can learn more about the new law by checking out Oakland Recycle dot com slash reusables.

Hello, Oakland Food Vendors.

There's a new law in Oakland that's all about reducing plastic pollution and protecting human health.

It's called the reusable foodware ordinance, and it applies to food vendors like restaurants, cafes, and food trucks in Oakland.

There are four main requirements.

Number one, for to go orders, single use food or accessories like straws, utensils, and common packets must be provided upon customer requests or self-service stations only.

No bundling of utensils, napkins and or condiments is allowed.

This way, customers can take only what they need.

So long as the containers are clean and can safely hold food orders.

But I thought that I've got the out of the baby, but we don't go.

Good morning.

Good morning and welcome to the special public safety committee meeting for today's day, July twenty second.

The time is now eleven oh two AM and this meeting has come to order.

Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit a speaker's card for items were due 24 hours prior to this meeting.

If you're here with us in chambers and you would like to order 11.02 a.m.

Speaker's card, please follow one out and turn into a clerk requests will no longer be accepted 10 minutes after the meeting has come to has begun, making that time 11-12.

But that we now proceed to take roll.

Councilmember Brown.

Present.

Councilmember Fife.

Present.

Councilmember Houston is absent.

And Chair Wong.

Present.

We have three members present and one absent Houston.

And before we begin, Chair Wong, do you have any announcements?

Yeah, just um again, just continuing on the um practice that I started at the last meeting.

I just want to acknowledge some of the incidents that is that have happened uh over the last two weeks.

And this is not a totally comprehensive list, so apologies if I've missed anything uh major that has happened in Oakland.

Um Councilmember Houston noticed or noted in our last um life enrichment committee meetings that uh there was a parole agent that was uh shot and killed out in East Oakland, um, in my own district.

There was a fire that happened um that engulfed the uh 30 unit or a building, three stories that used to house 30 individuals.

Luckily, they were not in the building and nobody was injured because unfortunately it's the second fire that's happened, and I'm really thankful to the firefighters for responding.

There was a fatal hit and run in East Oakland, and then there was another uh motorcycle, a fatal motorcycle accident that happened as well around uh the Laney College area, and I'm sure there is more incidents that have happened.

I just want to acknowledge that is what we are tasked with really addressing as part of the public safety committee.

Thanks.

Thank you for your announcements.

Moving to our first item of the day.

Please note that because due to this being a special meeting, there are no minutes to be approved.

Moving to item two, determination to schedule an outstanding committee items, and you do have one speaker for this item as well.

Okay, we'll go ahead and hear the public speaker.

When I call your name, please approach the podium and please noting Councilmember Houston present at 11.05 a.m.

Mr.

Sado Olabata.

It's going around that the mayor is going to several sites in the city talking about ceasefire.

And promoting like y'all do that ceasefire is working, and there's no evidence of ceasefire being working.

So if it was working, you would have this data available.

How many people who are murdered or who are victims of homicide are part of the victim?

I'm sorry, the perpetrator is part of a gang or a group.

All homicides are not gang-related, but you never produce the data that says this because ceasefire is related to groups and gangs.

How many people enter the ceasefire program?

How many people exit before it is over with?

What are the services that are provided and resources through ceasefire?

And I'm talking about how many jobs, how many job training, how many uh housing placements went on, how many were relocated out of the city, how many were given drug treatment, how many were giving anger management, how many were given uh financial assistance?

What was the training of the staff?

How many case managers, how many life coaches, uh were a part of ceasefire?

You can't say ceasefire is working until you give evidence of it, and it never produces evidence of it based on Pacific data.

The other part of ceasefire is you have a group of police officers that target individuals who they identify, refuse to be a part of the program that's being offered.

Never give any data on how that works.

Stop the line, Mayor, going around saying that.

Thank you for your comment, and that concludes your public speakers for item two.

Oops, sorry.

Okay.

Administration, are there any changes?

No, no changes.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you, Joe.

I need a motion.

Move approval.

Second.

We have a motion made by Councilmember Brown, seconded by Councilmember Five to accept the termination of schedule outstanding committee items as is on role, Councilmember Brown.

And Chair Wong.

Aye.

