Public Safety Committee - Regular Meeting

Good evening, and welcome to the public safety committee meeting of Tuesday, 05/12/2026. The time is now 06:03PM, and this meeting may come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber and would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative no later than ten minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record. Registering to speak via Zoom is now due twenty four hours prior to the start of this meeting.

This meeting came to order at 06:03PM, and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after, making that time 06:13PM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council member Brown, who is noticed on the agenda for remote participation? Present. Council member Fife? Present. Council member Houston?

Here.

And chair Wong? Present. Thank you. We have four members present. And before we begin, chair, do you have any announcements at this time?

I I do not. Yeah. Let's move forward.

Okay. Reading in item one, approval of the draft minutes from the committee meetings of March 24 and 04/21/2026. There are no public speakers on this item.

K. Council member Fife. I move approval. Do I got a second? Alright.

Thank you. That's a motion made by council member Fife, seconded by council member Houston to accept the draft minutes from the committee committee meetings of March 24 and 04/21/2026. On roll. Council members Brown? Aye. Aye. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item number one passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes. Item two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items, and there are two speakers that signed up to speak.

We'll go to public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number two, Asada Olubala and Rajani Mandal.

I'm concerned about anything that has to do with how we're doing intervention with our youth related to public safety. Having said that, we do have a, violence prevention interrupter program that goes into the schools to deal with challenges around violence. We need to have a report on that and how it's working. We also have our police officers and the stop data that they're required to do, they are required to implement truancy stops. And we haven't got any kind of report on that element of our children being out of school when they are supposed to be in school.

I also am concerned about the last allowing of $250,000 for faith in action to do outreach to the ceasefire community or what can be said it can be said it gangs or individuals. I'm I'm not sure how y'all doing it now, but I do not see how that qualification was met. You have to have a skill set to do outreach to individuals who are engaged in criminal activity. Not anybody can't pick up the phone and say come to a meeting. You have to have a strategy on how to do that, and I don't know if faith in action has that strategy in place.

I am also challenged by the responsibility of officers to make a decision on citation or warning. And if that may have an element of racial profiling. The data, does it exist when you make a stop? The citation, the warning that was given by race. Lastly, on public communication identification, sometimes you identify.

Rajni Mandel, District 4. This is for the NSA item future agenda item. There's a growing narrative that reforming Oakland's civilian oversight structure could somehow threaten compliance with the NSA, federal oversight. But the commission, the police commission's own CMC statement actually highlights why we need to clearly separate civilian oversight from federal compliance administration. The police commission is not a named party in

the NSA. The federal monitor does not oversee the commission and monitor reports do not evaluate commission performance. In fact,

the monitor explicitly does not evaluate CPR investigations for NSA compliance because CPR timelines do not meet NSA deadlines. The court's focus has consistently been on OPD leadership, internal affairs, the city administrator, the constitutional poli policing administrator, the city attorney, and the mayor. Judge Oryk has repeatedly praised city leadership and OPD progress towards compliance. Yet the commission's current CMC statement repeatedly attempts to position that commission as central to NSA compliance and post NSA transition planning. The statement describes the commission as uniquely positioned to quote drive the kind of results that can hasten an NSA exit and discusses transitioning internal affairs functions to SIPRA and having the commission take over broader compliance related responsibilities.

This blurs the line between oversight and administration. The statement also discusses lobbying for changes to the police union MOU participating directly in federal court processes and positioning the commission as a long term compliance structure even though those responsibilities right now belong to city leadership and OPD administration under the NSA. Civilian oversight is crucial. It is important, but oversight works best when roles are clear. The commission should provide independent oversight and public accountability, not attempt to become a co manager of federal compliance or OPD administration. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, Cher. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Alright. Thank you. E. C. Phillips, anything from the administration?

No, chair. Nothing from the administration. Thank you.

Okay. Great. We'll entertain a motion.

Okay. Thank you. I'll second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by council member Fife to accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. On roll, council members Brown?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item two passes with four ayes to accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. Reading in item three, adopt a resolution awarding a grant agreement to community initiatives for the term of 07/01/2026 to 06/30/2027 for community activation services related to Oakland's ceasefire lifeline strategy in an amount not to exceed $100,000. And we have two speakers that signed up to speak.

Okay. Great. We do have a pretty packed agenda today. So, DVP, I'll turn it over to you. And if we can keep it to about three minutes, that would be great.

Sounds good. Thank you, chair Wong. Jenny Lin Shi, deputy chief with the Department of Violence Prevention. I'm joined tonight by Sean Upshaw, our violence interruption supervisor. And I will wait for my slides.

Great. Okay. So we are seeking approval of a resolution that would award a grant of a $100,000 to community initiatives as the fiscal sponsor for town Nights to support community activations as part of the ceasefire lifeline strategy from 07/01/2026 to 06/30/2027, so a one year period. As a reminder of the DVP's role in the ceasefire lifeline strategy, we implement the lifeline portion which focuses resources on approximately the entire strategy focuses resources on approximately 350 individuals at highest risk of drawing or driving gun violence. Our portion of the strategy, the lifeline portion involves two primary components.

The first is violence interrupters using their lived experience and trusted relationships to mediate conflicts and prevent retaliation. And then life coaches who work intensively with individuals to support them in shifting mindsets, behaviors, and contexts that reduce their risk for violence and increase their protective factors. So to talk about what we're hoping to do, the community activations, we are hoping to strategically deploy our violence interrupters to neighborhoods that are experiencing either acute incidents of violence or high risk group related conflicts. So when there are shootings that are group related that have high risk of retaliation or when there are simply high conflicts between groups happening in a specific neighborhood, our intention is to physically deploy violence interrupters to have a physical presence in those neighborhoods for several days and engage community members through food giveaways, healing events, family friendly activities, and connections to services. So you can think about this in the same way that when violence increases in a specific neighborhood, OPD might increase patrols in that neighborhood, we would be deploying our violence interrupters to have a physical presence.

And this work replicates promising practices that are happening already in Baltimore and Indianapolis currently as well as prior work that has happened in Oakland in prior years. The goals of these deployments are to allow our violence interrupters to develop relationships with community members who can support future mediation or interruption efforts, educate residents about the existence and role of violence interrupters, reduce the likelihood of retaliatory violence due to an increased presence in public spaces, so simply by more violence interrupters being physically present in community. Hopefully, retaliatory violence is less likely. Increasing trust and visibility of city governments, so our violence interrupters would be wearing apparel that say clearly DBP and city of Oakland on them so that community members would recognize who they are and and hopefully engage with them. And then connect highly impacted individuals to an array of services and support.

So some of the things that violence interrupters might do in community would be food giveaways, connecting them to services either funded by the DVP or other city departments. So as a reminder about town nights, this is a program that the DVP used to fund as part of our community healing work. It's a community driven initiative that brings Oakland residents and organizations together primarily in public parks and spaces through food, music, and recreation to build belonging and heal communities. We coordinated and funded this initiative from 2022 through 2024 as part of our community healing work. And then since 2025, Town Nights has spun off.

It's been fiscally sponsored by community initiatives but is continuing to host events in community throughout Oakland. An important distinction to note is that when the DVP funded Town Nights and as Town Nights operates as on its own right now, it's they are proactive events in community. What we are hoping to partner with Town Knights to do is support these very reactive deployments into community after violence has occurred or given a high threat of violence. So town nights would support DVP led activations by bringing food, entertainment, marketing materials, and other resources to neighborhoods during these activation periods. So they are very well versed and able to be agile and move quickly in terms of getting food trucks, getting bounce houses, getting other things that might support these activations.

DVP and town nights together would coordinate coordinate with faith based leaders, neighborhood crime prevention council chairs, nonprofit leaders, and other members of the community business owners on activation locations and activities. So these would be very customized customized to the specific neighborhood or block where they are happening. And then town nights would also be able to work with other city departments to facilitate road closures or park cleanups or anything to help make the activations happen. Okay. We are happy to take questions.

Seeing none, let's first go to public comment. Calling in

the names that signed up to speak on item number three, miss Asada Olavala and Blair Wieckman.

Wrote down some terms in the presentation that for me needs further explanation. So what is a healing event? How does that work? Connection to services has always been element of ceasefire that I've never fully understood. So what services are you able to connect to?

Now if you're talking about connecting to services, you identify a service and you let them know it exists, that's not enough. How are you able to guarantee that a service can be provided for an individual that needs it. Then you have community support for the future mediation or interpretation efforts. I don't know what that means. Reduce retaliatory violence.

How do you reduce retaliatory violence? I think for me, I I enjoy the capacity of life coaches, but life coaches speak to and deal with through conversation how to help people do deal whatever they dealing with. That's a verbal exchange that goes on. That's it. So how does that work when you're trying to reduce retaliatory? You you convince people through discussion. It's hard to do. Town night. You say you have healing communities. You're building belonging.

I don't know how you build belonging. And then you want neighborhoods to have crime prevention council chairs? How many of our neighborhoods have crime prevention council chairs? Who are we talking about? Because that doesn't exist across the board for everybody. Now I I don't like when we talk about

Thank you for your comments, miss Olubala. Switching to Zoom user, Blair, you can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi. Blair Beekman. Thank you a lot for this item. I want to better understand. C SPIRE. I'm not so fully clear on it like a lot of things. So I'm just starting to really get into learning about what C SPIRE is and all the good, violence prevention programs we can be working on in Oakland. Thanks a lot for Asara Olapala's questions. I thought they were really good. It's kind of the way I'd like to ask questions too of these items at this time, perhaps not so deeply concerned, out of my own lack, of course.

But, just the general tone, the general questions, just thank you for the idea of something that's like a block parent is coming around to open, and it's community policing ideas that was brought to your board a few months ago when I was in Oakland back in March or so. And it was met with kind of a lukewarm so so, and it's got good people working on it, but they don't know if they wanna go through with it. Is that what this cease fire item is about, local council, leaders, something like that, that was spoken about? So, I like the block parent, and I like neighborhood, groups working together talking and working up ideas on how to address you know, if there's concerns in a neighborhood, you can go to those neighborhood. You can go to those people in those neighborhoods.

And and an overall process of working things and coordinating things, working things out as local neighborhoods, I think that's this real potential, and I don't know if that's the ceasefire program. It's of another program. It's working with together with these two programs. Good luck with this sort of

Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers on item three.

Okay. Councilmember Brown, go ahead.

Excellent. Thank you so much, chair. And so always grateful to the work of the DVP. Thanks for providing more clarity as to kind of the intent of kind of being these the program of town nights in this capacity being more reactive to what is happening currently. I did have a question about, you know, given the funding allocation, in your estimate, you know, how many events do you think or, you know, how many activations are we predicting you would be able to have with this dollar amount?

Through the chair that's a great question. We'll have to see as we get started really what is required but off the top of my head I would estimate 1,500 to $2,000 per event. So maybe 20 or so, 20 to 30 events over the course of the year.

Amazing. That's pretty good. Alright. Thank you so much. Oh I'll make a motion to move this to the full council.

Okay. Great. Council member five.

Thank you. Through the chair, thank you for this presentation. I I do have a question for whether or not you have organizations identified for certain areas of the city that you plan on partnering with. Mhmm. And I would be interested in knowing if it's possible to partner with some groups around the uptown downtown area during first Fridays or at post first Fridays. Well, then again, I think some of your events end a lot earlier. But I just wonder if that might be possible to offset some of the violence that we're seeing happening in the area.

Through the chair to council member Fife, thank you for the question. We would definitely be interested in partnering with the agencies that we already fund that are in community that work with our population of course. What I would say about the downtown area is that since these activations are purely reactive to shootings and high risk conflicts, if there was an event that there was a shooting or a high risk conflict in the downtown area, we would consider hosting or doing an activation in that area. But most commonly unfortunately we see these happening in West Oakland and deeper East Oakland. And I think we, our violence interrupters are really focused on group violence conflicts.

So again, if if the criteria fit and there was something in the downtown neighborhood where there were group violence related shootings or conflicts, that could be a match.

I just talked to the general manager of the Oakland Ice Center this week Mhmm. And he said through one of the conflicts that occurred in the area, there were 37 bullet holes in the Oakland Ice Center. Mhmm. Many of which were where they have the new Alisa Lu mural painted.

