A Better Oakland Police Recruiting Budget

It turns out that the Oakland City Council will approve $7.7 Million to spend on police recruiting.

I like that advertising has been reduced to $1M instead of the ludacris $1.5M bucks.

Great.

OPD is still not on the ball marketing online. According to a post on the Rockridge Crimewatch group, there have been NO ads for hiring OPD officers on craigslist. You won't find any ads except one for an $8-10k/month HR manager fatcat position. (Perhaps split that into three positions: one coordinator, and two neighborhood walking recruiters?)

Check craigslist for OPD jobs

You will find job postings on monster.com, but monster costs 4x what a job posting costs on craigslist ($495 instead of $75) and monster ads are seen by far fewer people.


I spoke with SFPD officers over the weekend who noted that *every* PD in the country is having trouble staffing up right now. Same with the military. Who wants to die for low pay, or nothing to show for it?

These guys also commented that hiring bonuses are not good for this reason, because they steal officers from other cities who need them. For sure, they can replace said officers more easily than OPD can. Oakland has plenty of violent crime. On the other hand, San Francisco has more homicides per year than Oakland. Do you hear that in the media?

Rebecca Kaplan's IDEAS
OPD marketing/recruiting needs to hear Rebecca Kaplan's ideas of hiring more people from within Oakland. If the police are your brothers and neighbors, you can't really well call them "pigs" can you? Plus, many households in West and East Oakland could use the money!

Also, most people who aced all our OPD tests but were screened out at the 11th hour, failed because of:
-- low credit scores (who cares? what about goldman sachs' and alan greenspan's "scores"?)
-- past drug use, long ago (who cares? who in our newer generations has NOT used drugs? I know I have, but I didn't keep up because that's not my style of addiction. C'mon now people. If we want more police, make the standards realistic!)

A Date with Mack the Knife

In the CoCo Times, there is a story about a man who went on a date with a woman who intended to kidnap and rob him with help from her other hoodlum East Oakland friends.

Luckily, the victim, like me, carried a knife and stabbed her male accomplice while he was stuck in the back of the car with the women.

Nice date!

Now go get your own piece.


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City Council Votes to Delay OPD Recruitment Funding

According to the San Diego Tribune, and San Mateo Times, our City Council voted Tuesday night (2/19) to defer this program:

Subject: Measure Y: Police Recruitment Program
From: Oakland Police Department
Recommendation: Adopt A Resolution Authorizing A Transfer Of Existing Appropriations Of Measure Y Funds In An Amount Not To Exceed Seven Million Seven Hundred Twenty-Two Three Hundred And Thirty Nine ($7,722,339) To Implement The 2008 Augmented Measure Y Police Recruitment Program, Waiving Advertising And Bidding For The Purchase Of Ammunition, Firearms, Advertising Services And Travel Services, And Waiving The Requests For Proposal/Qualifications Process For The Purchase Of Recruitment Services And Other Professional Services Needed To Expedite The Hiring And Training Of Police Recruits, And Authorizing The City Administrator To Purchase: Firearms In An Estimated Amount Of One Hundred And Fifty Six Thousand ($156,000), Advertising Services For Recruitment In An Estimated Amount Of One Million Five Hundred Thousand ($1,500,000), Travel Services In An Estimated Amount Of One Hundred Thirty Eight Thousand Four Hundred Sixty Four Dollars ($138,464), Recruitment Services In An Estimated Amount Of Sixty Two Thousand Three Hundred Thirteen ($62,313), And Other Professional Services Needed To Expedite The Hiring And Training Of Police Recruits In An Estimated Amount Of Five Million Six Hundred Forty Two Thousand Five Hundred Sixty Two Dollars ($5,642,562), Without Return To Council
(07-1009)

Minutes are not posted yet, only the Agenda is available (PDF) from city's website.

Why would council block this immediate, focused use of funds to recruit more qualified police and buy equipment? Are they crazy? Or is something really wrong with the proposal?

Comments, please.

Detroit Girl Hero vs Oaklanders' Crime Response

If only our Mayor, Council, and the rest of us would put ourselves on the front line, like this seven year old girl from Detroit, who was shot six times defending her mother from an exboyfriend/ excon.

'Hero' Girl Recovering After Shooting

Where are the firm, positive father figures our black communities desperately need? Surely there are more out there than the media tells us. We could use more. I don't think it's out of people's capacity to do so, given the right circumstances and "village" support.

And if not?

Should richer families in this country be required to adopt poor black children before going to Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe to find adoptees? What if some of those children were born to crack-addicted prostitutes?

One related issue to why blacks remain poor is the fact that black students are all racing for the academic bottom, to be the cream of the crud (gangsta), instead of studying and making their way out of the ghetto. They all pull each other down. If you try to study in school, you are "just tryin to be white." No, that's called trying to get ahead!! Beat whitey at his own game! I suppose it's merely kids being kids in a shitty situation, trying to come out of top. Problem is, they're playing the wrong game.

Our black kids need Cream of Wheat and button down shirts, not Coco Puffs, tshirts and Xbox360.

Heart Disease Kills more West Oaklanders than Violence

The number one cause of death in West Oakland is not violence, but heart disease - accounting for 29% of all deaths from 1996-1998.
Source: Alameda County Public Health Department of Vital Statistics


So are you surprised? Really? And what could be causing this epidemic?

* low quality diets with too much meat, fat, sugar, and processed fast food

* too much driving

* living too close to major freeways and the port of oakland's 20,000 car-tailpipe-equivalent tanker ships

It's easy to change #1 and #2. #3 not so easy.

Dellums and Newsom's bullshit request

Dellums, Newsom call for help fighting crime, Daily Review Online - Feb 07, 2008

OAKLAND — Calling violence on the streets of America "a national health crisis" that the federal government has ignored, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom chastised the Bush administration on Wednesday for abandoning cities and called on all levels of government to respond to crime.

"Sixteen thousand people were murdered in the streets of America" in 2006, Dellums said, and even more were murdered in 2007.

"If 16,000 people died of AIDS we would have a national strategy to deal with the epidemic," he continued. "If 16,000 people died of bird flu we would have a national strategy. We have 16,000 people die of murder and yet each mayor is left to deal with it alone."


Great! Why don't they ask for help from the Feds for _42,000 people killed by CARS_ each year? That's 250,000 DEAD AMERICANS SINCE 9-11.

Oh wait, Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes--not to mention Exxon Mobil, Shell, CHevron, BP don't want anything done about THAT. Nope! Keep filling up at the gas station, losers!

The guy getting shot is Viet Cong and just killed 2-3 American soldiers. Did he deserve to die?Do Oaklanders deserve to die for killing other Oaklanders?