Oakland robberies surge as investigations sputter
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
I get the feeling that some elements inside OPD are trying to help the public, while others are cops for the power trip (see the Riders case of the early 2000's). OPD is absolutely stretched thin, but they are that way because Oakland is a big city and the command structure has previously had major run-ins with the DoJ (see Riders again) and therefore is very very careful about putting officers on the street. More so, they keep having issues with the DoJ (See Occupy Oakland, Scott Olsen), going so far as to the DoJ throwing down a threat of having the force taken over and reorganized, what would be a first for any organization in the US. We can't even keep a police chief for more then a few months, or days for that matter. Howard Jordan was around from 2011 until earlier this year. A day or two before another DoJ ruling/meeting, he suddenly retired due to a "medical condition", which he still hasn't disclosed. His replacement, Anthony Toribio, only lasted 2 days. Days. Not months. Days. The current interim chief, Sean Whent is still around, but we will see how much longer. We only have 637 officers as of last check. 637 for a town of 400,000 people.
Oakland has a broken government, including OPD and other services. It caused all of it's own problems, mostly due to OPD. Oakland won't get better until crime gets better or people start caring more about Oakland. I love my city, but I can't do much to help, other than helping the community (see OaklandWiki.org).
Maybe this is rambling, but whatever, it's out there. Oakland needs help, robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care.
Edited to add more details and color.
This.
Why have moderators changed the headline?
Oakland is #1 for robberies in the country. People need to know this. To accept it for what it is.
Sweeping the discussion away with a politically correct headline is part of the problem.
The edited/new headline is the same as what's actually on the linked article. If you believe this headline is overly politically correct, take it up with the SF Chronicle.
I sympathize somewhat, but keep in mind that these rules are common throughout online communities, and only exist because submission headlines became massive soapboxes.
This story was on the front page and heading to the top, but now it's sinking fast. Well done moderators.
In the small apartment complex where I live, at least three other people were mugged at some point.
I remember a couple of years ago the guy that came to the Bay Area for the google interview and stopped in to see someone in Oakland the night before and was shot dead. Or, the old man that was killed by someone on the street hitting him so hard. Or, the kid that was paralyzed while getting a music lesson because some shot off a gun during a robbery.
In the past, the crime in the bad areas of Oakland didn't bleed out to the nicer areas. I predicted this after the 2008 crash. I knew once the economy crashed, it wouldn't take long for the very large numbers of uneducated, jobless, young men in the bad parts of Oakland to realize their meal ticket was walking around in the nicer areas of town. Piedmont, surrounded on all sides by Oakland, has been hit by an increase in robberies, many of which are home invasion style. I was talking with a friend the other day who knows a lawyer that is defending some of the people in the gang (Easy Money Team... what a name, but it gives you insight into their thinking). They're all 14-20ish, with parents about 14 yrs or so older than them.
There is a lack of opportunity, but the black community needs to address some of their problems, at least one of which is cultural: it is uncool for kids to succeed through academics, it is very cool for kids to succeed via sports or rap music or dancing. Until it is cool to do well in school, and that starts with the parents, this problem will only get worse.
For those that want to label me a racist: there are studies that back up what I said. There was a prominent researcher that died recently, but not before writing a scathing article about this problem. There was an article about him and his research in the East Bay Express. I forget his name. It was eye opening.
I believe this bus fight video was also in Oakland. http://youtu.be/tYTO4P80q9k
> Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who represents West Oakland, said joblessness is a big factor in the city's robbery rate.
I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job.
> "We have a lot fewer jobs for adults so kids experience a lot more lack, so they are not able to get things," she said, noting that some turn to robbery to get money. "Really what they are after is really basic things - shoes, jackets. The things these kids are buying with money from stolen things are not flashy things.
She goes on like this, defending criminals and criminal activity and blaming the system. The system may suck, but resorting to guns, scaring people out of their lives and taking things from them that belong to them is not excusable. It's criminal, and she's a terrible person for commenting this way, and a terrible official.
Of course not, neither am I. Of course, I'm a white-collar professional, in an in-demand industry, with savings, and consequently, even if I had to really scale down my career level to make ends meet, I could definitely find a job.
On the flip side, if I was largely unemployable aside from menial jobs with long hours, low pay, and lousy job security, and then I lost my job, I'd have a lot fewer options. I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low.
Why is it so crazy to think that some people who steal would do something else if they were given the opportunity for real advancement?
You would? Do you think of respecting others, their property and the law as some kind of luxury you could do without if you were sufficiently needy?
We could have a philosophical discussion about free will and the irresistible forces of circumstance, but in order to have a civil society we have to at least pretend that people are responsible for their own actions and will respect the law even if they might not get caught breaking it. And indeed, most poor people aren't thieves.
In the abstract, no, of course not. I think I do a fairly decent job of living a moral life, and I'd like to think that I would never be forced to consider such a thing.