Mhmm.

And so I can't say whether or not that was group or gang related. Mhmm. But I'm I'm hearing similar messages from different business owners and organizational owners in that area. So if there could be some identification on where this is coming from because I haven't heard that it is grouper or gang related but I haven't heard that it's not. Right? I would like there to be some consideration to that area of the city with organizations that are in the near proximity if possible.

Of course.

Thank you.

I'm happy to follow-up on that and share that with our our team that would be determining when and where to activate.

Thank you.

Mhmm. Council member Houston. You'll second. I first see council member Houston and then I have one question of my own and then we will move to the vote.

Yeah. I was was in deep thought, and through the chair, mister Upshaw and miss Leachie. I'll be talking more about this in in on item seven, but I'm I'm I'm I'm, like, really, really disturbed. I DVPD is doing a good job. I appreciate everything they do. I do. I appreciate everything that the OPD is doing. I really do it. And I don't blame either one. We're trying to solve these problems.

Right? I blame the waiving of our local contracts. I blame the participation of our local businesses that hire our youngsters. And let me tell you why, my friends are dying on these streets. I know these people. These are my neighbors. I live off the one way. Right? And it's not that they wanna kill each other. They're caught in the the underground economy. Right? And it comes to money. I mean, I appreciate I do. I'm not when I say this is is is is I respect it. The food giveaways and things like that, but we're dying.

We're ving. Right? District 7 in 10/02/2025 to March 2026, I had six single homicides, one double, and one triple. Homicides. These bodies is these is people's lives. Right? And they're dying over money. So like I said, I you guys are doing your best, and I really appreciate it. I appreciate the police doing what they're doing, you know, trying to bring down the crime and they have. But what it takes for my folks is money and opportunity.

You know, when you look at this District 7, I'm a say another statistic here, same time crime stats. When you look across the board in District 7, you got six and one, zero and two, three homicides in three, four in four, five they got three and I got 10 in my district. We got 10 people dying and and it's like I know these people. I bumped them. I've talked to them and they just cut in that circle.

Right? So I'm a say this in closing. I'm a yield the floor. I I I blame the waiving of our local contracts. I blame us not being able to hold on to our local businesses that hire our local people. Because if you have somebody local that has a business, they're hire the people that they can relate to, like me. When I was out there, when I worked contractor, I hired the people that I could relate to that looked like me. Right? To give the opportunity that I didn't have. Right?

So I appreciate everything that d p d DBP is doing. I appreciate what Oakland Police Department is doing. I work good with both of you. But I'm a say it in closing. I I blame the people that are waiving these contracts that embrace my local businesses, generational wealth. And I blame them when they are going outside of Oakland to other cities, to other states that are not giving my people an opportunity. That's why we're dying. We're not dying because we wanna kill each other. We're forced into the underground economy. I've been there.

I know what it's like. I'm a do what I gotta do to feed my baby. Right? I am. I am. And I know they will. And I'm not I don't even compare to some of these guys. Nothing compared to them. They're do what they have to do to survive, but we have to give them the opportunity. We have to give them the opportunity.

And it hurts me just to sit here to see that I look at these these these crime stats. It's District 7. We've been underserved for years and I'm hoping that we can do one of these these these these events at Elmhurst Park that I'm I'm just revamping. Michelle Phillips helped me out with that. We're bringing it back so our kids can play.

The first day that we fixed the got rid of some of the the riffraff in the park that was just unnecessary, and I'm a say it was real riffraff, They had kids playing there at the park. Right? So I I can go on and on, but it just hurts me to sit in this seat. And I know I'm on the other side now, and I could talk to my people, and I see what's happening, and I see what could have been done for my people. I see it. I'm in closed session. I see what could have happened and I was lied to before. I see we could have stopped these. I see we could have gave my community. And I'm a say this in closing.

My people gonna do what they gotta do to survive. Right? Let's give them the opportunity. That's all I'm asking and I beg. Thank you.

Sounds like town night should have some job opportunities at these events. I did, so I think this is both a promising model and I think I also have a little skepticism to be honest just given, I know it wasn't First Fridays but it was the aftermath of that activation. And I've seen it myself where there was a fight that broke out at San Antonio Park at the town nights and I've seen it at some of our street fairs and everything. How can we assure that these activations aren't going to actually be the cause of violence or is there a intentionality behind the events that will prevent that?

So one thing I would say through the chair is again a distinction between these won't be large community events like a town nights, like a first Fridays. These will be violence interrupters walking the streets, going you know standing on a corner, handing out bags of groceries, having a food truck, connect, having conversations with community members who are walking by. They won't, again they won't be even really medium sized events. These will just be an opportunity for violence interrupters to be physically in community and to be sharing something with the community. So having something to give, having something to initiate conversation with people.

And then our violence interrupters of course, it is their job to diffuse conflict and to mediate conflicts. And so they are very skilled at what they do and would bring those skills to any interactions that are taking place.

Great. That sound that that was helpful. It was very concrete what you just provided. Let's move to the vote.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Brown, seconded by council member Fife to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the May 19 city council agenda. On roll, council members Brown? Aye. Five? Aye. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong? Aye.

Thank you. Item number three passes with four ayes. Support this item to the 05/19/2026 city council agenda on consent. Reading in item four, adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a purchase agreement with Bauer Compressors Inc. For the purchase, service, and or repair of self contained breathing apparatus, units and complete repairs to turn out gear clean cleaning extractors for a three year period in an amount not to exceed $600,000 with two one year options to extend the agreement for up to an additional two years sorry.

In an amount not to exceed $200,000 per year without returning to counsel for a total contract amount not to exceed $1,000,000 over the possible five year term and waiving the advertising and competitive bidding requirements. And we have one speaker that signed up for this item.

Okay. Great. I see we're already at 06:35 and we have a couple more items so do try to keep it below three minutes.

Okay. Yes, ma'am. Good evening madam chair and committee. DeMond Simmons, deputy chief of Oakland Fire Department. As stated, fire department seeking approval to enter into a contract with power compressors not to exceed five years, not to exceed $1,000,000 for specialized equipment and services servicing.

What that specialized equipment and servicing entails is our firefighters, whenever they enter an environment that's oxygen deficient such as a fire or hazmat incident, they need to wear protective gear and one of those items that they wear is self contained breathing apparatus. Bauer, a long term vendor who is located in Alameda County, they furnish SCBA units and they also do annual servicing on our filling stations. These are filling stations that technically referred to as cascade systems. They allow us to replenish the SCBA bottles at a particular fire station as well as our services and training division. Second, Bauer Compressors are responsible for servicing our extractors.

The extractors are specialized washing systems that are used to clean our gear, and our gear cannot be completed or actually say cleaned in regular or noncommercial washer and dryer units. And then last, they're responsible for the annual servicing. That's a OSHA mandate as well as a recommendation from the National Fire Protection Association to minimize occupational cancer on the part of firefighters, which we all know is prevalent in the fire service throughout The United States. And with that, I yield for questions.

Council member Houston.

Through the chair, I'd like to just say it was nice seeing you yesterday when our kids was our family was was getting awards, real nice awards. So thank you. I wanna move this.

Thank you, sir.

Alright. Second.

There we go. We have one public comment so let's go to that.

Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number four, missus Sada Olubala.

I don't believe this but I read the reports. Just have one concern with the language. It says, based on the long standing relationship between the vendor and the department staff, we recommend counsel waive the multistep proposal solicitation process. Now you know what they're saying? Because you've been having this relationship. I've been in a relationship with a man for ten years. Wasn't good. But just because it was long don't mean it's good. You understand what I'm saying? So the wording should have been, we have had a relationship successfully with this company meeting our needs, something like that.

But when you just say you're in a that that just stuck out in my head, babe. Cheer. You're No. You can't say nothing. You can't say nothing. They don't allow it. I would love to hear what you have to say. And I'm just I'm just being funny. Okay. And I respect your department. I know you're working hard. But words mean something, and long relationships don't mean nothing if they're not good relationships. Okay? And then the last thing is I just have a problem with the three year agreement and option. Is that to extend without coming to counsel?

It's correct. Okay.

I I would love to hear about how healthy or toxic you think this relationship is.

I will keep it short. I will say it's a very healthy relationship. They're very response to our needs and like I said they're located here in Alameda County. Anytime we are requesting servicing of our air van and or we have SCBA repair needs, they're very responsive. So yes, very healthy relationship.

Great job answering that question seriously. Council member Feif.

I think it's important to have healthy relationships with our service organizations inside of the city, with our departments. I think it's also healthy to have nontoxic relationships with other groups as well. And so when I evaluate these contracts when they are there is a no bid process and there's been an ongoing relationship, I wanna make sure that the organization that we're contracting with and giving taxpayer dollars to also has good relationships, you know, across the board. And I do realize that Bauer has market share with the the services that they provide and I have not heard anything negative. Wait.

Did we talk about this? I can't talk about some of the other negative relationships that we have that we've discussed in closed session, but I do I I do support this moving forward as well. I just wanted to let the public know that sometimes I'm extra critical on who we give these contracts to when there's no bid. But if if they're not harming other people, other groups, and they don't have a monopoly that is that is also harmful, then it's a thumbs up for me.

And madam chair, there's a quick follow-up to that. Chief Covington has tasked me with reaching out to businesses here in the city of Oakland, and one of those businesses is is, U Save, which is located on 96 At Foothill. So we will be reaching out to them for some of our non specialized equipment. Yes. So that is a directive that the fire chief's office has asked me to ensure that we do.

That's great. I will say that I've made habit these days, lessons learned of just searching some of these companies plus controversy just to see what the Internet brings up, and I don't see anything for this one. So that's good.

Yeah.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by council member Brown to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the May 19. City council agenda on roll. Council members Brown? Aye. Five? Aye. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong?

Aye. Thank you. Item number four passes with four ayes to forward this item to the May 19 city council agenda on consent. Reading in item five, adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into an agreement with Ellen Curtis and Sons for the purchase of firefighting equipment for a three year term in an amount not to exceed $1,500,000 with an option to extend the agreement up to two years in an amount not to exceed $500,000 per year without returning to council for a total contract amount not to exceed $2,500,000 over the possible five year term and waiving the advertising and competitive bidding process requirements. And we have one speaker that signed up to speak.

Okay. Back to you again. And sorry. Actually, what is your name? Can you

Deputy chief Devon Simmons.

Okay. That's right. Thank you.

Yes.

Please go ahead and up to three minutes again.

Yes. Oakland Fire Department is seeking approval to enter into a five year agreement with Ellen Curtis not to exceed $2,500,000 to purchase both specialized and nonspecialized equipment, equipment that's used by firefighters for wildland firefighting, structural firefighting, as well as for fire operations at Oakland Oakland International Airport. Ellen Curtis, a former long time vendor that was located here in the city of Oakland, specifically out in West Oakland, still has since moved up roughly five years ago, but still located in Alameda County. We've had a long term relationship, a healthy relationship with Ellen Curtis, and they have provided, once again, wildland personal protective equipment gear that's used by firefighters when we are fighting fires in wildland environments such as such as the case that took place a couple years ago up in, the Keller area, as well as equipment, tools, and supplies that are used for structural firefighting such as fire hose, fire nozzles, and as I mentioned previously, foam that we use for fires specialized fires such as aviation fires at Oakland International Airport. And with that, I yield to questions.

We'll go to public comment. Miss Isata Olubala?

So I I was a little concerned because you in the report you identified the Oakland fire risk areas. And that was Montclair, Claire Claremont, Piedmont Pines, Leona Heights, Chabot Parks, and Chessmont, I think. But I didn't hear Oakland Hills. I live off of Vision Fields Keller, so I'm not in the high risk area. You can't answer me, but that that was my concern.

I thought I was in hive. So is this is this the real area or is Oakland Hills included? That was one concern. And then the other thing I'm concerned about, wave of multiple step proposal solicitation. And, boy, this is becoming an everyday thing. We when's the last time we put something out to bid? Anybody remember? Because what we're doing now and this one says without returning to council an extent of another two years. And I'm sure this is gonna work okay. But the other thing I'm concerned of the source of funding is the general fund.

So has this been already budgeted or did because we identified in the budget in the general fund everything we spend it for. So is this a budgeted item that you approved last June? Hello? Anybody here? You wanna address it or you don't have to address it?