The motion passes work for eyes to accept the termination of scheduled outstanding committee item that it is.

Moving to item three.

Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a no-cost agreement with the County of Alameda, the Oakland Unified School District, and the National Institute of Criminal Justice reform regarding a public system referral and service coordination team that serves youth at high risk for group violence, intimate partner violence or commercial sexual exploitation in Oakland for up to five-year term.

And you do have one speaker for this item.

Okay, great.

Let's move to the presentation, my staff.

Thank you so much.

Good morning, Council Jenny Lynche, Deputy Chief of Grants Programs and Evaluation for the Department of Violence Prevention.

I do have slides that should be coming up in a minute.

Perfect.

Okay, so we are asking council to adopt a resolution that would allow us to enter into an agreement with several other public system partners to establish a service referral and coordination team for youth in Oakland who are at high risk of violence.

Um specifically the participants would be the Alameda County probation department, Alameda County Office of Education, Alameda County District Attorney's Office, Oakland Unified School District, and then the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform would be the convening body.

They are a national national experts and technical assistance providers related to group and gun violence.

The agreement is at no cost to the city, and it would be for a five-year term.

As some background, this group would be new in Oakland, but NICJR has convened a similar group in San Francisco for over three years now.

They meet on a weekly basis to discuss recent violent incidents involving youth and to make coordinated service referrals.

The participants in that group are the San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Families, the San Francisco Probation Department, UCSF Health, and several community violence intervention organizations.

And they approach the Department of Violence Prevention and the other public system entities in Oakland last fall after identifying the need for or the benefit of creating a similar group in Oakland to discuss again youth at high risk for violence and making coordinated service referrals.

The plan for the Oakland High Risk Youth Team would be that the team would convene weekly to discuss youth who have been identified either by the probation department, the Office of Education, or the Oakland Unified School District as being at high risk for violence, either because they've recently been involved in a violent incident or are displaying concerning signs and risk factors.

The purpose would be to coordinate resources and services to best address their needs and prevent future violence and victimization.

The Department of Violence Prevention would participate in this group solely for the purpose of receiving service referrals, so youth who we could then refer out to the agencies that we fund through Measure NN funding, or potentially in-house if youth met certain criteria.

And we would not provide any information back to this group.

We would solely receive service referrals and information from the group.

And that's the end of the presentation.

I'm happy to take any questions.

Let's move to public comment first.

And we'll take comments and questions from council.

Thank you.

Want to call your name, please approach your podium.

You have two minutes and please state your name for the record, Mrs.

Sada Lawala.

So we have um do some research on what causes young people to become involved in violence.

And so the identification of where young people start to participate in violent behavior is based on in some cases mental health challenges, substance use, academic struggles and lack of commitment to school can be a source of why young people are engaged in violence, harsh or inconsistent discipline, lack of parental involvement, and violence can be normalized in areas if you live with high concentration of crime rate now.

All of these areas I just identified.

How is this department embracing the possibility of these issues being the reason why that I just spoke to why young people are involved in our violence?

I also just found out from reading another document that the police department has a section on youth uh youth dealing with youth.

How are they working with you to deal with this issue of young people involved in violence?

Now I'm involved uh over at McCliman's high school, and I don't see the productivity of your department at McClima.

There's case managers that are assigned to these schools, and what I see is a lot of times they react to situations that occur at the schools.

Where is the preventative tool that has been developed by your department?

So we are not responding to violence, but we are actually causing violence to dissipate.

Thank you.

Um colleagues.

Um go ahead.

Um, Councilmember Houston.

I like that one over Trinity Hall this morning, my council, a special assignments Trinity.

Can you come up and ask the first two bullet point questions, please, to the staff?

Hello, uh Trinity Hall, uh from the Office of the Center of Oakland, Councilmember Ken Houston representing district seven.

Um I just have a couple of questions on item number three.

Um, what will be the funding source uh to establish this partnership and to create the referral system?

There's no cost involved.

Staff will just convene at based on their own um already being funded by the departments.

Um and then the second question I have is uh what measures will there be to ensure cultural competency for underrepresented and marginalized youth?

The services that we fund that youth would be referred to in all of our contracts with those agencies, we prioritize services being culturally competent and relevant.

