San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Fires fuel surge in subscribers for alert systems
The Camp Fire reduced nearly 14,000 homes to rubble and killed at least 88 people. Even though the destruction didn’t touch anything outside of Butte County, the blaze served as a warning to other California communities that they could be next.
The thought of being caught off guard by a major disaster has spooked hundreds of thousands people into signing up for alerts, which should make them safer come next fire season, officials said. In November, more than 600,000 Bay Area residents signed up for Nixle alerts, which law enforcement agencies use to notify residents of public safety issues.
Many people were antsy to opt in before the next big disaster hits, said Imad Mouline, the chief technical officer of Everbridge, which created Nixle.
“We certainly see that, especially when the stories around the nation are about how potentially some people didn’t even know what was going on,” Mouline said. “So, that helps disseminate the message that opting in to your local emergency or mass notification system is a good thing.”
The day before last year’s Wine Country fires raced across Sonoma County, subscriptions to the Sonoma County Sheriff ’s Office’s Nixle alert system sat at 21,284. Just three days later, the department said it counted 233,000plus subscriptions — almost a 1,000 percent increase.
The county has two other alert systems: SoCo Alerts, which are opt-in emergency notifications that go to home phones, work lines, cell phones and email addresses;
and the Wireless Emergency Alerts, which ping every cell phone in the area with an Amber Alert-style message.
While the county Fire and Emergency Services Department does not track day-to-day numbers for SoCo Alerts, interim Emergency Manager Christopher Godley confirmed that the agency does see a spike in subscribers every time another major disaster occurs.
“Even since the Carr Fire, and especially now with Butte County, we’ve seen another surge,” Godley said. “We’ve probably doubled what we had in 2017.”
Nixle and county officials said that having multiple alerts isn’t confusing, but rather is more effective in making sure key details get to a wide slice of the population.
“We have the technology, and we use it every day, so why can’t we use it in these scenarios?” Godley said.
The rapid rise in subscribers over the last year and a half, Godley said, pushed the county to hire its first full-time community program manager to oversee the alerts.
The Oakland City Council on Friday rejected both the Police Department’s and civilian Police Commission’s competing versions of a new policy for searching people on probation and parole, sending the matter back to the commission to iron out the differences. But the move was viewed as a victory for the relatively new civilian body, which has been tasked to help shape the Police Department’s discipline and protocol. While Oakland police brass insisted their draft would be the most progressive in the country, the commission argued it didn’t go far enough.
The dispute amounted to a showdown between the department and its citizen oversight, in a tug-of-war for power over policymaking.
Ten days ago at a Public Safety Committee meeting, the police version of the policy seemed poised to sail through the full City Council. But the council’s mood had shifted by Friday and elected officials unanimously chose to stall the final vote until the new year.
“If I were forced to choose today, I would absolutely choose the commission’s version,” said Council member Rebecca Kaplan, who called the motion to delay the vote.
Sending the matter back to the commission sets an important precedent: It will force the two groups to work out a strategy for collaborating on new policies in the future.
There are a few key differences in the two proposals. While the police version said officers should refrain “when possible” from immediately asking whether a person is on probation or parole, the commission’s version said officers must refrain from it.
The department’s policy would require officers to document why they believed a person was involved in a crime when searching a person on probation or parole for a nonviolent offense. The commission wants to require a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity before any search.
Oakland Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick defended her staff ’s policy on Friday. As written, she said, it would have already been the most restrictive in the country.
Kirkpatrick went on to argue that the commission’s edits would harm public safety. She pointed to department statistics that showed police recovered 80 firearms after traffic stops and searches for people on probation and parole.
“If we had not done probation and parole searches, we would have left 80 guns on the street,” she said. Commission member Maureen Benson rejected Kirkpatrick’s argument on the recovered firearms being a good reason to back the department’s policy, arguing that the searches were unconstitutional. Ultimately, though, she thanked the council for realizing there was a breakdown between police and the commission in creating the policy.
“We have to send a message that OPD must work with the commission in creating policy regarding profiling,” Benson said.
The recent transfer of two popular San Francisco police captains isn’t sitting well with some residents who in recent months have become attached to their neighborhood law enforcement leaders.
Police Chief Bill Scott announced last week that Bayview Station Capt. Steven Ford and Central Station Capt. Paul Yep will be moved to new leadership posts in the department. “I don’t know why there’s such a hurry to move them out,” San Francisco resident Howard Woo said at a Police Commission meeting on Wednesday. “I’d like them to keep their jobs over there to do more safety for our people in those two districts.”
Several others, particularly members of the city’s Chinese American community, joined Woo in expressing displeasure with the move.
“We are very disappointed to see Capt. Steven Ford leaving the Bayview Station,” said Hazel Lee, a board member of the San Francisco Shanghai Association. “Our community knows him well and he is very knowledgeable.”
The transfers are part of a larger shakeup of the command staff that is a component of the chief ’s “organizational plan to place members into the best positions that enhance organizational effectiveness,” the Police Department said in a statement.
Police captains are generally moved to new positions every few years to give them new opportunities and experience, officials said.
Ford had been at Bayview Station for just over a year and launched a wide-ranging effort to build ties with the community. He regularly hosted residents at open houses at the station and held peace walks and prayer circles with community members when a homicide occurred in the neighborhood.
“Bayview Station was a very, very special assignment for me both personally and professionally,” said Ford, who started his career as a patrolman in the Bayview 27 years ago. “Not only is it challenging, but at the same time, it was the most rewarding work. It really stretched me in terms of digging deep.”
Ford will take over as captain of the Professional Standards and Principled Policing Bureau, where he served as interim captain before coming to the Bayview. The unit will oversee the implementation of hundreds of reforms recommended by the Department of Justice in 2016 after several controversial police killings.
“I’m flattered and honored the organization has placed me in this role, and I look forward to it,” Ford said. “This work is familiar to me, and I feel like I can hit the ground running and get the DOJ project where it needs to be.”
Capt. Valerie Matthews, who previously headed the department’s Major Crimes Unit, will take over at Bayview Station.
Yep, who at Central Station oversaw Chinatown, North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf, is being reassigned to the Staff Services Division, which oversees personnel matters.
Yep was born and raised in Chinatown and has stayed close to the neighborhood’s residents. He has focused on concerns about property crime and late-night rowdiness at entertainment clubs.
Taking over for Yep is Capt. Robert Yick, who was previously at the Taraval Station.
Gwendolyn Wu, Megan Casidy and Evan Sernoffsky are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: gwendolyn. wu@sfchronicle.com, megan.cassidy@ sfchronicle.com, esernoffsky@sfchronicle. com, Twitter: @gwendolynawu, @meganrcassidy, @evansernoffsky