Wyatt, you wanna take that OUPD? Simmons, Desmond?

So those funds are part of the two year general fund or the budget for the Oakland Fire Department. And to answer your original question, yes encompasses all of Oakland, not just those areas that are identified in the report. So I do apologize. You know, we should have been a little bit more succinct. It just simply said,

all

of Oakland. And once again, as it relates to businesses here in the city of Oakland, both the fire chief and the city administrator have asked me and we modified the agenda report. So as of right now, we're focusing only on wild land equipment for purchase to Ellen Curtis. And as of right now, I'm strategizing with the fire chief's office to identify local vendors for non specialized tools and equipment. So once again, as I mentioned in the last discussion, USAVE, which is a small independent operation out in East Oakland as well as Marcus, although it's a franchise part of ACE, it is located here in the city Of Oakland.

So fire department, we're gonna go back and make sure that we identify all businesses here in the city Of Oakland that can provide us with non specialized equipment and tools. But I must be honest and frank with you and say somebody many of the items that we purchase fall under the category specialized, and therefore, we have to go to vendors that are nationally recognized in terms of providing us with the requisite items so that we can operate under the all hazard mitigation perspective.

Yep. That makes sense and seems wise. Council member Houston.

Yes. To the chair. Curtis and Sons, I remember they were in West Oakland. They were there for a while. I used to buy pieces and items from them because they were specialized and they moved. I'm wondering why they moved. Was it because of what? Do we know why they moved? And it's not their fault if they moved if it was because of the conditions down there because it was pretty rough down there at that time. When I first was elected, it was two issues that I had.

One was small local businesses and waiving of the contracts that I just spoke about. And another one that kinda like like perked my ears or whatever was not returning to counsel. I'm like, isn't that our job? I mean, return to council. So I would I'm a I'm a go with this, but I would want I want everything to start coming back to council. I want at least six months, three months or whatever. Come and just come and talk to us. Let us know what you just mentioned. You just said you're gonna look out for businesses that are local for nonspecific or non

Nonspecialized tools and equipment.

Yes. So I like it to come back to council and let us know where they are with that. So anything from now on that says not return to counsel, I'm a vote no on it. No. I'm not. I'm a say return to counsel.

Duly noted, sir. Duly noted.

Alright. Thank you. Thank you.

Council member five. Go ahead.

Thank thank you, chair. I I do have to say that it might not sound like a lot of money, but a million dollars broken up into smaller contracts for small businesses that are based in Oakland can mean so much to our local economy. So for this non specialized equipment, I would definitely like to hear information about how all of our departments including our public safety departments and our, you know, public works departments are trying to work with Oakland businesses because it could even attract businesses who wanna come to Oakland if they know that they'll be able to get certain contracts. So I think it's critical for us to do exactly what the council member is is stating, like figure out how we can work with local businesses to keep them, you know, actively employing Oakland residents and paying into the Oakland business tax. We we need that.

Correct. Correct. Yes. Madam chair, if if I can address that.

Go ahead.

So I have a monthly standing meeting with Laura and Richard Battersby. In our last meeting, that was one of the items that I asked o p excuse me. OPW, do they have a rough dollar amount of how much they spend each year on nonspecialized tools and equipment. So we're working on a plan that's in conjunction or will satisfy some of the recommendations that came out of the 2024 disparity study to once again ensure that we have identified small and large businesses that are here in the city of Oakland and have some discussions with them, let them know what's coming down in terms of OFD needs both in the short term as well as in the long term so that we can start back up to spending taxpayer dollars with those businesses Oakland. Here in the city of Oakland.

I would love to get an update on that information once once you have it. I'm not sure if this this committee would benefit from that information, but, I think that's the right direction. That's the direction we need to be moving in. Thank you. If there hasn't been a motion, I'll make a motion.

Okay. Great. Yes. And I I did wanna add just we had a conversation in our internal discussion that there are not really any immediate vendor in the immediate vicinity for this type of equipment and it was gonna add transportation cost. I recall that. So I think for this particular specialized equipment it for me it makes sense to move forward. So I'll second this. Yep. Yep. And that's all I'll second this.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Bife, seconded by chair Wong to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the May agenda. On rule, council members Brown. Aye. Aye. Aye. Houston? Aye. And chair Wong? Aye.

Thank you. Item number five passes with four aye. Support this item to the May council agenda on consent. Reading in item six, Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the University of Southern California, Suzanne Dora Dorak Peck School of Social Work to create internship opportunities for graduate level social work students from August 2026 to 05/30/2031. And we have three speakers that signed up to speak on this item. And,

captain Yu, so I'm actually going to co present this item. I'll take it first.

Yes ma'am.

Okay, all right. So this is an item that I'm excited to bring forward even though I did not add myself as a co sponsor to this yet. I will be doing this. This was something that I've been working with OPD for a number of months on. Just what I see and we'll move through this.

But essentially there are new models happening in policing departments called police social work. And this is what the intent of this partnership is to bring OPD into that model. So very quickly the need and I will say that this is not an OPD specific data point but rather a national data point but that 80% of police calls involve social service related issues that require specialized training to be resolved. There's a need for holistic response. This has been brought up by a number of individuals here in the city of Oakland many times you know we have individuals that are experiencing homelessness, they're survivors of gun violence, we have domestic violence and human trafficking, two issues close to my heart.

We have at risk youth and we have those experiencing substance use problems and mental health crises. At the same time, we have limited capacity to provide resource navigation. So you have officers that respond to a 911 call but the follow ups that are needed afterwards are are limited. Just given the the constraints, the the realities of the constraints that we have. The school of USC has a school of social work and they have a public safety and social work program.

It's something that they established more than a decade ago. And you might ask why the School of USC, they are the only school that I could see in the near vicinity when I emailed a number of schools that responded. So that's part of it. But also their program is actually mostly online. So they have a number of students that actually study remotely from the Bay Area getting their masters of social work degrees and this essentially is a practicum placement into metropolitan police departments.

We've also discussed a number of times here at the Public Safety Committee the challenges around recruiting police officers. Now, not everybody who is a social work student that gets placed in a police department winds up becoming a police officer, but some eventually do because they find the work compelling. And so what is essentially being proposed is a five year memorandum of understanding with this program. And these would be graduate level social work interns. They'd be embedded into OPD for five years.

Each of those interns would be committed to doing sixteen to twenty four hours of work each week. The types of services that these interns would be providing include crisis response, so intervention, mental health first aid, emergency response support. They can also do resource navigation. These include service referrals, in home assessments, community outreach. And then another thing that I know is a much needed, skill set right now in OPD is just grant support and administration.

So they can actually do grant development and writing, data analysis as well as program planning and evaluation. And alright, I'll turn it over to you now.

Alright, thank you council member Wong. The OBE side, currently we're planning about sixteen hours per week the first year and then up to twenty four hours. Initial we've already run the MOU through the city attorney's office for approval and review, and that has been completed. Initially, utilization of this program will be adopted by the special victim section as our victim a lot of our domestic violence as well as our youth victims are there, and we find that section in most need and will work best with this pilot program. Additionally, if the MOU is approved, OPD will work with a program design with USC and identify a lead practicum instructor for this program as well.

Here's kind of the road map timeline for this. It has the review right now in May, authorization hopefully in June, and then launch of the first rotation in August. And I believe council member Wong covered everything else. Thank you so much.

Alright. Let's first go to public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number six, miss Sato Olapala, David Boatwright, and Blair Beakman. Okay.

First, have we ever done this before, Or is this something for the first time? And if it is, this is an experiment. Second, 2031 is a long period of time if this is a first time event. Now this is an opportunity for classroom learning to become actual hands on experience, practicum. And so they're gonna go through a process that they have never probably done before with crisis intervention, emergency response support, or some of the things in home assessment, whole lot of stuff here.

But here's the questions. Are these individualies individuals culturally competent to deal with the diversity of this city? How will placement of the interns be determined based on what skill set? How will specific responsibilities be determined? Because there's a whole lot of areas you determine it. How will the who determines that? The professors? The department? Who? How will the sharing of personal data be determined?

What if any personal data will be given to these people, and how does that work? Will background checks be done on these individuals? What is the benefit of the Oakland Police Department with this MOU? How do you benefit from this? Students will receive course credit, but what do we receive? At any point, who is the overseer of these students? Because when I did a practice, somebody had to be available who is over me. I don't just throw myself out there. I did practicum as a teacher. I wasn't in the classroom by myself.

Someone had to be over me to make sure I was doing things. So you're just throwing these people out here independent with no oversight because they are in a learning experience. They are learn

Thank you for your comments, miss Olabala.

Yesterday afternoon, I was getting kinda desperate. It was late in the day, and and I was almost turning toward the dark side as you referred to earlier. And I picked up the public safety agenda and was reviewing it. And I came across it, the perfect scrabble word. And the best way to learn a new word is to use it in a sentence. So I'm gonna ask the question, do we already have practicum instructors on the police department, or are we gonna have to hire these people? That's a joke. Thank

you for your comments. Switching over to Zoom user, Blair Beakman. You can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi, Blair Beakman. Yeah. I thought this was kind of an interesting item. It reminded myself, believe it or not, I can remember, when Jean Quan was mayor, and she I think it was, her time that she hired, she started hiring, the Stanford researchers to to help with, you know, statistical data and and and best practices in community policing and and, you know, working on violence prevention and and the good stuff. But it was really questioned if Stanford University does some pretty good work for these Palo Alto issues, if they were gonna ready to work with Oakland.

And I I I is that going overall after ten, fifteen years now? I guess they've been doing pretty good. And so good luck in what you can be doing with USC. It's a bit a different set of, ideas in how to work. So excuse me. I'm in a loud place right now. It's in, it's a bit of different, set of ways to This is real hands on stuff. And, so good luck what this can be doing. Some better explanations can be helped. Some good beginning explanations have been offered.

So thank you for that. So good luck. Assara Olapala offered some interesting choices what how to be considering this, what to be considering. Are they gonna be culturally competent? Am I culturally competent? I lack a lot, and I'm trying my darndest. Working in the social work network is really difficult with this sort of work, and perhaps coming from more of a community place instead of police, maybe that's an option. Some things to consider. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Thank you, clerk. And just a point of privilege, I'll make a motion to advance this item but add myself as a cosponsor since I was not able to do that at rules. And then council member Brown, go ahead.

Okay. Excellent. Thank you so much. So, you know, great job council member Wong on this item. Also, OPD as well. I mean, we like we like innovative ideas, right, and and doing all that we can to just kind of, help support the varying needs that we have in our community. So I'm ultimately supportive. I wanted to call our attention to, I guess it's page two of the report, And it just says how the city of Oakland must provide qualified staff, as practicum instructors for the students. These can be supervisors and educators responsible for the orientation. I did hear you identify that, that would come from the special victims unit.

I think that's what I heard. But was hoping for a little bit more clarity on that specifically and, you know, who's who is genuinely qualified to serve as a practicum instructor. And then I think my last note, given the, areas of focus that they would include, I

would be hopeful that we would

also include our partners at Macro as well.

Thank you, council member. I just wanna be clear. What I said was we'll be identifying a lead, practicum instructor. They will be assigned a special victim section to assist. We have not identified a practical instructor yet.

Okay. Thank you, captain Yu for that clarification. And so in identifying who that is, is it safe to assume that it is already someone hired within OPD?

Yes.

It'll be Go ahead. Yes. The instructor is gonna be hired in in a police officer. Of course, it's it's about social work. Okay.

Council member Fife.

Go ahead.

Yes. Chair Wong, so is this a program that you researched or is or I'm trying to understand where this is coming from because I I don't have any reference in in my knowledge of policy at the city of Oakland where this has happened. The Stanford is similar but not the same. So I'm I'm trying to understand because you said you're gonna add yourself as a co sponsor. Isn't this coming from you

or no?

Well, yes. It I mean, it's not. You can see that technically in the sense that this I'm not listed as a co sponsor. But we had a discussion earlier, OPD and myself, and I just I was not able to make it to rules committee to add myself as a co sponsor so that's why.

