New Measure Y Evaluation Report Released: More Bad News

The new Measure Y evaluation report, prepared by Resource Development Associates, has just been issued, and it is depressing on so many levels. Most annoying to me is that the authors get patently wrong some basic information regarding the requirements of Measure Y, like the actual staffing requirements. According to the cover page of the report, practically everybody who works for RDA has a PhD or masters degree. And yet, somehow they weren’t able to read Measure Y or understand what it requires. It also appears that they either failed to read the judge’s decision in my lawsuit, or misinterpreted that as well. The inaccurate information on these basic issues makes me distrust the level of effort and accuracy in the remainder of the report. But assuming that they got at least the gist correctly, it appears that in the years since Measure Y passed, crime went way up (except for the time the size of the force started to increase), the police department couldn’t keep track of how the money was spent, and couldn’t manage to properly staff many beats with regular and consistent PSOs. The report is supposed to be discussed at Monday’s meeting. I’m not sure if I can make it, but I plan to communicate, one way or the other, the following points:

1. Credibility Lost By Brownnosing: So RDA of course got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prepare this tome. They want to keep the business, and not alienate the people who chose them to be the “independent evaluator.“ So the report starts off with an acknowledgement to all the biggest bunglers of Measure Y, with the verbal equivalent of a big sloppy kiss. Given the total disaster that Measure Y has been, this just makes me want to gag. With reference to Jeff Baker, they thank him for his “guidance and unwavering dedication to this evaluation and to Measure Y.” Ha! More like, “thanks for giving us this lucrative contract and we’ll make sure we don’t blame you for the fact that we couldn’t get half the information we needed and that you can’t seem to ensure implementation of the most basic provisions of the Measure or catch the numerous errors in this report!”

2. RDA Doesn’t Understand Measure Y’s Staffing Requirements

Measure Y requires an “integrated program…in accordance with the following specific purposes: Hire and maintain at least a total of 63 police officers assigned to the following specific community policing objectives:
A. Neighborhood beat officers….
B. School Safety: supplement police services available to respond to school safety and truancy;
C. Crime reduction team: at least 6 of the total officers to investigate and respond to illegal narcotic transactions and commission of violent crimes in identified violence hot spots;
D. Domestic violence and child abuse intervention: additional officers to team with social service providers to intervene in situations of domestic violence and child abuse, including child prostitution.”

Notably, the RDA report includes information ONLY about staffing of the neighborhood beat officers, referred to as problem solving officers or “PSOs.” It includes no information whatsoever regarding the City’s compliance with staffing the other positions. Why? Because there is no evidence the City EVER complied with the remainder of the legal staffing obligations.
The authors go out of their way (p.4) to compliment the City on compliance by filling “63 Public Safety Officers (PSOs)” Okay, bozos, “PSO” stands for “problem solving officer,” not “public safety officer.” Moreover, there are only 57 beats in Oakland, so there are not 63 PSOs. The “highlights” section contains “key findings” that the City achieved “full implementation of Measure Y staffing levels….” However, the failure to address the CRTs, school safety officers, and domestic violence officers is a glaring omission.

Worse yet, on page 6 of the community policing portion of the report, the authors contend that “a judicial decision delivered on June 16, 2009 affirmed that as of September, 2008 Oakland had successfully assigned a PSO to each beat in the City.” Sorry, but a review of the Statement of Decision includes no such language AT ALL. This claim is so at odds with the ruling that again, it casts doubt on the credibility of the remainder of the report.

3. The RDA Report Fails To Provide Meaningful Analysis on Whether PSOs Were Properly Assigned Solely to Serve The Residents of Their Beats

The judge’s decision held that while Measure Y clearly requires that PSOs be assigned to serve “solely” the residents of their beats, Measure Y is not violated “when, on occasion, a PSO might lend assistance to a fellow officer working outside his or her beat….Measure Y does not require that a PSO to [sic] remain within the geographic confines of the beat at all times or proscribe the flexibility needed by the police department to call a PSO to assist elsewhere.”

The report notes (on pages 7-9) that there were some beats that did not have a regularly assigned PSO, and that their beats were covered only intermittently. The report also indicates that “researchers were unable to conduct a quantitative analysis of the amount of time and nature of work on beat business due to limitations in the Department’s data collection system.” The report also noted a shortage of patrol vehicles, and anecdotal comments such as, “my guys share a car. So, they split their time between the two beats.” However, RDA researchers should have followed up on this issue by interviewing PSOs and asking them point blank how much time they actually spend serving the residents of their beats, and if it’s not 100%, why not. But the researchers didn’t do that. Why not? My guess is, they were asked not to, to prevent giving me fodder for my next lawsuit.

4. The City’s Expenditure Tracking of Measure Y Funds Is Disastrous; Report Fails To Address Primary Holding In My Lawsuit

The report correctly concludes that the OPD’s records of how Measure Y funds are spent are abysmal. Okay, they didn’t actually use that language, but that’s the gist. But what is worse is that the report utterly fails to address the fact that the judge ruled that the City misspent Measure Y funds for recruitment and hiring of officers never placed into Measure Y positions. The report fails to address how much money is at issue, and/or the fact that the state of OPD recordkeeping is so bad that it is virtually impossible to tell how much money is at issue. Instead, the report falsely claims that: “The June 16th court ruling determined that fiscal reports provided by OPD were insufficient to verify training expenditures….” Excuse me? The holding said nothing of the kind. Where they got this information is completely beyond me, and this is the sort of error that Jeff Baker clearly should have caught before the report was finalized.

5. The Report Fails To Draw Obvious Conclusions between police staffing and crime
The report includes extensive charts of crime in the city, by area and type of crime, over the last four years. Basically, it shows a steady increase in crime since 2004 through 2008, when finally crime began to drop in most areas. Notably, the size of the police force was also dropping during most of this period, and finally started going up in 2008. The authors of the report clearly should have tried to do some connecting of the dots, but at least there’s some data there that maybe the chief and his consultants can use to support the need for additional officers, or at least the staffing currently required by law.

6. The Report Completely Fails To Address Fire Department Requirements

Measure Y very clearly requires that with the funds the fire department receives, it must establish a mentorship program at every station house, and “expand” paramedic services. Now, I have already done a public records act request to determine whether the City ever bothered to comply with this requirement, and so far, it looks like it never did. But the evaluator’s report needs to address the community policing, violence prevention, and fire department components of the measure. There is no discussion of the fire department whatsoever. This is a glaring omission, and again, makes me doubt the credibility and thoroughness of the authors, as well as the competence of Jeff Baker in not catching this obvious error. Alternatively, I would suspect that the omission was intentional, again, for the purpose of omitting information I could use in a subsequent lawsuit.