Oakland burglaries barely investigated City consultants lay out their plan to reduce crime

Patrick Harnett, one of the consultants studying the Oakland Police Department: "When this is fully implemented, this is going to have an impact on crime and reduce crime in this city." Patrick Harnett, one of the consultants studying the Oakland Police Department: "When this is fully implemented, this is going to have an impact on crime and reduce crime in this city." Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Oakland burglaries barely investigated 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

The Oakland Police Department has been so ineffectively structured that only one part-time investigator was assigned to handle 10,000 reported burglaries last year, a stunning deficiency revealed Thursday by police consultants hired by the city to develop a crime-fighting plan.

"Given the way the organization was structured, burglary was not being investigated," said William Andrews, one of the consultants working on a team hired by Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and the City Council to help police reduce the crime problem.

"Burglaries have gone through the roof," Andrews said.

The revelation came one day after Howard Jordan abruptly stepped down as Oakland's police chief, citing long-term medical reasons, and as the consultants and city officials released a brief six-page summary of the consultants' crime plan.

City officials refused to release the full plan Thursday, saying they needed to review it before releasing it on Friday. But sources said the plan had been given to Jordan on Sunday.

The consultant team, headed by former New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, criticized the Police Department's centralized structure, saying that there are not enough investigators and that the few the department does employ should not all be located at headquarters.

The team's plan says the city should drastically increase the number of detectives and give those investigators geographic responsibilities.

Working closely with officers also assigned to those geographic areas, detectives would have a more intimate understanding of crime patterns and the criminals behind them, according to the consultants. The effort would be aided by a thorough use of a data-driven policing tool known as CompStat and, possibly, increased camera surveillance throughout the city.

Getting started

Acting Police Chief Anthony Toribio said the department has already begun carrying out the plan, which consultants promised would reduce crime within six months - a quick pace for a department that's seen crime rise in each of the past two years. But it remained unclear Thursday whether the department will implement the entire plan.

Oakland police have been under federal court oversight for the past decade as part of an agreement made in the aftermath of a police abuse scandal. The scrutiny was intensified in March, when a federal judge appointed a compliance director who has the authority to fire the police chief and even direct the city administrator - powers otherwise held only by the mayor.

"When this is fully implemented, this is going to have an impact on crime and reduce crime in this city," said Patrick Harnett, a former Hartford, Conn., police chief who is one of the Bratton consultants.

Burglary concerns

Police response to a rise in burglaries has been a persistent concern for residents throughout the city over the past few years.

Burglaries increased each of the last two years, including a 43 percent spike from 2011 to 2012. Auto burglaries jumped 77 percent last year, while home burglaries rose 24 percent.

At the same time, because of low officer staffing, the Police Department has said it cannot respond to burglaries that are not in progress. The combination has infuriated many residents, who have believed that the inadequate police response has contributed to the rise of burglaries.

The Bratton report comes a week after the federal compliance director, Thomas Frazier, issued a report highly critical of police management.

Struggling to develop plan

The department has struggled to develop a crime plan since July 2010, when the City Council laid off 80 officers in a dispute over job security and pensions. The force declined from roughly 776 officers before the layoffs to a historic low of 611 this March as officers continued to retire and leave.

The shrunken ranks pushed department leadership to prioritize patrol shifts and 911 response - and de-emphasize investigations. Even after a police academy graduated in March that boosted the number of officers, now around 640, all officers in the department work a mandatory overtime shift every 10 days to fill open patrol shifts.

That restructuring of officers wasn't "all that well thought out," said Andrews, the consultant.

Investigative units

Under the Bratton plan, each of the five new investigative units would be staffed by three veteran investigators, at least three officers and a veteran sergeant as a supervisor. Each team would be focused on one of three specialties: robberies, burglaries or a category combining assaults and shootings. Toribio said he is trying to determine where to find the officers to fill these slots and whether other police services would be cut to accomplish it, but he said he is committed to making it happen.

Quan disputed the idea that police have not been investigating burglaries - though she acknowledged it had mainly been done by a limited number of community policing officers.

The mayor emphasized that change was on the way. Police academies have been funded to increase the number of officers. The City Council approved a contract Tuesday to pay for outside help from the California Highway Patrol. And 25 civilians have been added to the Police Department to help take crime reports and evidence.

"I'm determined to make this city safe," she said, emphasizing that she sought the Bratton team's input and welcomed its guidance. "We are not afraid to take the criticism. ... We are learning."

More recommendations

Bratton's team also called for the following:

-- More efficient use of the county's photo database to provide lineups to robbery victims.

-- New protocols to run burglary fingerprints at a quicker pace.

-- Increasing analysis of shell casings at shooting scenes.

-- More cameras throughout commercial areas of the city. Consultants argued that it would help in burglary, robbery and some shooting cases. The videos would stream into a central operation known as the Domain Awareness Center, which is housed in the city's Emergency Operations Center.