Where's this program? Whose brainchild is this? Did this come from OPD or did

I initiated the conversation. So for me this has come out of the challenges that we've seen with police recruitment and wanting to look at innovative ways to get especially this generation of young people interested in policing but also to help shape the future culture what OPD looks like. And to me that means integrating the idea of police social work and social work into the police department. It also comes from my own just lived experience honestly as a domestic violence victim and also seeing that resource gap where which was named on the slide of you know there's the initial 911 response but what happens afterwards? Is there is there the follow-up afterwards for someone who has been responding to the police and they need resources afterward, after the nine one one incident, right?

And so that is in that sense come out of my brain brainchild. I started doing some outreach to some social work schools. I looked up what social work schools had existing law enforcement partnership since that seemed like the easiest way to start. Right. So I definitely think there's opportunities for OPD to do this if this is successful with some more local social work schools but USC already had an existing social work school and law enforcement partnership. And that's why you see this before us and then I brought it to OPD and OPD was welcome partner in in moving this forward.

Okay. And the reason I'm trying to clarify is because I'm trying to determine who my question should be directed to.

Okay. Sure. I would say if brainchild questions can go towards me like act how it will actually be implemented and what it looks like should be directed at Captain Yu.

Okay. Thank you. So through the chair, I thought you had a different position. Are you still captain?

Today I'm acting deputy chief, ma'am.

That's what I thought. Deputy chief Yu then through the chair, can you explain to me how this would work and how many students would we have and how did can you just walk me through what this would look like on, I don't know, a part one call, a priority one call?

Right now, the initial assignment is to be in in our special victims unit, which is investigative. They will not be deployed out to the street. That could be a future program, setup. But right now, after, this is to set up the MOU so we can work with USC to start mapping out the entire program. But the initial, step is to have the interns assist in the office setting with our special victim section. So they will not be out on the streets deployed.

So a a college student, are we talking about graduate students or undergraduate?

Grad graduate level students. Grad like a freshman in college? Freshman No. This would be like a master's

Oh, I'm sorry. You said graduate.

Yes. Yes.

I apologize. Whoo. Thank God. So a graduate student would come into the PAB and or and the investigative unit and sit with an officer that's working on an investigation?

Yes. If if we're gonna try to kinda spitball and kinda map this out, our investigators meet with victims from child abuse to domestic violence to sexual assault. Obviously, like our speaker had said, we're gonna have background checks, but that that will be all be built into our program after adoption of the MOU so it could work with USC and to map out a program that works with USC, the interns, as well as the police department.

I I I guess I don't wanna take up this whole time because I don't I don't think we have the time to go through every single question I have without seeing the actual program mapped. I wanna I wanna be able to if I don't know how we go into an MOU without being able to review what the program actually is. I see some overarching ideas here which are phenomenal. I think they're great. And innovation, again, I also believe is great.

But I'm I'm voting on signing a memorandum or supporting an MOU, a memorandum of understanding, when there are questions that I think need to be clarified before voting to move something forward that has never happened before. So brainchild question.

Okay. Sure. What do you have the program mapped out yet? No. This to my understanding because this goes back into the implementation side of things is the MOU is needed to have those conversations to really design program? You need an MOU before you design a program

to explain that to me. You need an MOU to have a conversation with USC? Yes.

Yeah.

Through the Let me know. Through the chair to our parliamentarian or maybe our ACA. I I just I need more I I need more time, I think, with this. Today, I would like to meet with you because today based on what was presented, I think there are a lot of positive things that are being mentioned here. But I have a lot of questions around who is responsible if something goes wrong in these situations, if there's referrals by these students who I'm sure, you know, that's one of our premier colleges.

But who takes responsibility if there are legal implications to some of the decisions they make or some of the actions they take? Do does that fall on the city or does is USC ensuring this program? So I'm I'm concerned about legal implications. Also, macro can't go into people's homes. So how then are we offering the opportunity for it it but then they're not going into people's? But you So

what I had listed before is that is part of the types of services that these interns can do. So they've already worked with LAPD, they've worked with Santa Monica PD and they've worked with our Gardena PD. There have not been issues with these in their work with the other police departments. And so we can define it as it is. Think given that we have a different risk profile, let's say given our oversight with the NSA. It sounds like to me that what OPD is looking at on the implementation side of things is not having those sort of in home crisis response. But that is part of what they've done at other police departments.

Yes. Do those police departments also have macro style because this sounds like this should be housed in a program like macro. But I don't know because that program is also having there there's some issues we need to work out there. Right. I just like I said, I have so many questions but without the actual program to review it makes it hard for me to actually have a a robust conversation.

It's just the hypotheticals and I I would like to see something concrete that I can have more positive deliberation on. I think it's great ideas, but I also would like to to know more about the programs that have happened in the cities that you mentioned. So that's I my initial will say that

there's some time urgency here because we're trying to bring on a class by August. And so there is

Okay.

Yeah. That's helpful. Yeah.

So then that changes my perspective then for me so we can I'm

complete at this time. And I think if there's some interest in having a more detailed report, was chief Detasco has been the person that's been on point. It's my understanding at OPD that when he is here he can add more color commentary on those details since I have not been in that because that's on the administrative side of things. I did the initial outreach to the respective schools of social work. You know introduce them to OPD and they've been carrying it since then. So I don't have all of these details. I don't know if Deputy Chief, you if you have those details or if it's better to have AT so to speak.

It's definitely Chief Dadesco was the primary lead from OPD side. Right. He ran the MOU through our city attorney's office who reviewed a lot of our legal concerns about this. But obviously, the minute details and everything can definitely be broken down by chief Tedesco at a later time. But, definitely, the city attorney's office has reviewed this MOU, for legal concerns, and they have they have already passed this.

But definitely, if we want, I could, relay any questions with chief Tedesco and get back to, our council members.

Okay. Council member Houston.

Yes. Through the chair. Social worker is really important. It brings a human element to it. It really does and I like it. But as my colleague said right here, where's the standard operation procedures? It's like, I like it, but I don't wanna rush something to it at the same time. I think we should just hold it here and then come back with some of the have Tedesco here because Tedesco really knows what he doing. Not saying that you don't. I'm just saying that if he was the brainchild too, it'll be good to have him here.

I think we should just hold it here until we get some, like, standard operation procedures and just, can speak to it because if you said the city attorney cleared it, can the city attorney speak to it now? What is the question? I'm just saying about this, the the the the legal ramifications for having, students come from this university? See that's what I'm saying.

I don't necessarily know how to answer that question. You need to be more specific like about what the question actually is. I don't know for what legal ramifications you mean.

Okay. So so I think we should just hold it here until we get it just a little bit more information. That's what that's my thoughts.

Okay. Captain Yu, do you know or deputy chief Yu. Okay. Do you know in terms of the timeline since you know, is there like a certain date by which we need to have this either voted on and gone through city council or not? Is there do we miss a window of opportunity to bring on this this class?

Based on the timeline it does appear that there is the window of opportunity obviously based on kind of the school school year. Right? And programs with USC and when when to start an internship program. So I believe there are time limitations, but I don't know exact ones. What were the time like due date is for this.

Okay.

But the goal is to have this implemented in August.

Okay. I think if I recall from some of the conversations there was an actual MOU as well. I didn't see that in the, there is a report but I didn't see it attached. I think A. C. Phillips that is something since colleagues are asking for more details is we should get the actual MOU attached in into this document into this item. Okay. Councilmember Brown.

Yep. Thank you, chair Wong. That was actually gonna be my exact call out. Two things. One, can we actually see the actual MOU? And then two, how close are we to actually finalizing, like, the details of, like, the practicum? Like, especially if we're now hearing that there's a potential for a class in August, I imagine we must be nearing completion of kind of the scope in in those items.

Council member Pfeif.

I I would like to understand I would like to get an answer to council member Brown's question. I think that's relevant. Are we close

to I'm not sure if we have the person in the room. We

We weren't prepared to hear this item today. We it just there's this is not an item that should be rushed. So if August is the deadline for us having to approve an MOU, then all of this information along with Tadesco should have been here so that we can so I'll speak for me. I don't wanna speak for the rest of the committee, can make an informed decision on what's being presented. I should have no.

We we should have had this information for the public to to read in the agenda report. And again, I think this is a great idea. I have I hear some great potential benefits for the city of Oakland with this concept, but I need to think more intentionally about what is being recommended and I want the time to be able to do that. I think our our constituents deserve that and so does this committee. So I this is not a knock on the concept, but it is just me asking for more information so that I can make a decision based on that information. Okay.

What are the risk or the concerns for my colleagues that way we can proactively address them? It is I will say it is important to me for this item to pass. We had a hearing or or an item earlier before on how domestic violence victims and special victims units are there's not enough investigators. So let me also make the argument that, yes, there's a risk of this going wrong but we also know there's not enough resource for this specific type of victim in OPD. And so I do want to see this pass but let's hear what the concerns are so we can be proactive about addressing them. Go ahead council member Brown.

Yeah. I asked two specific questions and then I think you called on council member five. So I would like my questions answered.

Do you wanna take a stab at it, council deputy chief Yu?

No. She gave me the questions earlier, so I'm gonna note them down and have them addressed with chief Tedesco.

Okay. And

So I feel like there's consensus that we don't have enough information and so although I am a 100% in support, I just would like to see some more supporting information.

Okay. Also colleagues, the full MOU, I stand corrected, is actually part of the attachment in the agenda. So I would recommend that committee members that you do review that and take a look. Yes, ACA Phillips.

Apologies through the chair to the rest of the committee it is attachment A. If you take a look at that, that's the MOU.

Okay.

Yeah. I sorry if I may chime in. I think, thank you, administrator Phillips. But I believe one of the things that we were calling out is the kind of, you know, what the specifics of what will be done, as we are having a class that's coming in August.

Okay. Gotcha. Understood. I think we will follow-up with chief Tedesco and provide an update. We'll continue this item then.

And I will say that you know I have not been in the implementation side of things. This is really rested on chief Tedesco but I think some of this is going to be student specific, right? What is it that they want to get also out of their experience and until we have the MOU, that's part of my point here, we are not able to find out the profile of the students that is interested in this type of program. So go ahead council member Houston. Okay.

So I just wanted to kind of comment for a suggestion then. So we can continue this request and request more info specifically on the MOU to kind of address some of the outstanding questions. And additionally if you guys do have substantive legal questions you want to forward to my office, you can do that in advance and we can respond to them directly to you from there once you have more time to kind of think them out. So we can request by the majority of those present for additional specific item from staff and continue to reschedule the item. But that's just the options that we can do.

Okay. Got it. So there's a motion on the floor. Does someone want to make a substitute a motion? Council member Fife.

I'm sorry. What you made the motion?

I made a motion to add myself as a co sponsor and I to accept the staff recommendation to move the item forward.

I don't have a substitute motion.

Someone going to either no one's gonna make a substitute because I'm I'm anyways, I made myself clear in terms of where I would like to see this go. Council member Houston, go ahead.

So I don't think there was a second on council member Wang's motion. So I guess the next step would be someone has an alternative motion about how they wanna proceed today. So one of the suggestion was to continue this item and request more information. Okay. So council member Houston, it sounds like you have a motion.

That's why I'd already said. I said that we should just keep it in in in committee until we get some of our council member Fife's questions answered, council member Brown's questions answered, and a few of my legal questions answered. I like it. No, I'm telling you I like it. I like the social worker part about it because but I wanted to know okay. Let me ask through the chair. Let me ask you what's the pluses and negatives to this program? What's I want plus negatives. Give me your pluses and your negatives.

Alright. In my opinion, because there could be a lot of pros and cons, council member. As we stated before, an extra resource free internship which would no cost to the city is a plus. Obviously, there's risk of adding any interns or personnel into our city, but having interns who are already in a master program for social work is a additional knowledge base for our department that we can lean on. Additional staff pretty much internship staffing to assist with our special victim section for now, as well as what council member Wong said about a possible recruitment route for the city of Oakland.

Those are all, I would say, pros that I see in this program. And I believe the cons right now are the risk of adding personnel, but then we have a MOU with USC. And as we develop this program, obviously, is a pilot program. And as everyone said, this is something that hasn't been done before. So we're going to have questions, kinks, as well as things to work through.

I wish we could design like a perfect program for this, but as we said, this is a pilot program. It's gonna be difficult to map something out such as this for five years without any adaptation. I would say the program would have to adapt, change based on the needs of the city of Oakland, the Oakland Police Department, as well as the learning progress of the interns. I hope that answers Okay. Based on my opinion.

I also want to note that in the MOU it states that the school requires that student interns obtain professional malpractice insurance through a blanket policy secured by the school before beginning their practicum placement experience. The coverage liability limits are $1,000,000 each claim and $3,000,000 aggregate. Okay. Council member Houston.

To the chair, what did you say about the insurance part?

It looks like that students are required to obtain malpractice insurance and that the coverage liability limits are $1,000,000 for each claim and $3,000,000 in the aggregate.

And that was going to be my next question about who covers this insurance wise because like I said in closed session, we are a lot of things, right? So I just wanted to know who will cover should it be more insurance liability? Should it be more? Yeah. That does.

Council member five.

I'm I'm good. I'm I'm really struggling with this item right now and I think I should just wait. I don't do we need a second to hold this item in committee? Because if so, I'll provide the second.

For the motion, we also need if you want additional information, need specify what Oh,

I'm sorry. I I know what I'm supposed to do. I apologize. So council member Houston already made the motion, but I think there needs to be additional language added to continue this item to a specific date or a nonspecific date if that's what we're gonna do. So I think that needs to council member Houston, you should identify that with the request for additional information.

Yes. For an additional date, what's the next time? Because you said it's urgent. What's the next time we can hear this?

Two weeks from now at the next public safety meeting.

Hear it the next public safety and, just hold it here for the to the when is the next public safety? What what date is that?

Through the chair to council member Houston. It's May 26.

May 26.

Okay.

Okay. And then with additional legal information that I I'll I'll send to the city attorney's office.

Sounds good. And then colleagues, it's council member Brown, you've all of you have had some questions. I would ask if you could send them to me and then I can work with OPD and ACIP Phillips to make sure that you all have your questions answered and we at the next time that we present this.

That would be a brown act violation. We can't all the committee members can't send you our questions. It the chair

Individually you cannot send me?

Through the chair to the parliamentarian if you could clarify what would be legal for us to do. While

we're waiting, through the chair, if I can ask council member Brown, I believe she asked for a program implementation plan. Just wanna verify if I heard that correctly through the chair.

Yes. That is correct. I was just gonna chime in and say a draft curriculum.

Through the chair received. Thank you.

So to answer the question that was posed about, the Brown Act, the best way to do it would be to send it to city administration instead of to council member Wong. And if you guys could on the record today just kind of state the general topic of the kind of questions, the information you want just for this for the motion itself, that would be helpful.

Okay. Thank you Patrick. Let's move to the vote.

Through the chair to the maker of the motion please specify what you guys are requesting in a supplemental.

Hold it until the next committee meeting.

The curriculum with the curriculum. With

the draft curriculum and some legal questions that I have for the city attorney.

Okay.

So that's a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by council member Pfeif to hold this item in committee with the request to staff to provide in a supplemental, a draft curriculum, and answers to specific legal questions to the city attorney's office. On roll, council members Brown? Aye. Aye. Aye. Houston.

Aye.

And chair Wong. No. Thank you. Item number six passes with three ayes, one no to hold this item in committee with the request of staff to provide supplemental information. Reading in item number seven, receive a biannual informational report from the Oakland Police Department on crime data in the city of Oakland, and we have two speakers that signed up to speak.

Okay. Great. Deputy chief Yu, you have the floor.

Thank you. With me is also deputy chief Rojas from the Bureau of Operations two East End. We are here to present the biannual six month report from October 2025 to March 2026. I'll kinda give you a brief overview. Is this still a three minute presentation, ma'am?

You this is presentation, so you will have more than three minutes. You have up to eight minutes.

Okay. Thank you. I'll kinda give the overall high level view of the city followed by kind of an area breakdown. Myself will be present areas one, two, and three, followed by deputy chief Rojas presenting areas four, five, and six. Kind if you go to slide two, the crimes, citywide crime stats.

Overall, for the entire city. We're seeing a reduction in comparative from October 2024. When we compare the six month comparison, it is based on six months last year to six months this year because we've kind of compared the summer months to the winter months, it's going to be slightly different. Therefore, we compare October 2024 to March 2025 to October 2025 last year to March 2026 this year, kind of a six months span. Overall, part one crimes are down by 21%.

Highlights here within the statistics, homicides down thirty twenty twenty six down 10 from 36 to 26, a 28% reduction. Robberies, a major reduction from a 180 to 673, a 43% reduction. As you can see, major reductions within all part one categories. I do wanna mention a week I believe a week prior, there was a request from council member Wong regarding adding the part two crimes into this presentation. OPD follow-up on that with our crime analysis unit.

Part two crimes obviously is pretty much the entire crime, every single other crime related to the city of Oakland. Our crime analysis unit would would take would be very resource dependent as well as our crime analysis team would be very much have to dedicate more than a week to complete those statistics. I would like to offer in response to that possibly focusing on specific part two crimes that the committee is interest in interested in and I can get back and we can get back to you on that. Is that okay? And I'll continue with the part one crimes.

Sounds great.

Thank you so much. Alright. As I as I stated, robberies down additionally, shootings also down 15% citywide. The next slide is going to be for the areas. We're going to dive into each one of the areas itself, but this chart is just kind of the numeral statistics for each one of our areas citywide.

Going on to the next slide. This is a geographic representation of the where the homicides have occurred within our city of Oakland within the last six months broken down by the areas. I understand, obviously, our council districts and our areas are slightly different since I know council member Wolohan and council member Fife are my council members. But this is the geographic breakdown placed on our policing areas. The next slide is the shot spotter activations, very consistent from the last year and the years before.

You do see that Area 5 And 6 have the largest concentration activations. And next slide is a homicide graft. It has been trending down in the last six month. There was a spike in January, but a a reduction in February as well as March this year. Moving on to the robberies.

We did see a spike in January, February, and March, but overall comparative to last year, again, it's a 43% decrease comparative to last year. Third slide is for assault with firearms or shootings, and you can see there it is relatively the same. Shot sparrow activations. Moving on to next slide, you see the increase in January, but, of course, we had New Year's Eve that usually spikes our data. Area 1 is commanded by captain Toribio.

You can also see it's kind of gonna be consistent for all through all six areas. We have reductions in crime statistically for robbery shootings, all our part one crimes. And I will move to captain We had a reduction of 14% in homicides, 37% in robberies, 32% in burglaries and thefts, and aggravated assaults was down 29% for Captain Toribio and Area 1. We contribute that with the great partnership within the Area 1 community from Chinatown to the Uptown bids, the cameras that are working with the bids, as well as our collaboration with CHP, Alameda County Sheriffs, as well as our city partners. To keep this short, I'm gonna move on to Area 2 unless there's any questions about Area 1.

Area 2 is under command of acting acting captain Dave Burke. Major decrease in homicides from six to two in the area. And if you go to the next slide, you will see the two homicides that occurred in Area 2 and where those locations were. And at a high level numbers view for Area 2, robberies have been decreased by 45% comparative to last year at the same time. We definitely contribute that to work with the flock as well as a real time operation center where we're able to flag vehicles that are doing robberies and burglaries within our area, respond to those locations quickly, and either identify, apprehend the suspects, or even interrupt those sprees that year the year before would contribute to kinda sets of 10 to 15 robberies and burglaries.

By arresting those individuals or just interrupting the sprees with faster police response, we have seen a reduction in the robberies. Overall, the numbers residential burglary numb burglary is down in Area 2 by 59%, commercial burglaries down 61%, vehicle death down 21%, and burglaries overall down 12%. Captain Burke attributes the reduction with proactive enforcement from the team, coordination with EVP, as well as, as I said before, the work with the clock cameras. Now moving on Area 3.

I would say Sorry the best

to interrupt. If we're about twenty minutes till 8PM, so just if we could I will move on. This in a succinct way. Great. Thank you.

Area 3 has also seen major reductions in crime as well, 50% in homicides, a reduction in shootings, as well as robberies by 30%. Area 3 is the nexus for a lot of human trafficking in the the city of Oakland street level. We've make we focus a lot of our resources along the International Boulevard, making multiple arrests, enforcing new laws that was implemented in January. And with that said, collaboration again with a lot of our outside agencies, the FBI, ATF, Department of Transportation to reduce crime in Area 3. Now I'm gonna pass the mic to deputy chief Rojas unless we have questions about Area 12, or 3.

Good evening, everyone. I am the acting deputy chief Francisco Rojas. I'm in charge of the b Bureau of Field Operations two East Oakland, which encompasses Areas 45, And 6. And, to keep everyone moving here a little faster, I'm gonna try to speed this up and give you guys a high level summary of B F 02. So in order to provide a overview of public safety trends and operational strategies of our bureau, we looked across all three areas and, our focus has remained centered on reducing violent crime through intelligence led based policing, coordination enforcement strategies, strong investigative follow-up, and continued collaboration with community partners and our violence prevention organizations.

While the challenges remain and the fact that we are sometimes understaffed and we're dealing with that, we continue to see measurable progress in several key crime categories through collaboration, public safety efforts, and a focused, resource deployment. As stated earlier by DCU, we definitely have seen a a drop in in violent crimes. So I'll break down each area, and I'll try to minimize the time here. So for Area 4, we experienced a mixed crime, trends. Mostly most notable was violent crime index decrease about 28%.

With that said though, we did have an increase of homicide, to a 33% number. But if you look at the actual data, it goes from having three to four. Obviously, any loss of life is unacceptable in the city of Oakland or in in anywhere, but, we stay very focused on that. What we do to continue, and try to continue to operate and reduce crime, and specifically violent crime in the city, specifically for Area 4, the captain is, utilizing intelligence driven strategies to identify individuals and groups that are contributing to the violent crime. We work with our Department of, Violence Prevention, ceasefire, our real time operations center, as well as our special resource section, East Oakland.

Again, the priority and the emphasis is community engagement as well and, continue to work with partnerships with our merchants, stakeholders, project dignity, public works, and community leaders to address the quality of life concerns, reduce blight, improve public safety response throughout the area, and reduction in homicides. I won't go through all the numbers as you see them up on the slide. If there's no questions, I'll move on to area five.

Let's keep on speeding through.

Alright. So area five are remains focused on preventing violent crime, particularly murders, shootings, and robberies. During the reporting period, area five had a re had reduced homicide from one incident during the previous reporting period to zero. I'll stop there. Give a moment.

Area five, it's really good. Robberies also decreased by 39%. At the same time, aggravated assaults increased by 10%, reinforcing the need to continue to focus violence reduction strategies and proactive intervention efforts. So what we're doing in Area 5, again, continuing our intelligence based less policing, doing targeted enforcement, identifying individuals and groups contributing to violent crime activity, and working with our ceasefire teams, our real time operations center, and our department of violent crime prevention. The goal again is to continue those numbers and continue to decrease crime, specifically part one.

Any questions for Area 5? Thank you. I'll move over to Area 6. Area 6 experienced significant reduction in crime during October 25 through March 26. Part 1 crimes decreased by 23% compared to the same reporting period last year. One of the things that we noted was robberies and burglaries of 43% reduction while aggravated assaults decreased by 16%. Homicides remained unchanged year over year. We're working on that. I know I saw you bring that up earlier.

So, to the chair, I was just looking at this is five months evaluation, right, for these homicides?

Six months.

Six months? Okay. That's what I wanna know. I thought it was five. Okay. Go.

Alright. Continuing. Additional efforts that we've been focusing in area 6 is in conducting CPTED evaluations with local businesses to support long term burglary prevention strategies, leveraging ShotSpotter technology for strategic deployment, and coordinating with the criminal investigations division to support through investigations and follow ups. Basically, all the areas also partner with the open public works and encampment management team to address blight, improve environmental conditions, and enhance overall community safety and quality of life. As stated earlier by DCU, another thing that we use is definitely the flock cameras, but that's across the city as a whole.

And really, the the main point today that I wanna make sure that we have is that, you know, the the, stats there show that we are definitely tracking in the right direction and, and just pushing hard to continue and striving to, lower crime in the city of Oakland. Any questions for me?

Thank you. Council member Houston.

