Jean Quan Can't Do Math Or Comply With The Public Records Act

Are these the qualities we need or want in a mayor? I think not. But given that this is the same person who led the school district into bankruptcy, and is well on her way to dragging the City down the same road, you probably should not be surprised.

As you may be aware, Jean Quan is campaigning all over town bragging about her successes with Measure Y, and how, as a result, crime is "down 40% in the last three years." Well, I had reason to doubt that claim, so I sent her a public records request two weeks ago, seeking all documents supporting that claim. More than 10 days went by, with no response, so I sent a follow-up email yesterday, reminding her that there is a pending lawsuit and PEC complaint on this issue. Here is the response I got today:

"The information on the decrease in crime came from the Oakland Police Department’s Part 1 Crime Report, which can be found at http://www2.oaklandnet.com/Government/o/OPD/s/Statistics/index.htm. This information is the same as the FBI Part 1 Crime Statistics.
Councilmember Quan was specifically looking at the Oakland Police Weekly Crime Report’s Total Part One Crimes, for her annual information, which shows a decrease of 10 and 14 percent for the previous two years. For this year, she has employed different numbers which are dependent on the statistics for a given month regarding year to date totals. Thus, earlier this year the Chief noted a 34 percent decrease, while last month the figure was a decrease of 16 percent and there is a 15 percent decrease this month."

So I referred to the source documents she cited, and found that they contained totally different numbers. The "summary of Part 1 Crime Offenses" for 2008 lists a total of 29,394. But according to a January, 2010 press release from OPD, the total was 31,917. The total for 2007 was 31,489. Regardless of the actual totals for 2008, they were either flat with 2007, or slightly up. They certainly did not go down in any significant amount, according to any of the data cited.

Turning to the January, 2010 press release, it shows a total of 28,867 Part 1 crimes for 2009, down 10% from 2008. Okay, so serious crime did go down in 2009. By 10%. Now, let's turn to 2010. Keep in mind that the police publicly announced a few months ago that due to layoffs, they'd no longer respond to certain crimes, and reports had to made on-line. That will certainly help crime statistics, won't it? Even assuming that people will still report Part 1 crimes (the most serious crimes), Quan's numbers still don't add up. According to the most recent "weekly crime report," (available on the OPD website) Part 1 crimes are down 15% this year, to date. So where is that 40% drop she's claiming coming from?

Even looking at the "YTD" figures for this week's crime report for Part 1 crimes, it shows that in 2008, this time of year, we were at 22,011 total part 1 crimes. Now we're at 17,325. Okay, that's quite a nice drop. But not nearly 40%! In order to be a 40% drop, the number of Part 1 crimes to date would need to be 13,206. Instead, we're looking at a 20% drop in crime over two years, not a 40% drop over three. Of course, if you're Jean Quan, a few misplaced zeros or decimal points don't seem to matter. Nor does missing the deadline for responding to public records requests. Which is just one of the dozens of reasons her name will appear nowhere on my IRV ballot sheet.