In practicality, I can empathize with feeling unable to move the needle on the economic ladder, and seeing crime as a mechanism available to me when other mechanisms of earning money have been refused or strongly restricted.
My point is not that crime is acceptable, or moral, or excusable, aside from extreme edge cases - just that the OP presupposes that crime is purely a rational choice all people make when alternatives exist.
Also, I'll note that elsewhere you talk about access to food charity - I'll throw out there that 14.5% of the US population had food insecurity during 2012 - http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-r...
That's hardly a ringing endorsement for people having access to food.
As for "steal or starve", the USDA threshold for "food insecurity" starts at "reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no indication of reduced food intake."[1] That is a long, long way from starvation.
[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/foo...
You seem to think our behavior is entirely rational. Even aside from the free will debate, this is completely untrue. Our behavior is motivated by a combination of unconscious impulses and consciously directed goals. If the unconscious impulses to steal became great enough it would override any rational ideals about property rights and such.
Of course you'll retort that there are millions of poor folks that don't steal so I couldn't possibly be right. Well that's true, but how many of them are kept in line by external factors such as potential jail time, shame, embarrassment, fear, etc? This is the point of society after all--create external motivations for behaviors that are beneficial to the group. All those that don't steal is not an indication that they do it for purely rational reasons.
The point is that asking "would you seriously consider robbery" to someone who is relatively well off is not a meaningful question, just like you saying (from your place of privilege) that you would never consider violating someone else's property rights no matter how destitute you became is a meaningless declaration.
Of course not. What I do think is that poverty in the U.S. is not a sufficiently de-rationalizing force to make it likely I would commit violent crimes. Do you think it would have that effect on you?
Yes, I can envision a possible world where I would be prone to steal for food/shelter/etc. I would go out of my way to avoid causing harm as much as possible, but I don't pretend like I'm somehow physically incapable of these things. But no, that world doesn't currently exist in the US: luckily for me I am intelligent enough and educated enough that I would be able to find other avenues for money. Others aren't so lucky.
Also, you seem to think that violence is never the rational choice (assuming you mean stealing as a form of violence). I don't agree with that either.
Armed robbery and violent assault are in a different class, and the solution is better enforcement. If someone pulls a gun on you in a robbery, it's not a property crime -- it's a violent crime against your life, and you're in immediate and reasonable fear for your life. The property is at that point not even secondary in concern. Similar to how rape isn't really about sex.
>"Option #1: I will give you $100 in cash.
Option #2: I will return tomorrow with a basic laptop and three books to learn to code. I will then come an hour early before work and teach you to become a software engineer."
https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/ae059ddffd2e
>How I taught a homeless man to build an app in a week
Software developer takes on vagrant and helps him develop his own business.
Patrick McConlogue came up with the idea after passing the homeless man every day on his way to work.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2436371/Homeless-man...
I honestly don't buy this, but even if you would personally starve to death rather than steal to obtain food, the vast majority of people would not. Crime rates increase as legitimate ways to make money dry up; the statistical trend is real and the implications for human nature cannot be ignored. Wishful thinking about human nature and just teaching people not to be bad will get you nowhere.
It is a politicians job to see things at an aggregate level and address public health issues at that level. Discussing the lack of jobs and legitimate avenues for making money is exactly the appropriate response that a politician should have. If people need a moral kick-in-the-pants, perhaps their pastor should provide it.
Nobody in Oakland, or the U.S. generally, needs to steal to obtain food. This is not Dickensian England. Government social programs and private charities may not be perfect, but they are more than enough to be sure anyone capable exercising a minimum amount of effort and self-control will not be in danger of starving to death. Obviously there are continuing problems with the mentally ill, but those are not particularly relevant unless you think they're disproportionally committing crimes.
And that is the ultimate point here, we are all capable of committing crimes if we became desperate enough. This is a property of humanity, not just of a group of morally depraved oaklanders. Thus it makes sense to address the issue in a systemic fashion, i.e. jobs and opportunity.
We are? I can imagine committing a violent crime if I were not in control of my faculties, or if I were being blackmailed in some horrible (and manifestly illegal) way. But there are many, many poor people who do not commit crime when sound of mind and body, and it's rather disrespectful to the important notions of free will and human dignity to assume that they just haven't been ground down to their limit yet.
But from a different perspective, I always find it laughable when people like to claim that they or us in modern times are (or should be) so far above certain types of behavior, violent or otherwise. Human history is a trail of tragedy perpetrated by regular people no different from you and me. To think that you are somehow different than all those that came before is pure egoism.
This is sophistry. Of course some people are different from others. Only a tiny minority of people living in the U.S. will commit violent crimes over the course of their lives, despite a much larger minority living in poverty or facing other hardships. Those who commit violent crimes are different by choice. If you don't think those of sound mind are responsible for their own actions, it's hard to see how you can think of democratic society as anything but a doomed experiment.
