Mayor Ron Dellums made a decision to avoid adding more police to help deter the ever-present spectre of crime in Oakland. Not surprisingly, some people are up in arms about this. Here's what I found on the Topix site:
Oakland Dimond...
ya gotta be kidding me! he says he wants to form a community policing program. WTF is that? so, on top of me paying $13,000/year in property taxes, i have to be a guardian angle for Oakland. fine, PAY ME THEN!
excerpt:
Dellums says he has no plans to significantly increase the number of Oakland police officers, despite the reality that Oakland's under-sized force of nearly 740 officers is roughly half the size of cities of comparable size.
"I don't believe the (Oakland) residents support the idea of a huge increase in the police force," he said. "Measure Y was passed to accommodate those needs.
"In lieu of more police, we think community policing is the answer."
On this point the mayor and I agreed to disagree, because I live in Oakland and believe we need a police force at least one-third larger than its current size.
Comments