Oakland: Police chief sees no relationship between hills robberies, 100-block plan

Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan on Tuesday said the surge in burglaries in the city’s hills and in North Oakland were unrelated to a violent crime strategy that targeted the city’s flatlands.

Violent crimes and property crimes are generally committed by distinct groups in different areas, he said.

“The people who are shooting and robbing people are not suddenly going up to the hills and preying on people in the hills,” Jordan said. “There has been no displacement of property crimes to the hills.”

Jordan was seeking to quell persistent concerns from hills residents that their areas were being overlooked by recent initiatives to patrol notoriously violent parts of East and West Oakland, particularly Mayor Jean Quan’s 100-block plan for East and West Oakland.

Jordan emphasized that the 100-block plan, described by Quan as the concentrated use of policing and other city services in historically violent blocks, was only one component of the city’s overall crime plan. The 100-block plan went into effect in January, the same time police began a separate violence reduction plan also targeting East and West Oakland.

Movement isn’t change

Police officials say crime has been “displaced” by this year’s violence reduction initiatives, meaning that focused attention in one area had moved crime elsewhere.

But Jordan said the types of crimes had remained consistent in their respective neighborhoods. The displacement, he said, only meant that the crimes moved only slightly.

“We’re talking literally a block or two away,” he said. Sometimes, “it’s the same backyard. That’s what our anecdotal information is showing.”

Police this year have been saturating certain areas of East and West Oakland with officers to combat shootings, homicides and robberies, Jordan said.

Despite the various strategies, the city’s most serious crimes — such as robberies, homicides and burglaries — are collectively up 21 percent compared to last year.

“That is very alarming,” Jordan told the City Council’s public safety committee Tuesday. “It’s something we’re concerned about.”

Jordan said that the department had been looking at other means — particularly partnerships with federal and local agencies — to bolster a shrinking Police Department. The department has 653 officers, compared to 803 two years ago.

One of the clearest impacts has been on 911 response time, which is now at 17.1 minutes, Jordan said. That’s about 10 minutes longer than response rate in cities of comparable size and crime rates, Jordan said.

Community policing

Hills residents had also been up in arms because community policing officers — known as Problem Solving Officers — had been taken off their beats to work on the 90-day violence reduction plan. City Administrator Deanna Santana said that the decision to remove those officers had been made by the City Council — not the Police Department — in July.

As The Chronicle reported Tuesday, those officers will now be returned to their beats. Jordan said that would make it tougher to implement the 100-block plan.

“It’s going to be very difficult for us to continue our efforts in that area with the focus that we have had,” he said.

At an afternoon press conference, Quan said a critical component of her 100-block plan was that all city departments are now expected to be responsible for keeping crime down in the city’s most notorious areas. That means quicker response from nonpublic-safety departments, like public works, as they deal with issues like graffiti or illegal dumping.

“I’m tired of not doing something different,” said Quan. “Maybe I’ll fail. It’s the first time the whole city has stepped up. … Everyone of us is thinking about what we can do.”