To the chair, thank you deputy chief Rojas. Me and council member Fife was saying we need to you need to be permanent. We want you to be permanent. I was looking at this right here in Area 6, where it says prioritize cease fire and that was for 2026. And then on on page nine of 11, Area 6 Captain Gordon Durham in 2025, they're the same. Nothing changed?

Can we go to that slide, please?

Prioritize. Because when I look at this when I look at the public safety agenda here on page nine of 11, which is area captain.

Can we go to that page?

Yeah. Yes. And that's for 2025. And then this one that you have on this this PowerPoint is 2026. Area six. They're the same.

Is this the slide you're speaking to? No.

Yes. That one. And then if you look at the the the agenda, look on page nine of 11 for 2025 where it says at the top, it says Durham from 2025 comparison. That and this is the same and this one is supposed to be 2026. They're the same thing.

Oh, got it. So I believe that could have been an error, but we'll fix that and I'll send you updated.

Okay. Cool. Cool. Thank you. Appreciate that. No problem.

Let's go to public comment. Ah, okay. Council member five.

Thank you for this report. I I feel like it was a little rushed and but I'm glad you got some key information out there. So through the chair, what would you say to individuals in the public that are saying that crime is not down and that all of the stats that are being reported are just because people are not reporting crime anymore?

Well, I would say that obviously if we look at this data, the data doesn't, give us a clear picture of everything and feelings. Right? So the stats and the data show that crime is definitely down. The numbers are there. But I understand as a citizen of Oakland born and raised in this in this city, I understand that if we don't feel safe, it doesn't matter what numbers I provide to you, you're gonna feel like that crime is still not down.

So that's another, section of this that we need to continue to work in and just ensure that we're meeting with the public and making sure that we're going to the community meetings and having conversations to ensure that whatever those issues are that they're seeing that we're also addressing. Because as a department, obviously, we're focused on violent crimes. Right? The homicides, the shootings, the robberies. But sometimes when I hear from the community that crime isn't down, they're referring to our part two type crimes, something like blight or, you know, vehicles abandoned in front of their home.

And so that's also important. And so we make sure that we kind of dig that in a separate way and we go area wide. Each captain addresses those individual problems and we have big projects for officers, especially based on the fact that we're currently challenged with our staffing levels, you know, the loss of of our our CROs, our community resource officers. Right? The fact that we we are definitely under staffing.

We're trying to build those numbers up. We need to find different ways of making sure that we are also addressing the smaller issues that make it feel that it's not safe in the city. And so, again, we are very focused to ensure that we are understanding what those issues are and that we're making best efforts to try and ensure. Like for example, I'll give you some. We are now doing a lot more traffic stops for our our high injury network.

Right? We're also doing beat projects. Some of my units that work the night shift when there's not a lot of people out and they have a little bit more time based on calls for service, they're going out and finding vehicles that are abandoned or stolen and they're making projects out of that where they'll tag the car on Monday and tow it by Friday.

Wow. You just said so much. Thank you for all of that. I just another clarifying question. What do where does a because you mentioned the high injury network. Where does a fatality that occurs, high injury network or whoever, where does that occur show up in the report? So It's not a is it a homicide?

No. It would I mean, it it usually gets investigated through our traffic unit. It would be a fatal traffic collision and that's where it gets documented from. And

okay. Where where in the in the debt or is it on here at all, captain? It's not on here.

Council member Fife, our higher energy networks are were was not included in this crime report. We can add that. We do have that data and we'll note that for next time.

Got it. I was just curious because I'm like, it's not a 187. No. So okay. And that's important. I think the the injuries that lead to fatalities anywhere on our streets are just as important because those often can be prevented just with, you know, the septate analysis by changing the infrastructure or whatever. So I think those are low hanging fruit. So thank you doing those stops in those areas. It's really, really critical. I have a lot of high injury network streets in my district. But I also wanna ask, with the decreased number in officers, what would you attribute the dramatic drop in all of these numbers to?

Well, you know, one of the biggest things is we we went back to our ceasefire module, right, where we're doing targeted enforcement. Also, with a lot of the updated technology that we have with our real time operation center, more focused on specifics, our flock cameras that helps us immensely where we're able to gather information when there's a crime and we're able to use that information, get real time updates and follow-up. And as well as the partnerships that we've been building for a long time with the community where community members are calling more than they used to and giving us information, real information firsthand and it helps us. And so by doing that and staying real focused, you know, grounds on boots on the ground, I I believe it's what's helping us increase and lower that that crime.

Oh my goodness. Oh, my I'm sorry. Last question. Can you document the how FLOC has led to the decrease in crimes and aided the the police force in in solving some of these issues or being able to have a real time response?

Definitely. And we do. We usually send that information in. We make sure that officers, supervisors, anyone that uses the camera for any type of crime, we have we call them success stories and we provide that if you want like an example of of a recent incident. I would say well, okay. Okay. There you go.

Yeah. I just I wanna get to the CPRA item which I also think is very important. I know a number of the folks in the audience are for that item as well. Council member Houston.

Wanna move it, but I just wanted to say to the chair deputy chief Rojas, you guys are doing a good job. You guys are doing a fabulous job. I support you. And like I said in my last my last statement was it's not the police. I blame the departments that have been waiving these contracts where our youngsters because if you saw that that that shot spotter can you pull that up real quick where that shot spotter in my district, in Kevin's district? Can you pull it up?

I'm familiar. I'm familiar with that and you're right. We do have a lot of shot spotters. Thank god most of those you have not resulted in actual victims being shot but you're right.

Right. Right. So we just need more equity. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. We're there.

For sure. And I I would say just for me part of the reason that I want to dig into the part two crimes is because there's actually some really important crimes that are being surfaced in these current reports. As you all know I care about human trafficking and that is not something that is currently in the part one report. I think there's a number of other important crimes that are in the part two report. So I do want to start digging into that data.

I do think it's a positive sign that we're seeing the decreases in the part one data that now we're looking at what is the quality of life issues that you know we want to lift up. One thing I just want to note too is that I think people often also look at they wanna come I actually wanna compare Oakland's crime to pre pandemic since we all remember there was that surge of crime during the pandemic. When we do this year over year comparison it's still looking at those, it's still looking at the aftershock, right, of the pandemic, COVID. I will say I was just pulling up the 2018 report and overall things look positive. The one type of crime that really sticks out to me is the burglary.

And the burglary numbers in 2018 were in the '2 thousands. We are still at those elevated numbers here in 2026. And so I think that is one thing that is noteworthy that may have to do with some of what our citizens think. Okay. We do have public comment. Right? Let's move to that. Calling in the

names that signed up to speak on item seven, Asada Olubala and Blair Beakman.

You failed to address the fact that you're looking at a hierarchical report. Hierarchical report means you're not seeing all crime. Hierarchical means if somebody steals a car, go rob a bank, and then kill somebody, you will only see the higher offense, which would be the killing. You won't see the other two. I don't know why we do this.

We don't report all crime in totality. Then you address main there's some areas of crime activity that we are not addressing. Drug trafficking, sex trafficking, domestic violence, hate crimes, sideshows, shoplifting, illegal gambling, illegal possession of firearms, that's just some of them. And any crimes, we need a report, miss Fife, on youth crime. Any criminal behaviors under 17.

We need to do this because we're having some youth activities which would include our sideshows and shoplifting, heavily participation by our young people in those areas. Okay. I'm gonna stop because you need some time to get out of here.

Thank you for your comments. Switching to Zoom user, Blair, you can unmute yourself and begin your two minute comment.

Hi. Thank you. Blair Beakman. Thanks for this item. I I I just a reminder of our accolades of having to deal with the Trump administration, you know, in the past year who was ready to come in, you know, with both barrels into places like Oakland and say the world needs a change when we've already been working on some really important stuff and accomplishing really good things.

So good luck in those efforts. I think we're we are trying to shift to a world with less and less police. How we can think about that on the last item, hopefully, can be important. And I was also considering that it was very it was nicely mentioned by all sides, the different uses of block, you know, the after crime events. And it sounds like bit of predictive policing that's used with block.

And that is, I guess, some of their better work. And I like to hear the stories more of what police officers themselves can do and like Oakland police officers can do. And I've been learning, you know, language such as, you know, we were doing a lot of important good crime investigative work before surveillance tech. We weren't, like, in a dirt. It has been of help.

No doubt. But, you know, good good investigative work can and does happen without technology. And it's important we remember that, and we we can rely on ourselves and and how to solve crime. At least that's what I'm learning in San Diego. We had really you know, we're always considered one of the safest cities before the big block introduction and stuff. So thanks. Oh, and I quickly add, I saw a night heron in downtown, San Diego this morning. It really reminded me of days in Oakland. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Sure. That concludes all speakers on this item. We just need a second now.

There's a motion on the floor. I'll second it.

Thank you. That's a motion made by council member Houston, seconded by chair Wong. To receive and file this informational report in committee on roll. Council member Brown. Excused. Council member Pike. Aye. Council member Houston. Aye. And chair Wong. Aye. Thank you. Item seven passes with three ayes. One excused Brown to receive and file this information report in committee. Reading in item eight, receive a biannual informational report from the Community Police Review Agency regarding the functions and duties as required by o m c two point four six point zero three zero, and we have five speakers that signed up to speak.

Okay. Great. Before I turn it over to director Lawson on the report, I did agendize this item. I think it's important that we discuss this. Actually required by the charter are by annual informational reports from the CPRA. So this is I think the first one that's happened maybe ever at least when I was looking legislative record. And so and then we have the next one scheduled in November. So director Lawson, please take it away.

Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to to speak to the committee. I have

It's biannual is also a legitimate word. It's in fact, that is the title of the item. Anyways, go ahead.

Sister, there doesn't seem to be a history of this presentation. I wasn't sure necessarily what information you would like to hear in full, whether, know, on a kind of a recitation of what the organization is or just the statistical data that's required to be provided by the charter. I know it's a bit late now. So if it's suitable I can give you the statistical data but I would like to when I come back in the fall to give you more of an update as to what the agency is doing and kind of what our priorities are and what the goals are. But if we can pull up the slides.

We'll go to the first slide. So there is a series of information and data that's required to be reported in in the biannual reporting. The first one being the number of complaints submitted CIPRA to together with a brief description of the nature of the complaints. This is for so I'm reporting out for entirely of two 2025, and we just completed our annual report, will be formally disseminated in later this month with the police commission, but we had 1,019 complaints received in 2025. The nature of those complaints are primarily use of physical force, performance of duty, conflict towards others, harassment, discrimination, and truthfulness.

You go to the next slide. The identification of the council district from which the complaints originated, this data is not captured by CPR. Historically, they have not captured it. And this this is reflective of a major issue that I have with the organization and changes I'm making. We've retained a project manager identified in August.

We want to bring in a project manager. We finally were able to hire her in February. One of her prime responsibilities will be ensuring we have a proper data management case management system. Currently, SIPRA does not have a system that I that I think is adequate to maintain and report out the data that should be kept. So right now, we are in the process of interviewing and procuring a system to do case management data tracking.

And one of the issues that we will be tracking will be identifying the council districts and the the complaints that we get from the various districts. Go to next slide. Demographic profiles, once again, this is not data that's kept. We do know, for example, for profiling and discrimination cases, we have some data. But in terms of keeping demographic data for all the complaint complainants, there is not a system in place for CPR and that's another line item or category that we plan to implement in our document in the case management system.

The charter also requires that the number of agencies pending complaints that are being investigated be indicated. Currently, have 89 pending investigations as of April, down considerably. Typically, we have over a 100. Charter requires reporting the types of misconduct that's investigated, and this is by allegation. We had 276 allegations of use of force that we investigated in 2025, a 177 allegations of performance of duty, and that's a broad category that includes things like failure to activate body worn camera or could be search and seizure.

So it's a broad category when it comes to performance of duty. Conduct towards others, we had 86 allegations. That is typically cases involving demeanor where the officer's demeanor was inappropriate and we felt to invest the need to investigate. We have 44 cases, allegations alleging harassment or discrimination, those are primarily cases alleging profiling. And we have one allegation of truthfulness, and then we had nine allegations regarding a violation of Miranda rights.

The total number of cases investigated was six thirty seven. Earlier, I mentioned a 19, that's how many cases we received. 637 is how many cases we actually, at some point, went through either in intake and investigate in the investigative side to find a disposal. There are approximately 400 cases that come to us or more than that that come that easily not applicable to CIPRA, and they're closed out upon receipt. They may be things that do what, you know, I made a call into OPD and didn't get a response and and the and the response took twenty minutes or something like that.

Those are things that we typically don't investigate and are closed out at the early stages. We that's just reporting by month. We can move on in terms of number of closures. The results of completed investigations, we had 20 sustained allegations for 2025. There were 375 allegations were that were exonerated.

There were which basically means that the event occurred, but it was within OPD policy. We had a 153 cases allegations are unfounded, meaning the allegation or the conduct that was alleged did not occur. And then there are 49 allegations of not sustained, and there were zero administrative closures and one informal resolution. And I believe that's the case with someone just basically withdrew their complaint. The amount of time spent on the investigations, we we see an average of five to six months, but that is misleading because it varies greatly.

There's no average it's hard to say there's average time because I would say the vast majority of the intake cases we get are closed very quickly because they're not mandated cases or cases that CPR is really, disposed to investigate. And then those cases that do lead to, disciplinary recommendations will take more than six months. This slide identifies a number of department sworn employees who were for whom sustained findings of misconduct were made in the level of discipline that was proposed. There were 14 sworn officers in 2025 for whom we CPR issued findings of sustained allegations. There were a total of 21 sustained allegations against those 14 officers.

The level of discipline that was proposed ranged from anywhere from oral warnings to termination, and that was the that was actually the discipline issued anywhere from oral reprimand to termination depending on the the particular case. The number of closed investigations which did not result in sustained findings or discipline of the subject officer, so that's 50. Those are cases in which we actually did a report, but there were no sustained allegations. So those are cases that go to invest a lot of cases we close out without a final, what's called, report of investigation. We do we final reports of investigation when there are cases that that are potentially sustainable.

And then what this shows is there are 50 of those cases that we actually did not have sustained allegations even after a full report, and they will close out. Number of cases referred to mediation. CIPRA did not have a mediation program in 2025. I don't think the organization has had a mediation program since it's been CPR. CPRB previously had a mediation program in the fall of last year.

The police council commission approved a mediation program that we submitted. That program has been in the works and actually worked closely with OPD, Youth Alive, and community boards and and organizations. And chief beer have been very very much involved in the process, and we think we should have our first mediation hopefully in June. And we hope hopefully, the chief will be a to participate in that. Then it it's reporting on the number of cases in which Cipro failed to meet meet the hundred and eighty day goal specified in the charter.

There were 23 cases where we did not close within a hundred and eighty days. Those are typically cases where sustained findings. So if we have a case where there's likely gonna be a sustained finding, the investigation will likely go beyond six months. Next category is the number of times an OPD employee failed to comply with the agency's request for an interview or production of documents that did not occur. We never had any problems there.

The next was the number of times a sworn employee failed to comply with a subpoena or whether discipline was opposed for any such noncompliance. Noncompliance. We never had any issues with subpoena responses in 2025. And so I think that is the last of the compelled items that we have under the charter in our biannual report if you have any questions.

Let's go to public comment.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number eight. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record before you begin. Ann Shanks, Millie Cleveland, Asada Olubala, Blair Beekman, and Rajne Mandal.

So I've following CPR for a long time, and I've never been satisfied with it. So in this report, two areas of real concern are excessive force and racial profiling. When he revealed the areas for which they were findings, I didn't see anything for the number of cases under profiling. So it means that of the thousand, ten nineteen cases, none were under the banner of racial profiling or profiling as you have it here. The history of CPR as well as the police department when it comes to use of force, very few cases are sustained.

Very few. So I want to know, of the two seventy six use of force cases, how many were sustained? As I said before, this has been a long process. When we would get reports, and I don't see those reports presented to the police commission, that allowed you to see how you came to your conclusions. What concerned me, there was an incident of identifying that CIPRA investigation process was very similar in its reports to what internal affairs was coming up with.

And it didn't look like there was a real and clear investigative process. Another part of CPRRA, at the end of the process, it had been recommended at one time that something would be sent out to the complaint individual to explain how the conclusion, what the conclusion was, how they came to that conclusion. We never developed a process to inform the complainer about how the results were obtained. And I think that is absolutely necessary, and I hope at some point we get there.

Millie Cleveland. I I think it's important to note that there is a lot of information that could also be provided, but this presentation is based on what the charter is requiring at this time. And that's what I appreciate from, director Lawson. I also think that there's technology that could be used to help aggravate a lot of the data, but this council has been negligent in providing resources to CPR that is needed as well as the resources for the inspector general and resources to the police commission as a whole. I think there's a lot of time spent is also affected by, whether CPR gets the information they need from internal affairs in a timely manner, which can extend the time as well.

I also wanna raise that even though the charter in 06/2004 mandated a mediation program to be included, it was never it it has never been implemented. My observation from the police commission is actually chief Mitchell was obstacle to that. He didn't see a lot of the cases being appropriate for mediation. So I don't think the lack of mediation should be blamed on direct to Lawson. But, basically, I wanna say that this information is the basic information that is required by the charter and to have more substantial information that can be aggravated in a more detailed manner.

You needs he needs the software and the technology to do that. It's also something that chief Beer actually requested as well. So I hope you take that into consideration.

Anne Jenks, district three. I actually think that this is subject that warrants more than a couple of minutes at the end of a meeting that you're trying to rush through. I don't know if this is a six month report or a two year report. But, either way, this is important. And the public safety committee, it seems to me, might wanna be able to spend a little bit more time on it to ask other questions, whether CIPRA has plans in place to incorporate new investigatory work if work is moved from IAD to CIPRA.

The mediation program, it seems to me that a grant was actually lost, and it seemed like it wasn't being processed by the city administrator's office. I heard that the police union was opposed to it, which is always a magic bullet to kill anything, including charter mandates. And, you know, none of that's being addressed. This public safety committee, it seems to me, should just be more interested in digging into some of these issues. I'd wanna ask SIPRA if having GPS on in the, OPD vehicles would impact their investigatory work.

The auditor has come before the council and talked about how GPS being turned on would help with response times. Nobody seemed interested in asking the auditor more about that, which is regrettable. I understand that the police union doesn't want it asked. The community police review agency is the ones that identified the two major scandals that happened in 2023. They're doing their job very effectively, and it's regrettable that you haven't sped up the discussion about shifting work.

Rajni Mandel, district four. I appreciate that Zipper is finally presenting to council under OMC 2.4603 after years of inconsistent reporting, a gap identified by the city auditor. But frankly, the report before you tonight highlights serious transparency concerns. It's essentially a one page table with minimal narrative, methodology, trend analysis, or context. Other departments are expected to provide far more robust reporting to counsel.

In addition, we don't really have consistency in the report as to what an allegation or a case is which can affect the numbers. The report itself states that key ordinance required data, including council district and demographic information, was not captured in this year or prior years. Yet police commissioners have been requesting demographic and aggregate reporting data since at least 2024 without resolution. At the last commission meeting, director Lawson and here, director Lawson has acknowledged that SIPRA is still developing its reporting infrastructure and that the agency has lacked written operating procedures for a significant period of time. The report also raises important questions on how cases are categorized and closed.

Director Lawson has discussed concerns here regarding concurrent CIPRA and I and B investigations and possible impacts on discipline timelines and arbitration, yet no aggregate public data has been presented showing disagreement rates, impacts on outcomes, or measurable improvements to accountability. If Oakland expects detailed methodology, timelines, and accountability from OPD under the NSA, counsel should expect the same level of transparency from civilian oversight agencies themselves. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Switching to Zoom user, Blair Beakman, you can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi. Blair Beekman. Thanks for this item. It's nice to see a separate item here at public safety. I was noting at the recent police review items at city council last week that I I feel we don't talk enough about both groups. They're very separated, and I wish they could be talked about a little more together, and this is the way to do it. Thank you. I've been really impressed by the words of Millie Cleveland. She's really made a a really strong case and the importance of that the police review should be a public process. And I've been very it's it's an interesting way to to describe it.

I've been trying to understand that you want CPR as one set of principles in how to work, and then you want the police review as a as a very separated different way to work. And, Milliclee was saying no. You know, there's still there's there's, you know, a legal standard to the police review that is separate from the administration itself. And I I we're afraid to to work more in terms of CIPRA and moving it into a world of more, like, towards CIPRA. And Millie Cleveland's making it clear we don't have to be afraid.

There's good standards in place, and I hope we're we wanna be considered working towards those things and really question current, police review ideas. Good luck with the SIPRA ideas, what you're doing here today. It seems, you're doing some basic work, and, to always hear that they're working on their stuff is it it's it's important. And, thanks. I'm just trying to sort things out for myself. Thanks for your patience in hearing me out for this item.

Thank you for your comments, Cher. That concludes all speakers on this item.

I do have some questions. And also, I just wanna say that I was trying to rush through the other items in this meeting to get to this item, okay, to to be clear. Because I do think that this deserves more airtime. And you know my challenge as the public safety chair is that whenever I hold our public safety personnel late into these meetings, it results in more overtime. So that's the challenge I have which is why I wanted to have those other items first.

But here we are at 08:25 and it is late and that's okay. We're going to give the item the time that it deserves. Any questions for my colleagues? I do have some questions. Seeing none, I'll continue.

Okay. Go ahead council member Vieff. I'm really trying to be respectful. So I'll just say this through the chair to the public. Well, I'll I'll ask to our CIPRA director. What is the budget? What is your annual budget for your agency, for your organization?

It's currently, I think, $5,200,000.

$5,200,000. And I think that if we're gonna mention the auditor's report about what is mandated by CIPRA, it's also important to acknowledge that the auditor said that you need more resources to achieve the goals that you have to achieve. And so when we compare oversight agencies to what the Oakland Police Department has and can achieve, it's like comparing apples to oranges because the budget for the police department in 2425 was almost $400,000,000 or nearly 20% of the budget for the entire city of Oakland and a bulk of unrestricted funds for our general purpose funds. So we can't compare the two and act like we should be able to expect the same outcomes. This is not to you, this is to the public.

We have to be fair and our biases can't show if we're really talking about getting what's best for the residents of of the city. So we we got to be fair and honest in how we represent this information. So there's definitely work to do with CPR, but in order to do the work you have to be funded adequately to do that work. I just wanted to make that statement.

Fair enough. So one question I just have is in this report, I see the term complaints, allegations, investigations. They seem to be, at least because they're not defined explicitly and because when I'm looking at this not only the report that was attached but also I went to the police commission where there was the lengthier report that was submitted. I took a look and I would just it would be helpful to clarify both for this body as well as well as the public what each of those terms mean and the relationship that they have to an officer. Is it, you know, are multiple complaints?

Can they I assume they can be, alleged against one officer. You know, can you just explain some of these definitions?

Sure. To the chair. So typically, if we get a we will get a complaint from a citizen that may have multiple allegations against multiple officers. So maybe if it's to say a use of force issue where someone alleges that there was improper force used against them, they may have the allegation against say three officers and there may be various different types of forced use in those officers. May have brought him down.

That's maybe one allegation there. It may be another allegation of being stricken. So each case can have multiple allegations against multiple officers. So when we say allegations, those are the total number of specific incidents, allegations that we investigate combined in all of the cases. Individual cases though we tend to try to talk about more in terms of allegations because in the end, that's what it comes down to when it's presented to if there's a sustained case, that's what's presented to the chief and that's what we discussed.

So we have to break it down on allegations at some point because we can't simply say we sustained on this complaint because it may be you sustained on one allegation as to one officer when it could have been 15 allegations against three three or four officers. So That's helpful. I will be more clear in the future on breaking that down. That's all part of our getting a better data reporting system because all this information was actually have to pulled by hand month to month because we just simply do not have a a good system in place for data control and management. And we retained a set of project manager in February.

He was previously the head of data data management for California's Department of Justice and she's now interviewing vendors to get us a better case management data system.