All of our agencies employ individuals who have lived experience and who re reflect the youth who are being served.

Um, thank you, Trinity.

Thank you.

Councilmember Brown.

All right, um, well, thank you so much for the for the report.

Um so as I was kind of reading through it, um, page four, I guess it's kind of clearly noted that this is almost like a duplication of the of what is occurring in San Francisco um for the last three years.

Do you happen to have um an evaluation of of the impact of that program?

That's my first question.

I have a few more.

Thank you.

They have not done an impact evaluation in San Francisco, but they have noted that they've been able to deliver services to over 40 youth who had previously been involved in violent incidents and pr deliver supportive services to those youth.

And was that 40?

You said 40.

40, correct.

Okay.

Um, and then one kind of key component, um, kind of in comparing um what is being presented today and what kind of takes place in San Francisco is that there's a community kind of organization component um to this, and so if I was to make an assumption, you know, I was thinking about, you know, all of the current uh community-based organizations that are currently under the umbrella of the Department of Violence Prevention, but I guess I just kind of wanted to ask just um if if there was a particular reason why there's no um kind of community organization component here.

Yes, thank you for that question.

So the Department of Violence Prevention will receive the referrals and then based on the need, make appropriate referrals to any of the agencies that we fund.

We fund over 22 agencies, so it would be a lot to have representatives from every agency at every meeting where we're discussing youth, but we are in very close communication with our agencies and we'll be making those referrals out.

Okay, um, thank you so much.

And then last question is there any kind of overlap in like the review process kind of of what's happening with like the ceasefire um kind of incident review?

So the referrals for ceasefire primarily come through the police department.

It is possible that a youth who was referred through this group would reach the level of being at extremely high risk of near-term gun violence, in which we would loop in our cease, our in-house internal ceasefire team to see if they needed to be added to caseload.

But more typically, these are going to be youth who are slightly lower risk, but still again displaying signs of risk for group violence.

Thank you.

And uh, thank you, Councilmember Brown.

Councilmember Houston has one more question, go ahead.

Um, is um OU OUSD?

Are they a participant?

They are how they participate.

They would be making service referrals to the Department of Violence Prevention.

And what schools do you know?

It would be um participants from the district level.

So they would be receiving referrals from their school sites and then giving the referrals to us, but it would be district participants.

Good, and what what what is it high schools, junior high schools?

What is it?

Middle and high school.

Okay, alright, thank you.

Okay, I got some questions too.

Um, overall, this sounds like a fabulous initiative, so thank you for your department's hard work on this.

Um, since these are youth that are not reaching to the riskiness, I suppose would be the technical term for uh to qualify for ceasefire.

What is the way that these youth are being identified?

We have a specific criteria.

They are outlined in the agenda report.

I'm happy to read them.

Um so we have four questions that we ask, and the requirement is that youth meet at least one of these.

So is the individual connected to a street grower group or sorry, street crew or group.

Has the individual ever been shot, stabbed, or shot at?

Has the and does the individual have a significant juvenile justice history?

And in the past six months, has a close friend family member or group member of the individual been shot or arrested for a shooting.

So our expectation would be that youth meet at least one of those in order to qualify for DVP funded services.

Okay, great.

Thanks for that clarification.

Um the other thing is I recently um learned about a program that is being run through uh Oakland OPD called the OK program, which uh seems to have some similarities, but it's really like a mentorship program for youth that are at risk, and um I would just recommend that you all coordinate with them because I'm sure that they would also have some referrals for this program.

Thank you for that recommendation.

Okay, and with that, I move to accept staff recommendation.

Second, we have a motion made by Chair Wong cited by councilmember Brown to approve the recommendations of staff, and this to be forward to the September 16th City Council agenda on consent.

On roll, Councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Council Member Five, aye.

Councilmember Houston.

Aye.

And Chair Wong?

Aye.

This motion does pass for four eyes to approve the recommendations of staff and this to go forward to the September 16th City Council Agenda on Consent, moving to item four.

Adopt a resolution accepting the Department of Violence Preventions 2025 APRCOT annual report and approving the amended apricot use policy as provided by the privacy advisory commission on June 5th, 2025.

And you do have two speakers for this item.

Let's hear the presentation.

Good morning, council members.

My name's Katlin Gray.

I'm the data and evaluation planner for the Department of Violence Prevention.

And I'll be presenting to you on the uh APRCOT 360 annual report and use policy updates.

So APRCOT 360 is a cloud-based system that is developed by a company called Bonterra for use by social service providers to track service delivery and grant management.

And this data and grant management system was approved by the Privacy Advisory Commission and City Council in July 2022.

And every year we have to come back for an annual report.

We implemented the system in January 2023 and replaced an older antiquated system called City Span.

And the annual report and use policy amendment was approved by City Council in September 24 2024 for last year.

Apricot 360 is used by about 200 staff, about 20 from the Department of Violence Prevention and 180 from the community organizations that we fund.

So direct service staff use the system to enter service delivery information, enrollment, service meetings, milestones, goals, outcomes, group services, etc.

Supervisory staff use the system to review services and monitor service delivery.

Fiscal and grant staff use the system to store grant documents, track budget spend down, process invoices, etc.

And then DVP data and evaluation staff, which is myself and one other person, use the system to monitor service delivery and outcome data, conduct quality assurance checks, and also identify any challenges with service delivery and work with the program officers and planners who oversee the grants.

So for our one-year report, de-identified data for all participants and personally identifiable information for participants who provided their consent was shared with Urban Institute for the evaluation of Measure Z and then also Mathematica for their evaluation of DVP work funded by a state grant, and those are the only two entities that data was shared with.

And there's also been no public records requests pertaining to APRCOT.

There have been no community complaints about APRCOT related to its protection of civil rights and civil liberties.

We do work with the grantee staff who use the system on a regular basis to get feedback and see how we can improve the system, make it better, make it more user-friendly, etc.

The annual cost of APRCOT is approximately 125,000 a year.

It has allowed us to create regular weekly performance reports for the focus deterrence ceasefire program that we implement.

And it's allowed us to summarize and share service data with public oversight bodies like you all, as well as funders, and also to be able to work with researchers to actually assess the impact of the programs.

So the use policy amendments for this year are relatively simple.

One is that we would like to update the language to say that DVP staff who coordinate or monitor grantee services can access grantee data.

So this really applies to the planners and program officers who oversee the grants that we fund.

And then we would also like to replace the data privacy training that we had been using before with a more appropriate data privacy training that is just a little more concise and relevant to the information that we'd like people to be trained on.

So we presented the annual report and use policy amendments to the privacy advisory commission in June, and they voted unanimously to approve both items.

And that's my presentation.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

We'll uh hear from public comment.

Thank you.

Want to call your name?

Please approach the podium, stick your name for the record.

You do have two minutes.

Ms.

Scott Smith, a Sada Olabala.

Excuse me, and Scott Smith.

There's a point that says children learn what they live.

I want to talk about youth violence as well as APRC 360 and its application by the DVP.

Youth violence itself is a symptom of systemic intentional trauma in and of itself.

Rarely is it a moral failing, but a predictable result of deliberate generational harm.

The credit carceral system has historical roots outlining the uses of fear, distrust, division, and psychological abuse to control enslaved people.

We're still enslaved, we're not free across generations.

Apricot 360 could be and should be used to track how the CTC system uses data to further marginalize victimize and disenfranchise victims.

There are currently, I know cases I work with OPD officers who are targeting victims.

There are court judges who are using their power to further victimize victims.

There's data that shows how women, specifically mothers of black boys, are disproportionately targeted by judges in this state and especially in this county.

Ask me off the record, I'll name names.

So why are we not using this to correct the errors that have been going on systemically in this city and in this county and in the state since I've been a child?

This system can do that.

DVP needs more money.

So the presenter identified that the funding source would be measure in.

Currently, we have 661 officers.

So you can't guarantee I would think that you can use measure in.

I looked at some of the data.

Identify what was the specific data that warranted the privacy commission.

The asking for in the data that's being collected, the birthday, the duration of the activity, contact information, date employed, housing demographics, date and time of services, wages, type of employment, date and amount of financial assistance, amount of employment status, housing status, name of people being relocated.

What's the privacy issue?

I'm just naming some of it.

