Oakland Crime Rate High, Stays Higher – and not because of any Blue Dream [CrimeStats: Oakland vs NYC, SF, LA…]

photo by Jim OBrien, Ice City Almanac

Oakland Crime Rate High, Stays Higher – and not because of any Blue Dream

It’s been forever since I last posted about Oakland specifically, and I miss A Better Oakland (by intrepid Echa) so here’s a crime brief.

Oakland murders in 2012 to date: 84.

New York City murders in 2012 to date: 299.

So, Oakland has one third of the murders that NYC has and less than 5% of the population. Some will say Baltimore and New Orleans are worse but I don’t want to emulate the bad parts of any city.  And anyway, ex-OPD Chief Batts just landed in Baltimore. (youtubes here)

Oakland: 84/pop x 10,000 = 21 murders per capita, 2012

NYC: 299/pop x 10,000 = 4 murders per capita, 2012

Raw Stats: OAK pop 395,817 ; NYC pop 8,244,910 – Jul 2011, Source: U.S. Census Bureau. Oakland murder figure as of 9/7/12. 84 is Oaktown’s homicide count according to NBC and others. Incorrectly, KGORadio states “the 94 homicides in Oakland this year is one less than all of last year. Last year at this time there were 65 homicides in the city.”

That’s right. Oakland has FIVE as many murders per 10,000 people as New York City.  Okay okay. It would be lower without the Oikos mass shooting by an unhinged person. Yet, less murder is always preferable right?

Unfair? Let’s compare with SF, LA, Stockton, Fresno, Richmond and a few other cities.

City	Murders as of 9/11/12	Population as of 2011	Murders per capita
Honduras			82.100
Ciudad Juarez	625	1,300,000	48.077
New Orleans	128	360740	35.483
Colombia			33.400
Mexico City		8851080	24.000
Baltimore	146	619493	23.568
Oakland	84	395,817	21.222
Kenya			20.100
Uganda			17.100
Stockton	46	296357	15.522
Richmond	15	105,380	14.234
Chicago	300	3,000,000	10.000
L.A.	375	3819702	9.818
Fresno	32	501362	6.383
San Francisco	45	750,000	6.000
NYC	299	8,244,910	3.626
San Jose	31	967487	3.204

And I can’t speak to Baltimore/NOLA but Oakland clearly needs 5-600 more poh-leese on the streets. If you have a cop in every neighborhood, s/he can mediate for that neighborhood, help direct people to resources, GET TO KNOW people, people will GET TO KNOW her/him. Real community policing happens with adequate staffing.

No men or women are angels, so we will always need to police ourselves — either internally (social code, customs, tight knit communitas) or externally (police, security).

Is Oakland a “police state”? Hardly. It’s a “thug state” and all current city politicians (and the police union OPOA, higher up OPD who sit at their desks, criminals (underground businessmen), certain neighborhoods and “anti-violence” nonprofits with no-bid city contracts) are happy to let this continue indefinitely.

I hate this game.  More cops will fix it over a 5-6 year period. This November election matters. Vote for city “leaders” who will actually hire up 5-600 MORE cops — at lower salary/pension levels — on November 6, 2012.

The national elections are a sham. But you have a chance to bring REAL policing to Oakland.  Policing where cops know their hood, every hood knows their cop, and we have REAL “bridging the gap” between COMMUNITY and POLICE.  This must happen if we will have a nurturing city for residents — and businesses (ie, “more jobs for people who give a shit in East/West Oakland”).

You pay for security. Your choice is how: police, or private patrol/alarm. Do we all want our own alarm? NO.

data sources: news reports, city websites. (google)

#OccupyOakland General Strike Recon 11/2

Photos below are from just before noon today along likely General Strike march route.

The port police are ready, OPD is ready. Make sure to stay visible to BART riders. Bring lots of water, energy bars, clothing (will be cold later!!), led flashlights… coordinate with your peeps by social media and RADIO. If police can check up on us with infiltrators, we can do same with police band radio checkups. Perhaps carry fingernail clippers in your back pocket to clip zipties. Onward!

Port police patrolling 7th Street, above.

Below you’ll find OPD squad cars, motorcycle patrolmen, City of Oakland Public Works trucks… all hands on deck today. For better or worse.

Police on motorcycles on 7th St.

Very glad to see and hear today on KPFA that protestors demonstrated in front of all the BIG TAPEWORM BANKS I’ve railed against repeatedly here on my blog in 2008, 2009, 2010.

People are finally getting it.  How many Oakland “progressives” bank with these zombie banks which are sucking us dry?

Lest I repeat myself… big banks who received bailout “tarp” money 2008+:

1. Bank of America/ Merril Lynch (more recently, $75 Trillion of derivatives moved to “Fed”/Treasury books!! unholy bailout of 2011!)
2. Wells Fargo/Wachovia (drug money launderers, not to mention mortgage nonsense)
3. J. P. Morgan Chase  / WaMu
4. HSBC
5. ING – another Euro bank we bailed out
6. CitiBank – massive fail
7. Societie Generale – FRENCH bank we bailed out due to their own risky “mortgage-backed securities” fraud schemes failing – to the tune of billions of dollars

The elites/oligarchs/plutocracy doesn’t count every vote. They buy votes. What they DO count is every DOLLAR. Move your Dollars!!