Right. That that is good because I I did notice some things that appear to be data discrepancies at least when I was reviewing it where for example, I think the executive summary said that there were 739 allegations and then there was a snapshot table that listed 592 allegations and it sounds like that is connected to this procurement that you're undergoing. When is that expected to be complete? Because I think one thing that I picked up on is the demographic data is really important as we know we need to look at how those complaints get sustained, who they come from and it looks like that is a condition of you getting through this procurement process. Can you talk about when that data is going to be available the next time we talk about this in October or November?

Can that is that data going to be available at least the first snapshot?

No. It's that it'll be available actually next year. So we're interviewing vendors now. Once we decide on a vendor and implement a program, it'll likely be the end of this calendar year from what we're hearing from the vendors in terms of being able to to train, get the program on board, and actually have it functioning. So we don't anticipate that we'll be able to get the full data that we wanna report out until the 2027 annual year calendar year.

Okay. Council member Houston.

Through the chair. Mister Lawson, remember it was a discrepancy since you're talking about discrepancies between a number with you, ZEPRA

and

the police. Did you guys ever can you explain this so the public knows what that is? And did you guys come up with that discrepancy and who was right? Or what number was accurate? Which one wasn't?

Yeah. To the chair. Council member Houston referring to the Skelly number of Skelly cases that were pending. Where there's discrepancy in the last time we came here. We had a number of Skelly cases. I forgot the number. Was a 100 plus, I believe, and the OPD had a different number. We never resolved that. The number that I have was is is was taken from the data that's presented by OPD every week. So on Wednesdays and excuse me.

Say on Wednesdays, there is a regularly scheduled disciplinary hearing calendar. And on the Thursday or Friday Friday prior, there was a submission of, of data which includes outstanding scaly cases. And that's the data that I provided to this, committee at the time. And so I have not since that last presentation here, had a discussion with OPD as to what is the correct data. But they only they would know because it's basically both coming from their sources. So OPD would know which was correct.

Through the chair. Thank you, mister Lawson. Is OPD over there?

No. They're they're gone now.

Okay. One other question. Are all your positions filled?

No. They're not. So we have nine permanent employees currently. A field force would be 17. We have just closed out a job announcement to hire, line investigators. We hope to hire two line investigators. We also hope to bring on a, deputy director of investigations in June. We've identified that position, and we work with HR. We hope to bring that person on in June and that will bring us up to 15. Then we may not be able to hire anymore depending on what's the positions maybe froze. We're not so we will be hope it'll be a 15 this summer and and possibly in the fall, hire additional investigators. So then we'll be we'll be at full staff.

Full staff at seventeen?

Seventeen to nineteen.

Okay. Through the chair, what's the challenges of getting these positions filled? What's your challenges?

Through the chair. We have about 80 applicants for the current positions. I think 30 to 40 will actually be minimally qualified and that's we've had that position, that same result in the last two hiring rounds. The problem has been the pay scale. The investigators top out at a 130,000 previously and they had been attorneys, but we don't get attorneys applying at that pay rate anymore.

So in the past, when we had, say, four attorneys who were investigators, the last two job announcements we had, I believe, one attorney apply. And and if I recall, that attorney had been disbarred. So that's been and and we offered a position to one individual. And at the last minute, he decided not to take it. Instead, he decided to take a position, I believe, in the South Bay to pay.

So we've had some trouble finding people qualified for an investigator positions and then bringing them on board most recently. Hopefully, we'll see. We haven't seen the pool this recent pool. We have 80 applicants. We'll get that final, minimally qualified list within the next few weeks, then I'll know more then.

One more question through the chair. So if you got more resources, what would be the difference in, filling these positions?

Yes. Through the chair. If we got more resources, we could, one, change the classification to bring on, more attorneys. We do need it. We need attorneys at the investigator level. And we are doing that with we we are bringing on a deputy director of special of investigations next month. That was a position that was kinda recommended by HR due to our hiring difficulties. And, that's an attorney position. And and because it's the deputy director, it's a higher wage and we can therefore recruit at the attorney level. That person will be responsible for overseeing all of the the complaint investigators levels two and three.

So that's much needed that will help. And if we got more resources, I would bring on more higher level investigators. Because right now, we are in the process of contracting out investigations, the high level investigations to outside firms because we do not have enough investigators with the experience level in house to down to some of the complicated cases.

So so are you sharing through the chair? Are you sharing with us that you're not choosing people because they're not attorneys?

No. We no. We choose whoever we can who's qualified. But typically in the past to the chair, we've had applicants who were attorneys and have had more experience in either none of even if going to law school have had more experience in in drafting legal briefs and and and legal opinions is kinda what they're doing in their in their job as as investigators. So they has a little more background in doing analysis of legal issues, doing fact finding, and as much of what they do in their job.

Last question. So through the the chair, can they can individuals, do investigations that aren't attorneys?

Through the chair, all of our investigators none of our investigators are attorneys now. We have some very good investigators. But you can do it it helps efficiently if we have some attorneys. It's it's good to have a mix. Right now, we have it doesn't have to be attorneys, people some background in legal. It could be someone who's going to law school or who just has significant background. We're not getting any of those applicants right now.

What would be the pay scale to be competitive?

Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead

and do it.

Yeah. What would be the pay scale to be competitive?

Do the check. I would really need to sit down and talk to HR but it's probably be minimum one fifty, more than one eighty range before you can start. I mean, there's been such a dramatic disparity in in pay from in our economy now for a lot of the the people who are in the legal field compared to what we offer now that is hard to get applicants with that background.

Do you have additional questions, council member Houston? Sorry. I thought you were done. Okay. Alright. And then my understanding is that right now most the investigations do rely on the IED process until you have a difference, like until there's a difference of opinion. How I would like to see in a subsequent report in the fall time the times that you have disagreed. CPRA has disagreed with IID's findings. Okay. Council member Fife.

Yes. Through the chair, do you have a plan for transitioning IA to CIPRA?

There is through the chair, there's a task force that has been convened to address that issue and I believe the first meeting is tomorrow.

Oh, where and when?

It is I don't know the time because our representative is our our staff attorney who Karen Tom is our representative. So the city administrator's office has a representative. I think city attorney's office has a representative, finance, HR, SIPRA, and the meeting is tomorrow. I'm not sure what time or where they're meeting, but tomorrow is the first meeting.

So it's an internal meeting? It's not a meeting that's open to the public where

they'll be No.

It's not a public meeting.

When will the there be information to be reported out?

Through the chair. I don't know. I think after this first meeting, we'll get a better sense of how it's gonna be organized and how we'll proceed. But this is our initial meeting, so I'll assume they're gonna be setting a lot of the parameters on how it's gonna proceed.

But that information will come back to this committee or to the full council? How will we know?

If you want to come back, I will bring it back

I would like that to to come back to the committee. I'll to schedule an informational item if necessary. Okay. Great.

One just stepping back, so there were 637 completed investigations in 2025. Do you think that is, in in your opinion, what does that mean about the state of the Oakland Police Department? Are complaints coming down over increasing? Just yeah. We'd love to hear your perspective on that.

Yes. It's hard to say I have to look at the prior years. I haven't looked at them closely because some and I'm not sure how accurate the data is for prior years for me to make that kind of comparison. So I I think I don't wanna make a be guessing as to whether or not there's a trend to be found there. I try to we try to focus on trends we see within the the particular year, for example.

And I may hope to report this out more in the fall. And we see certain trends with maybe search and seizure. We see similar cases and similar concerns. We see certain trends with profiling. And and so we wanna highlight those trends within our reports and I think an annual report does. But in terms of comparison over year to year, I I really can't speak on that now.

Okay. I would say when we first of all we have to continue this item instead of filing it. We can it. We can receive and file.

Okay.

Alright. When we bring this item again in the fall time, I think first of all we just need to have the charter mandated items that are stipulated in the OMC in terms of reporting. The other thing that I would like to have covered is those discrepancies between IAD and CPR. And then the other thing I want to see is the year over year trends. I think that's important to see where the police department in CPR's independent take is is trending. Okay. Okay. And you making a motion?

No. No.

You got another question? Yeah. Perfect.

Remember remember I said I was old. So who sets the policies for your office? Through the chair.

Yeah. Currently, we are we've just are finishing a through the chair. I'm sorry. A contract with a outside law firm, a personal service agreement, and she will be drafting our our SOPs, standard operating procedures Yeah. And our internal policies and we she should start within the next week to two weeks.

And and that's where I can find more about these policies? Where can I find out more about them when she said so?

She's gonna they're gonna be public policies that she's gonna draft. So we will we will issue them. I will definitely attach them when we come back in the fall.

Okay. I'll move to receive this. File received.

Okay. Thank you. I believe we had the original motion by council member Wong and then did you wanna second it? Because she had the request for additional information. Okay. So it was a motion made by council member chair Wong, seconded by council member Houston to receive and file this informational report in committee with the request for the future report to include the discrepancies between IAD and SIPRA and to see the year over year year over year trends. On roll, council member Brown is excused on, council member Pfeif. Aye. Council member Houston? Aye.

And chair Wong? Aye. Thank you. Item number eight passes with three ayes and one excused Brown to receive and file this information or report in committee. Moving on to open forum. Calling in the names that signed up to speak, Ann Jenks, Asado Olabala, Rajni Mandal, Blair Beekman, and Mellie Cleveland.

So I'm very concerned with this social work item. My mother was a social worker and my son has a master in social work working in DC. I might have a discussion with him about that. But here's the thing, this is an opportunity for students who are working on their masters to get credit for a course that they're taking. This is under the umbrella of a course. Somebody has to give them the grade.

She loves

coming. Who is that? And when I did the practicum, the individual who had oversight of me in the classroom had to have specific qualifications. The qualifications for this course is you have to be a social worker. A police officer cannot give a grade on a course for a social worker. How does this work that an in

Thank you for your comments.

Anne Jenks, district three. So, you know, the council asked or the council instructed a process to begin with a working group to look at moving work from internal affairs to CIPRA a year ago. And then the council asked no questions. And it sat I think it got thrown down the well in the city in the city administrator's office. And the council didn't do anything to find out what was happening, and it's been almost a year.

And I'm hoping that you can use this as a little bit of a lesson in terms of the need to pay a little bit more attention to things. Things like macro, things like the civilianization so that more officers can be engaged in serious public safety issues. OPD overtime, which has not come to this committee. The meet and confer process.

If your name was called for open forum, please come up to the podium.

Rajne Mandal, District 4. Civilization within OPD is not the same thing as transferring an internal affairs authority to CIPRA. There's a growing political narrative linking measure e, police spending, and the OPOA contract to calls for expanding CIPRA and moving discipline outside OPD, but the c administration recently stated that civilization of IAB is not feasible in the foreseeable future because of staffing limitations and CPR's current structure. And that structure matters because CPR is not a typical operational department directly managed by the city administrator. Its governance runs through the police commission, meaning the city can't simply impose procedures, operational reforms, or accountability measures in the same way as other departments.

And it's especially important when CPR itself acknowledges unresolved infrastructure problems, including not having SOPs, missing ordinance required datas, and incomplete reporting systems for its entire nine years of existence. At the same time, recent OPC and CMC statements position it as a portion of the NSA. Thank you.

I think it's important to bring up again that the mandate to have a task force set up to transition IA to CPR was established over a year ago. And while, doctor Mandel brings up legitimate questions about how this transition will occur, if the council had been on top of the city administrator telling him to get this work group started, these issues could have been worked out. You don't wait a year and then say and then say what's going on. I also wanna I also want sorry. I also wanna confirm, agree that although civilianization and overtime has been agendized on the finance agenda, it is relevant for public safety.

It is not just a financial issue. It is an operational issue. So I

Thank you for your comments, miss Meli. Moving to Zoom user, Blair. You can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Hi, Blair. Thanks for the meeting today. It was really interesting. To quickly offer, good luck with the, USC social social, well, the program. And with that, in working with police officers, you know, mentioned as we are trying to make a shift towards using civilian persons overall more than just police.

Good luck in what macro or some sort of community agency can be work as a go between with with this future SC program. It's important, our USC program. Good luck in what you can be working on it. That's my 2¢ to make sense of it. Thank you that you offered to take some time with it. Thank you again one more time that you want to work on the Celebrite issues, that you can bring it back in a year's time with possible new vendors. You guys are doing some really amazing good work.

Thank you for your comments, chair. That concludes all speakers.

Okay. Great. This meeting is adjourned. Alright.