What was the issue that made it have to go to the privacy commission?

And y'all should be asking that cohort.

It's just an abuse of this privacy issue.

I know y'all want to protect your illegal immigrants.

That's the reason for the privacy commission looking into all of the things that's going on.

But I think you're doing a little bit overreach related to where the privacy commission is being used.

The last thing is why do we have Oakland fund for children and youth, where you have data that's being shared with the evaluation management group?

Why doesn't we also have uh thank you to the public speakers?

We also have an amendment uh from the administration that I'm going to uh turn it over to please announce.

The city attorney's office is recommending the following amendment to be added after as the second resolved clause of the resolution further resolved that pursuant to OMC Section 9.64.040.2, based upon the information provided in city staff's annual surveillance report, and after considering the recommendation of the privacy advisory commission referenced above and discussed in the agenda report accompanying this resolution, the city council hereby finds that the benefits to the community of the surveillance technology outweigh the costs, cost-benefit determination, that the proposal will safeguard civil liberties and civil rights, and that no alternative with a lesser economic cost or impact on civil rights or civil liberties would be as effective.

And so upholds the authorization of the city administrator to continue use of the Apricot 360 platform.

I have one comment on the UN.

Okay, thank you so much, Ms.

Sada.

Noted.

Okay, colleagues.

Yes.

Yes, noted.

Okay.

Colleagues.

Yes, Councilmember Brown.

Okay, um, well, thank you so much.

Um, I really um appreciated um getting up to speed on um this program and all of the details, so thank you for such a detailed report.

Um, I think kind of as I was reflecting, the only question that kind of came to mind for me was more um related to just kind of the security of the information in the data, and just was curious um what kind of um investments have been made to really protect the information that's being inputted into this program.

Thanks for the question.

Um, Apricot 360 has actually a one-pager about all of the data privacy um and security measures that they take that that we'd be happy to send and follow up on, but I can also just anecdotally share that um the system has very strict password requirements.

There is a timeout where if someone doesn't log in within 30 minutes, then um it logs them out.

Um, the system can't be accessed by anyone who doesn't have a user login, and the passwords have to be reset every three to six months, I believe.

Um, and also is uh only stored um on the cloud.

Um, and so we can follow up with the one pager with with details.

Um, but another measure that we take internally is that we monitor the like every user who has logged in and everything that they've done is available um to see down to the individual record level that we monitor on a regular basis.

I see.

Um definitely definitely would like to see the one pager.

Um, and then I guess you know, my apologies for not knowing.

Um, was this a program that was impacted by the security breach that the city had?

Uh no, it was not.

Yeah, it actually, um, since it was cloud-based information, it stayed completely safe from any of the the SharePoint rates.

Yeah, okay, excellent.

Thank you.

Councilmember Fife.

Uh, thank you, Chair.

Um, through the chair to staff, when this was first brought to City Council, um, there were nonprofit organizations that did not want to participate and utilizing the system.

Do you is there now a hundred percent participation?

And have some organizations opt it out completely.

There is a hundred percent participation, it's a requirement of our grants that uh grantees use the system.

And I did note in the report that there have been no public records requests, no data breaches, no um no incidents to date, and it has full approval of the privacy commission, which tends to be very rigorous in protecting uh the information of residents of Oakland.

So with that, I would like to offer a motion to move this to the next city council meeting.

This is a resolution, not an ordinance, correct?

Yeah, um, move it.

I'll move this item.

Great.

I do have a question right before we move to um to the vote.

Just one question, which is just that I, and this is perhaps to the city administration.

Um, this makes a lot of sense.

I think uh data tracking evaluation uh is all very important.

I have noticed like OFCY recently came before the body to ask for a separate type of evaluation system.

I think it was City Span, and then there was another different systems, and I'm just noticing the different um evaluation service providers.

Is there an and I know data migration is a pain, but are we at all evaluating like opportunities for economies of scale of using one system instead of having you know five different systems, maybe even more across our city?

Uh in terms of this type of data, I'll say not right now.

Um I can certainly follow up with our IT team, but we are looking for example at a universal um identification system that all departments could use that would be cloud-based as part of our uh security measures as we're looking at data classification right now.

Um what I will say is that the uh when DBV brought Apricot forward, you know, the city attorney's office, you know, looked at the surveillance technology ordinance and looked at the way the data was being gathered and determined that it does fall under that data surveillance category, which is why a use policy was developed.

Um I won't make any assumptions about the analysis of city span uh and whether or not that that reaches that level, but um if it if it were to, then it would take a trip to the pack for use policy such as this.

Um and I have to say, as a long time ago, I was a grant a grantee of this department and had to use City SPAN, and from what I hear of Apricot, it's a lot better.

Um so I remember having to enter those numbers late at night.

And it seems that this system does do a lot of data sharing to help the evaluators and to help the service providers do a better job.

But there was a very robust conversation about that data sharing at the time, and and I think the um the PAC chair said that the DVP annual report was one of the best they've ever seen.

So they've done a really good job with this.

Great.

Thanks for that context.

Um, let's move to the vote.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by Councilmember 5 seconded by Councilmember Houston to approve as amended the recommendations of staff, and this will be forward to the September 16th City Council agenda on consent on rural councilmember Brown.

Aye.

Councilmember Five.

Aye.

Councilmember Houston and Chair Wong.

Aye.

This motion passes with four ayes to approve as a mandate recommendations of staff.

And this will be forward to the September 16th.

City council agenda on consent with the amendments that was stated on record.

Moving to item five.

Receive an information report on the Oakland Police Department's 2024 biannual staffing levels as of December 31st, 2024.

And you do have two speakers for this item.

Okay, great.

Let's hear the presentation from staff.

Uh good morning.

My name's Amber Fuller.

I'm the human resources manager for the Oakland Police Department.

Um I'll be providing you with a high level overview of the information in the OPD uh police staffing report.

The information that's in the report that you have in front of you is as of June 17th of 2025, but I'll be giving you current information as of today's date, July 22nd.

Um first off the biannual staffing report.

It provides comprehensive data on staffing levels and the factors influencing changes over time.

It includes detailed information on hiring, uh sworn hiring and nutrition, sworn demographics and residency, recruitment efforts for sworn personnel, and the status of open professional staff positions.

As of today's date, the sworn field staffing is 653.

The 195th police academy began yesterday on July 21st with 26 police officer trainees.

Um we're currently recruiting for the 196th Academy.

On pages five and six, we'll go to tables four for A.

Just the report provides a detailed breakdown of sworn personnel who are currently on a long-term leave.

So as of the date of this report on June 17th, there were 61 sworn personnel who are on medical leave.

Currently, that numbers increased to 63.

41 sworn personnel on administrative leave, uh, and currently that number has decreased to 37.

Um as of June 17th, there was one person on extended military leave, and today that number increased to three.

So the number of sworn personnel were totally off work as of now today is uh 105.

Additionally, on page six, the report has information on a professional staff vacancies.

As of June 17th, at the time of this report, OPD was only authorized to proceed with hiring for sworn promotions and dispatcher positions.

Currently, there's 13 dispatcher vacancies.

Uh 46 candidates are in various stages of the background process.

And that represents the latest updates on professional staff vacancies.

Although recently we received authorization to expand hiring, so the department will continue um moving forward with uh filling our professional staff vacancies.

On page nine of table six, the report uh provides information on top cities of residency for sworn personnel.

And since then, the top cities have remained the same, although the counts and percentages have changed slightly.

So I'll provide updates on that information.

Um June 17th, there were 63 or 22.11% of OPD sworn personnel lived in the city of Oakland.

As of today's date, that number uh decreased by one, so 62 or 21.98 percent.

Concord's number two with 39 or 13.82%.

Hayward's at three with 29 or 10.28%, followed by Stanley Andrew at four with 26 or 9.22%.

And Brentwood is currently at 5 with 25 or 8.87%.

And rounding out the top 10 cities of residency are Antioch, Oakley, Vacaville, Castro Valley, and Tracy.

Um, that's pretty much a high overview of the report.

I'm now available to answer any questions that you may have.

We do we have public comment?

Thank you.

Want to call your name, please approach your podium, state your name for the record.

You have two minutes.

Again, and if anybody is wondering where I'm reading from, I'm reading from a report that I would love to share with y'all that I wrote for my psychological first aid certification about what's going on in Oakland.