And this is a result of the society we live in (welfare state, etc), not a fundamental property of us as a people. Take all those things away and you will see a very large increase in violent crime. My point is that the difference between those who commit crimes now and those that don't is simply a matter of degrees. Nothing you've said contradicts that.
Of course people are responsible for their own actions; what people are not are analytical machines that consider all possible scenarios independent of emotions and drives. It is the drives and emotions that strongly bias our internal scoring system for various decisions. So in this sense we are prone to acting irrational when it is in our best interest (from the perspective of our primitive brain). Society is constructed to allow us to provide for our basic needs so that we can suppress our basic instincts and make the best rational decisions collectively. Democracy does not crumble in the face of partially irrational actors.
Pretty big assumption here, don't you think? Poverty can drive a person crazy, and when national economic policies proscribe mandatory unemployment so that oligarchs will stop crying about wage prices, bad things can be seen as being designed into the system. There are no rational actors, just self-interested ones.
I really doubt mere straight employment would turn around the robbing creeps who gang up (usually three to a car--one to drive, the others to mug) on their victims. Thousands of other Oaklanders contend with desperate poverty without resorting to felonies. Until we have a fully staffed police force, though, we're all on our own.
You need to walk a mile in someone else's shoes before you judge.
"As of July 31, Oakland had 626 officers - still far less than the 800-plus officers the city had in 2010."
2010: 2917 robberies
2013: 5311 robberies (pace through Sept. 22)
"In early 2013, police Lt. Chris Bolton analyzed robberies across the city and found that roughly 75 percent involved a smartphone."
"So far this year, crime, as a whole in Oakland is stagnant. Shootings are down. Homicide has dropped by 13 percent...But robberies are up. A lot."
With smartphone penetration on the rise, it's pretty obvious that more robberies would involve smartphones, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that smartphones are responsible for a rise in robberies.
Having said that, waving a $700 smartphone around in public will mark you as a potential target, rather than the person next to you with an old-school flip-phone.
Or is the possibility that you may be armed supposed to act as a deterrent?
The bad thing about CCW is it turns any assault into a likely-to-end-in-someone-shot situation; if you're carrying and potentially will be knocked unconscious in an assault, or are being grappled, the attacker may grab your gun and shoot you; your correct course of action is to shoot him first.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...
Violent crime tends to be closely related to poverty, and much tends to be "criminal-on-criminal". As criminals do not follow carry laws, it's hard to know the true effect on stats. I do find it interesting that if you sort the list by property crime, the top cities are dominated by ones in gun friendly states. A quick comparison shows for example, Atlanta has a higher property crime to violent crime ratio than Oakland. If you say there's "base crime level" driven by socioeconomic factors, then Atlanta's more gun friendly laws could contribute to it having a smaller percentage of violent crime in the total crime pie chart. Criminals may choose to break into unoccupied cars, stores, and homes instead of muggings and home invasions.
I'm picturing an app with a button on the main screen. Press the button, device location is uploaded periodically to a server. For bonus points, make the device look like it is powered off (although I suppose there really isn't much you can do if they pull the battery).
After the fact, you might get lucky and the data reveals where the device went, which police might be able to use to track down who did it. Not sure if anything like this exists (don't have a smartphone), but it seems like something that might be useful if you live in an area where this happens a lot.
http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html
There are Android apps that will do the same thing.
The problem is getting the police to care about a relatively minor crime, and getting to the phone before the thief (or his fence) wipes it, or ships it to Vietnam or wherever.
As of iOS 7, you can actually remotely render the phone unusable. I've heard NYPD is now handing out flyers advising people to update their iOS devices to iOS 7[1] so they can take advantage of this feature.
While most crime in NYC has declined, smartphone robberies are -- as in Oakland -- majorly up y/y.
[1]https://twitter.com/Hoffm/status/381564392602480640/photo/1
You've always been able to remotely disable.
I was robbed in West Oakland over the summer while developing the app. Funny thing, I actually had the app installed on my phone at the time it was stolen and made a bunch of design and feature changes after the fact.
A better solution would be to render the device inoperable after it has been reported stolen. I hate to be a cynic, but it seems Apple, AT&T, Verizon and others are resistant to this not because it is difficult to accomplish, but due to lower revenue possibly.
Frankly, more people are getting assaulted and injured due to smart phone thefts, and while I do blame the perpetrators, I also find inaction on the part of smart phone vendors abhorrent.
FYI, I've lived in Oakland over 30 years and have not been robbed yet. Not to say it won't happen, but people on their phones are generally more oblivious to their surroundings than usual. Oakland has its problems, but it gets an inordinate amount of this type of bad press that greases the public fear wheel.