— 2:30PM Update: More great photos from today so far:

Aerial view of city hall plaza

Challenge Corporate Power banner (“skyscraper” format for you ad network folks)

Crowd at Bway/14th this morning

One of two streetlamp climbers hoisting anti-zombie bank banner by CHASE Bank this morning at Webster/20th

And… where is FRANK CHU??? (12 Galaxies)

 

Bitter Tea and Tasty Sandwiches: Yesterday’s MTC “You Choose Bay Area” Workshop and “Tea Party” Eruptions

Attended MTC’s second Oakland spring workshop for Bay Area future planning and visioning tonight, May 24th, 2011.  The visioning process is called “You Choose Bay Area” which is part of ABAG and MTC’s “One Bay Area” project.  You can “vote” on the type of sub/urban future you’d like to see at the YCBA site. The workshop was from 5:30-8:30pm with basic box sandwich dinners provided.  Ham, roast beef, tuna and chicken. Tea was also provided…though not by MTC. I’ll dive into that later.

The purpose of this event (like the oversubscribed May 19th workshop I missed) was for residents of Alameda County to tell the MTC what they’d like their future to be like: Business As Usual or new and different.  How to prioritize land use and transportation options, policies and incentives and tax money.  Everyone did that quite well, though some less civilly.

The night’s most memorable negative feature was the sizable and obnoxious contingent of all-white* folks mostly from Livermore, Alamo, Dublin and other 680/580 suburbs. Some people might call these people “Tea Partyers.”  They were variously very dismissive, distrustful, extremely rude/shrill/loud/uncouth, (think Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin and ten of their dittohead friends in a room), ignorant about fossil fuel realities and were completely “anti” MTC, public mass transit, planning, taxes, regulations and density. By re-arranging the letters in WASP, we get SAWP, or Super Angry White People. That’s what they were.

[*5/28/2011: At this point, let’s take a break and discuss race. I couldn’t help but notice that all the people who were loud, or anti-MTC/transit, happened to be white.  Does that mean the tensions in the room were due to race issues? In some people’s minds it very well could play a strong part. In a better read of the situation, it really boiled down to who was from newer  suburbs/exurbs, vs who was from older suburbs and urban cities.  Urban workshop participants were also largely white, but far more racially mixed (Asian, black, etc) given the more mixed demographics of the urban Bay Area.  I’m leaving the text as I wrote it, but keep this in mind. It’s more of a “inland vs coastal” sparring match. In microcosm, the US coasts vs the “heartland.” You can see charts of this I commissioned in 2008 for a city sustainability study.

Inlanders from the 680 valley were defending their car-based single family home way of life against decreased funding for them (which they’ve enjoyed for decades mind you), and increasing funding for less car-based, more “dense and convenient” ways of life.  I also have to note, based on the Bay Citizen story this week, that it is self-serving for Tea Party efforts to be led by a sales commission-based realtor… but still the main tension is over “The Economy, Stupid.” Also, there are no black UN (US) helicopters forcing people out of their SFHs and cars back into cities… economics alone do that. We’re in the “maturity and death” part of our society cycle right now. A new society will be born in the US by 2030. Now back to original post…]

You could say they were the ultimate version of that group of NIMBYs in North Oakland and Berkeley who frown upon any buildings taller than two stories or  Bus Rapid Transit. From talking to other people who tried to engage with them, and seeing their actions and hearing their words, I could see that they were there to get their point across to MTC (fine) but their manner of doing so was extremely rude. “Ghetto” would not be far from accurate. They were a riot. The irony!

art murmur resentment?

Seems a small minority of people aren’t Art Murmur fans. Don’t they know they are supposed to love all the things Lanesplitter? Could be a disaffected former fan I suppose… who knows.

Art 1.

Proper grammar and spelling would have been F “the” Art Murmur, not “Murmer.”

Art 2.

Not sure what the tagger was getting at in #2.  Phony Judaism? Phone Israel?

There’s some more at Bibliomania if I get off my ass soon, might record it too.

As far as positive views on the murmur, check out Becks and Gene‘s photos.

Would be more interesting to see an art gallery by the disaffected people called Art Murder but I don’t foresee that happening. I do like the wrinkled forehead egghead tagging on freeways…

North Oakland music

Music from the north pole…

Behind Government Budget Problems

Sutro Baths Steps, a photo by sirgious on Flickr.

This month’s post by Gail the Actuary explains our country’s (and the world’s) economic situation better than I ever could, so here it is.

This obviously speaks for Oakland as well, since we’re one of hundreds of US cities built upon a once lustrous but increasingly potholed and cracked foundation of cheap (and now all burnt up) oil and gasoline.

We’ll need to find other means of social lubrication, and in the meantime, don’t be poor!

The ramifications touch every part of our society, and thus I’ve tagged this with all categories. Put on your systems thinking cap and get reading!

Mini-post. ODP Chief handwriting analysis

This is just for fun, a handwriting analysis based on Chief Batts’ signature.

self important
wants the world to give him things
pessimistic, but not about himself
no real physical desires, likely mental and some emotional
free flowing personality with a tad of self destruction

I did not conduct the analysis but did commission it. 🙂

As for Batts wanting to leave, why not? Leave on a “high” or at least higher note — of lower crime statistics during your tenure — move to a city with more money and  less BS city politics, fewer crime problems (I’m assuming), fewer “knuckleheads” as Phil Tagami calls them (no brainer) and more Mexican food. Sold!