We're in the middle of a modern day abolitionist struggle.

Well, we must reject every policy practice and idea ideology rooted in the Willie Lynch blueprint that is being put to use, especially in our Oakland police department.

One, we don't have enough of good officers.

Two, we have too many officers that still abide by the blue wall.

We have to get rid of the rot because one bad apple truly does ruin the whole bunch.

And we have to actively recruit, just like with our teacher shortage, officers who are committed to being a part of the Oakland family, to keeping us safe, to keeping us secure, not to violating our rights as they have historically done in this city.

I am a Panther Cub.

I was birthed out of a mother who was attacked by the Oakland Police Department.

And yet I grew up to want to become an Oakland police department officer because I thought I could make a change, and instead was assaulted during that process by our Oakland Police Department officer.

The Raiders are notorious in this city.

I would love for us to actively recruit people who are mentally stable to be police officers and who not just want to be law enforcement so they can continue to enact racism and bigotry on our people that continue to rape, molest, rob, allow known criminals to be snitches on good law-abiding citizens just to get ahead.

Patrol is another number, and I'll get to it.

Officers 53.

What are these 53 officers doing?

Then you have long-term leave.

You have medical 61, but some long-term leave are on duty.

Some are off-duty.

Breakdown of the 61 who are on duty who are off duty.

Administrative leave, 41, but you have administrative leave where they continue to receive regular pay, and you have data that uh relates to two to years and um up to several months.

But is it more than two years that you have people?

Maybe I don't know.

The police department's staff report reflects that you are engaging in proving 9-11 calls, but it does not make sense to have the availability of a 9-11 call to be answered, and you don't have the officers to respond to the 9-11 call.

You have to have those two working together, and we don't have the officers available.

So in another place, you have the number of officers, 325 that are on patrol, and uh like I said before, over 500.

What I think should be happening, you have 14 officers who are community resource officers until you get up to the maximum number required by measure in 700, all community resource officers should be on patrol.

All crime reduction.

Thank you for your call, but that concludes your public speaker's right of five.

Thank you.

Um, before we go to my colleagues, I just want to make a comment about the report.

This was incredible.

This was very thorough, so thank you for compiling this information for us to discuss.

Colleagues.

Councilmember Fife.

Yes, I uh thank you, Chair.

Through the chair to staff, is it possible to um identify in these reports coming forward in the future?

Um if if this is too detailed and too granular, please let me know.

But the area where are where these officers are staffed.

Are you speaking to the officers that are on patrol?

Everyone, all of the the what did you say we're at 600 and today?

Yes, and 653.

671.

Yes, we can provide you with that information.

It would be helpful.

Um, I am trying to understand what and I know things shift, right?

There's shifts between someone being on patrol maybe one day and a special unit another day, um, but just more clarity around uh where people are currently staffed.

I want to get a better understanding of the number of officers engaged in um public information, um, public information officers.

I think there might be one or two.

I'd like to know if how many sworn officers are in um IT and different things like that.

So I think that level of granularity would be helpful in these staffing reports if if possible.

Yes, okay.

Um, that's it.

I have a few questions.

Um, so very helpful report.

I so 661 is our current sworn officer staffing.

Is that correct?

No.

So uh so we're authorized for 678 currently, um, and our field number is 653 as of today.

653, okay.

Where does that put us historically?

I see the numbers dating back to 2020, but that seems low.

So um over the course of the long range, where are we?

Um has when has the department hit that number previously?

That we've been at our staffing numbers, so um in the report it was some months ago, but it was the actual authorized staffing was um lower, so the department was above the budgeted staffing level at that time, um, as the authorized staffing fluctuates if it decreases, then that also affects the numbers where we offer fulfilled positions.

Okay, but I I guess yeah, we I'm just trying to understand that number seems strikingly low to me.

How does that compare to the history of OPD staffing?

I see dating back to 2020, this would be the lowest amount, at least according to this report of sworn staffing numbers.

If we go back even further back, where does that put us in compared to the history of OPD staffing of sworn officers?

So uh good morning through the chair, Deputy Director Keanu Setto.

So, yes, our numbers are extremely low.