So, what would be a more appropriate amount and type of press for the violent robbery capital of the country?
I've never had a problem with crime in Oakland personally, perhaps due to this level of precaution, but I know a lot of people who have (generally females walking or using public transit, in the afternoon or at night, in uptown and affiliated areas). Think about how much your laptop/phone/ipad/mifi/etc. together are worth, and whether you want to be displaying that on the street, at a bus stop, etc.
The weird thing is Oakland rents in the Grand/Broadway/Adams Point/etc. area are starting to approach ~2004 SF rents; a 1BR is about $1800-2k, up from about $1200 a couple years ago. I'm not sure if increasing rents will lead to less crime, since most of the people moving to Oakland are "hipsters" or "young single people", who generally don't prioritize security as much as families or older people.
(The huge amounts of crime in Oakland, which largely influence the stats, and most of the violent crime, are in the large gang/etc. areas where no hn reader would be likely to go. A friend of mine lived in a warehouse in one of those areas, and I ended up having to drive and walk through active ~50 cop police raids on the neighbors to get to her place several times. It was pretty lulz; I would not recommend it.)
If Alameda became as "issue on good cause" as the San Mateo County Sheriff, I'd more seriously consider living here again.
Maybe a camera and/or an alarm would be helpful, but good thieves would learn where the cameras are and to cover them up. An alarm would give itself away before you'd have a chance to find it, and would probably entice the thief to destroy your bike. Maybe there's a way to echolocate the bike, using a frequency outside the range of human hearing:
- The owner goes to the rough location of the stolen item, as determined by GPS.
- The owner sends a signal to the anti-theft inside the stolen item to start emitting a signal that the thief can't hear.
- Using his phone (and maybe a friend's to aid in triangulation), the owner deduces where the signal is coming from, and is better able to recover his item.
The problem with bolt-on antitheft (like the BikeSpike) is that once thieves realize what a GPS beacon looks like, they'll destroy it ASAP after stealing the bike. Therefore, options like Helios where the GPS is hidden in the bicycle itself are the much preferred option, but even then, the thief can hide the stolen goods in a basement or a Faraday cage where any signals the device emits can't reach the outside world.
The more I think about this, the more I realize that if your bike is stolen, you are basically screwed.
What seems to be happening is what seems like a standard burglary scenario. Someone walks around the neighborhoods checking out places, identifies a few and candidates and takes a closer look, and then the burglary happens. The officer in the article caught a couple of people in the act after being notified about a casing incident, which is great, but it's a drop in the bucket.
A rural or suburban volunteer or private fire department is fine, much more so than privatizing police forces.
My neighborhood is considering hiring private security. The initial estimate is $15 a household per month given N neighbors sign up. I forget what N is, but it wasn't that many. So yes, it would be a real monetary sacrifice to a lot of the residents around me, but the alternative, given that the police can't really help right now, is to be at a very high risk of being burglarized with basically no chance of the perpetrators being caught.
Sometimes you have to take things into your own hands. I think oakland is making strides to hire and train more officers, but that's going to take a few years to get back to the 2010 level and we probably need more officers than we had then. Until then...what do we do? Keep getting robbed/burgled?
Take Uber for example - Uber only exists due to the complete failure of SF's public transportation network, as well as its horrifyingly corrupt taxi industry. The fact that it exists may be necessary, but it is indicative of a malaise, not a leap forward.
I personally find it very annoying at how self-congratulatory our industry is on these matters. A private police force is nothing to celebrate, it's cause for sober reflection on just how badly we've completely fucked up to even make it necessary.
Oakland has a serious problem with burglaries/robberies. The police force is understaffed and, while oakland is finally trying to add more officers, it's going to take years to get back to a level of staffing that is sufficient to fight crime in the city. What is the alternative here?
And my neighborhood is one of the poorest in the bay area. If you look at richblockspoorblocks.com for oakland north of 580 and west of 24. Those are some of the neighborhoods that are looking to hire private security (among others). My census tract (4007) has a median household income of $38,646!!! These aren't "rich" people that want to hire security to protect their gated community (:cough: piedmont :cough:). These are working class neighborhoods fed up with the crime rate and powerless to speed the process of growing the policing power of the city of oakland. The only thing they can do with any speed is hire someone to help out.
It cant be hard to find a cell phone, it has a connected GPS, mike, and camera.
This kind of reporting allows one to think & reason about the issues & perhaps consider how to avoid(hopefully fix) the problem - instead of the blatant generalization like this[2][3] that only invoke fear and demoralize all the people in the city. Also, I support the headline change to match the article. The original headline is exactly what I'm talking about, just invoking fear. People who scan headlines will just memorize the headline instead of clicking into the article to understand why & how. We know far more people read headlines than read the whole article. We need more understanding about "why" and "how", not just "what".
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409
2. http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-kin...
3. http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakla...