

Oakland robberies surge as investigations sputter - teamgb
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-robberies-surge-as-investigations-sputter-4855014.php

======
robbiet480
I live at The Grand, which is close to Broadway and Grand. In the last 6
months, I have heard one purse snatched and one assault and carjacking. Both
happened in broad daylight, in heavily trafficked areas with people around. I
was unable to assist OPD with the former case, but for the latter I ran down
to give a statement. OPD never caught them last I heard, the car hasn't been
recovered, and an elderly couple was very shaken.

I get the feeling that some elements inside OPD are trying to help the public,
while others are cops for the power trip (see the Riders case of the early
2000's). OPD is absolutely stretched thin, but they are that way because
Oakland is a big city and the command structure has previously had major run-
ins with the DoJ (see Riders again) and therefore is very very careful about
putting officers on the street. More so, they keep having issues with the DoJ
(See Occupy Oakland, Scott Olsen), going so far as to the DoJ throwing down a
threat of having the force taken over and reorganized, what would be a first
for any organization in the US. We can't even keep a police chief for more
then a few months, or days for that matter. Howard Jordan was around from 2011
until earlier this year. A day or two before another DoJ ruling/meeting, he
suddenly retired due to a "medical condition", which he still hasn't
disclosed. His replacement, Anthony Toribio, only lasted 2 days. Days. Not
months. Days. The current interim chief, Sean Whent is still around, but we
will see how much longer. We only have 637 officers as of last check. 637 for
a town of 400,000 people.

Oakland has a broken government, including OPD and other services. It caused
all of it's own problems, mostly due to OPD. Oakland won't get better until
crime gets better or people start caring more about Oakland. I love my city,
but I can't do much to help, other than helping the community (see
OaklandWiki.org).

Maybe this is rambling, but whatever, it's out there. Oakland needs help,
robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care.

Edited to add more details and color.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
I live in Berkeley. My girlfriend and I were robbed in Oakland at gunpoint in
June. We reported everything to the OPD. My iPad was sending out information
about its location for weeks. I forwarded that information to the OPD. The
detective assigned to my case never called me back. We don't go to Oakland
anymore unless it's passing through via BART, nice restaurants and other
culture be damned. The amount of enjoyment I get from seeing your cool new
funky band and trying your cool new food is dwarfed by the amount of shit
feelings I get when dealing with having guns pointed at me and an unresponsive
police department.

~~~
dkl
I used to live in Berkeley, and two people were robbed at gun point in my
neighborhood. Shit like this happens everywhere. I don't think Berkeley is
that much safer than Oakland. Just my opinion.

~~~
YuriNiyazov
Shit happens everywhere. The BPD, unlike the OPD, is excellent at follow up.
That's what makes all the difference, and makes one place safer than another.

~~~
dkl
I don't agree with that. I had two home burglaries. Never any followup from
them on that. Again, sample size is everything.

------
leokun
This lady:

> Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who represents West Oakland, said
> joblessness is a big factor in the city's robbery rate.

I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job.

> "We have a lot fewer jobs for adults so kids experience a lot more lack, so
> they are not able to get things," she said, noting that some turn to robbery
> to get money. "Really what they are after is really basic things - shoes,
> jackets. The things these kids are buying with money from stolen things are
> not flashy things.

She goes on like this, defending criminals and criminal activity and blaming
the system. The system may suck, but resorting to guns, scaring people out of
their lives and taking things from them that belong to them is not excusable.
It's criminal, and she's a terrible person for commenting this way, and a
terrible official.

~~~
mattzito
> I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job.

Of course not, neither am I. Of course, I'm a white-collar professional, in an
in-demand industry, with savings, and consequently, even if I had to really
scale down my career level to make ends meet, I could definitely find a job.

On the flip side, if I was largely unemployable aside from menial jobs with
long hours, low pay, and lousy job security, and then I lost my job, I'd have
a lot fewer options. I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can
make _more_ money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low.

Why is it so crazy to think that some people who steal would do something else
if they were given the opportunity for real advancement?

~~~
twoodfin
_I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with
less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low._

You would? Do you think of respecting others, their property and the law as
some kind of luxury you could do without if you were sufficiently needy?

We could have a philosophical discussion about free will and the irresistible
forces of circumstance, but in order to have a civil society we have to at
least pretend that people are responsible for their own actions and will
respect the law even if they might not get caught breaking it. And indeed,
most poor people aren't thieves.

~~~
mattzito
> Do you think of respecting others, their property and the law as some kind
> of luxury you could do without if you were sufficiently needy?

In the abstract, no, of course not. I think I do a fairly decent job of living
a moral life, and I'd like to think that I would never be forced to consider
such a thing.

In practicality, I can empathize with feeling unable to move the needle on the
economic ladder, and seeing crime as a mechanism available to me when other
mechanisms of earning money have been refused or strongly restricted.

My point is not that crime is acceptable, or moral, or excusable, aside from
extreme edge cases - just that the OP presupposes that crime is purely a
rational choice all people make when alternatives exist.

Also, I'll note that elsewhere you talk about access to food charity - I'll
throw out there that 14.5% of the US population had food insecurity during
2012 - [http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-
research-r...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err-economic-research-
report/err155.aspx#.UkngcmRgaaY)

That's hardly a ringing endorsement for people having access to food.

~~~
twoodfin
So would you seriously consider doing robbery or not? I'm not sure if you're
standing by your original claim. If you are, I still don't understand why you
think you would. If you're not, what makes you different than the people you
assume will?

As for "steal or starve", the USDA threshold for "food insecurity" starts at
"reports of reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet. Little or no
indication of reduced food intake."[1] That is a long, long way from
starvation.

[1] [http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-
assistance/foo...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-
assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security.aspx)

~~~
hackinthebochs
>So would you seriously consider doing robbery or not?

You seem to think our behavior is entirely rational. Even aside from the free
will debate, this is completely untrue. Our behavior is motivated by a
combination of unconscious impulses and consciously directed goals. If the
unconscious impulses to steal became great enough it would override any
rational ideals about property rights and such.

Of course you'll retort that there are millions of poor folks that don't steal
so I couldn't possibly be right. Well that's true, but how many of them are
kept in line by external factors such as potential jail time, shame,
embarrassment, fear, etc? This is the point of society after all--create
external motivations for behaviors that are beneficial to the group. All those
that don't steal is not an indication that they do it for purely rational
reasons.

The point is that asking "would you seriously consider robbery" to someone who
is relatively well off is not a meaningful question, just like you saying
(from your place of privilege) that you would never consider violating someone
else's property rights no matter how destitute you became is a meaningless
declaration.

~~~
twoodfin
_You seem to think our behavior is entirely rational._

Of course not. What I do think is that poverty in the U.S. is not a
sufficiently de-rationalizing force to make it likely I would commit violent
crimes. Do you think it would have that effect on you?

~~~
hackinthebochs
As I've said, its a matter of degrees. It is meaningless to pretend like there
is a hard line of despair that only then would violence be justified.

Yes, I can envision a possible world where I would be prone to steal for
food/shelter/etc. I would go out of my way to avoid causing harm as much as
possible, but I don't pretend like I'm somehow physically incapable of these
things. But no, that world doesn't currently exist in the US: luckily for me I
am intelligent enough and educated enough that I would be able to find other
avenues for money. Others aren't so lucky.

Also, you seem to think that violence is never the rational choice (assuming
you mean stealing as a form of violence). I don't agree with that either.

------
ddlatham
Some interesting numbers and quotes from the article when you put them
together:

"As of July 31, Oakland had 626 officers - still far less than the 800-plus
officers the city had in 2010."

2010: 2917 robberies

2013: 5311 robberies (pace through Sept. 22)

"In early 2013, police Lt. Chris Bolton analyzed robberies across the city and
found that roughly 75 percent involved a smartphone."

"So far this year, crime, as a whole in Oakland is stagnant. Shootings are
down. Homicide has dropped by 13 percent...But robberies are up. A lot."

~~~
mathattack
Freakonomics discussed crime decreasing in New York. A lot of it was just due
to more police.

------
jijji
Its worth noting that every city on the list is a city with very strict gun
laws. You won't find the robbery rates high in cities and states which allow
citizens to properly defend themselves when confronted by an attacker
committing a felony on his or her person.

~~~
grannyg00se
How does the proper defense scenario play out with a gun? Someone pulls a gun
on you to rob you, and you then pull yours out without getting shot? Once you
do pull out your gun, do you shoot the robber(s)? I find it hard to imagine
any of this working out very well.

Or is the possibility that you may be armed supposed to act as a deterrent?

~~~
jijji
In states that have strict gun laws, the way it plays out is that the victim
never has the opportunity to defend themselves. Read any story where an
attacker tries to rob a person with a concealed firearm to figure out how it
plays out when the victim is armed. It usually doesn't end up well for the
attacker. So I guess we should just all be victims and never defends ourselves
when attacked. It actually drives crime up when everyone plays the victim and
doesn't defened themselves. The attackers feel emboldened to commit the act
over and over and over again with impunity. Why should they stop? No one is
preventing them they should continue to rob people, it is working for them.

------
cobrausn
So, after reading the article and seeing that smart devices are often
targets... I have to ask, is there an app that would help in these kinds of
cases?

I'm picturing an app with a button on the main screen. Press the button,
device location is uploaded periodically to a server. For bonus points, make
the device look like it is powered off (although I suppose there really isn't
much you can do if they pull the battery).

After the fact, you might get lucky and the data reveals where the device
went, which police might be able to use to track down who did it. Not sure if
anything like this exists (don't have a smartphone), but it seems like
something that might be useful if you live in an area where this happens a
lot.

~~~
lwhalen
Not to be a complete schmuck about it, but Glock makes a wonderful 'app' for
that. Unfortunately, California systematically denies its citizens the right
to lawfully carry firearms concealed - and in many cases denies them the right
to own at all. I would think that a straightforward fix for the robberies
would be to enable 'self-service' self-defense and get the laws around legal
gun ownership changed.

~~~
allochthon
A Glock would not have helped in my case, when five or six young men attacked
me at close range (in Oakland), unless I was Chuck Norris and willing to throw
away my own life as well as theirs. More police on the streets, and more
effective followthrough after the fact, would have helped, though.

~~~
lwhalen
Sounds like a great case for standard-capacity magazines (instead of the
neutered 8-rounders they want you to have). But that's just me being snarky
:-) There's firearms classes out there that teach you how to effectively deal
with multiple attackers, but in general it just plain sounds like you had a
bad day coming your way. Sorry to hear that, and I hope karma catches up with
your assailants sooner rather than later.

~~~
allochthon
No worries. It was just a bad day. :) To be honest, I feel sorry for those
guys. They're throwing their lives away.

------
rdl
I live in Oakland now (although I plan to be in Issaquah or Bellevue WA by the
end of 2013, thank god). I'm not really a good robbery candidate (which should
be obvious just by appearance), but I'd never use a cellphone, laptop, etc. in
public (including in cafes) in Oakland. I leave my house by car. I'm more than
adequately armed and secured at home.

I've never had a problem with crime in Oakland personally, perhaps due to this
level of precaution, but I know a lot of people who have (generally females
walking or using public transit, in the afternoon or at night, in uptown and
affiliated areas). Think about how much your laptop/phone/ipad/mifi/etc.
together are worth, and whether you want to be displaying that on the street,
at a bus stop, etc.

The weird thing is Oakland rents in the Grand/Broadway/Adams Point/etc. area
are starting to approach ~2004 SF rents; a 1BR is about $1800-2k, up from
about $1200 a couple years ago. I'm not sure if increasing rents will lead to
less crime, since most of the people moving to Oakland are "hipsters" or
"young single people", who generally don't prioritize security as much as
families or older people.

(The huge amounts of crime in Oakland, which largely influence the stats, and
most of the violent crime, are in the large gang/etc. areas where no hn reader
would be likely to go. A friend of mine lived in a warehouse in one of those
areas, and I ended up having to drive and walk through active ~50 cop police
raids on the neighbors to get to her place several times. It was pretty lulz;
I would not recommend it.)

If Alameda became as "issue on good cause" as the San Mateo County Sheriff,
I'd more seriously consider living here again.

~~~
allochthon
I don't think one needs to be flashing anything to be assaulted. Just be at
the wrong place at the wrong time -- perhaps walking through a transitional
neighborhood near a BART station in the late afternoon.

~~~
rdl
Not necessary, but it helps. Being aware of your surroundings does generally
help, not obviously burdened by bags, etc.

------
j_baker
We're talking about robbery rates _doubling_ in two years. As far as crime
stats go, that's a huge increase. I wonder what the cause of it is?

~~~
potatolicious
Wild guess, but probably smartphones. Never before has something been so easy
to take (it's just in your hand and not tied to anything, unlike a purse),
worth so much money, is so easy to conceal, and is so universally demanded and
easy to fence.

------
wehadfun
I've had an iPhone stolen in Dallas. I tried to show them iPhone "Find my
phone" feature they would not send an officer to investigate claiming that the
number was only accurate to 500ft.

~~~
bsimpson
Part of me thinks that it's obvious that high-end bikes need a GPS-enabled
anti-theft system, and is flabbergasted that there are still barely any
options for that. (The only one I'd buy is Helios, but it requires new
handlebars that wouldn't fit my bike.) That said, I've also wondered about the
efficacy of such a system. If the bike was still moving, you'd have a decent
chance of finding it, but if it was stashed in somebody's apartment waiting to
be sold, how would you know where, precisely, to find it? It's a hard problem,
especially considering housing is probably pretty dense in the places most
thieves live.

Maybe a camera and/or an alarm would be helpful, but good thieves would learn
where the cameras are and to cover them up. An alarm would give itself away
before you'd have a chance to find it, and would probably entice the thief to
destroy your bike. Maybe there's a way to echolocate the bike, using a
frequency outside the range of human hearing:

\- The owner goes to the rough location of the stolen item, as determined by
GPS.

\- The owner sends a signal to the anti-theft inside the stolen item to start
emitting a signal that the thief can't hear.

\- Using his phone (and maybe a friend's to aid in triangulation), the owner
deduces where the signal is coming from, and is better able to recover his
item.

The problem with bolt-on antitheft (like the BikeSpike) is that once thieves
realize what a GPS beacon looks like, they'll destroy it ASAP after stealing
the bike. Therefore, options like Helios where the GPS is hidden in the
bicycle itself are the much preferred option, but even then, the thief can
hide the stolen goods in a basement or a Faraday cage where any signals the
device emits can't reach the outside world.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that if your bike is stolen,
you are basically screwed.

~~~
rdl
Bait bikes seem like the solution to bike theft.

------
malyk
I live in Northwest oakland (near san pablo and stanford/powell) and the
amount of robberies/burglaries that have happened in the greater neighborhood
is kind of crazy. It's rarely more than a couple of days between reports of a
break in on our Nextdoor neighborhood group. It's quite shocking how frequent
the crimes are.

What seems to be happening is what seems like a standard burglary scenario.
Someone walks around the neighborhoods checking out places, identifies a few
and candidates and takes a closer look, and then the burglary happens. The
officer in the article caught a couple of people in the act after being
notified about a casing incident, which is great, but it's a drop in the
bucket.

------
sixQuarks
Not enough police enforcement. How much does the city pay in pension
obligations? That's what's killing a lot of cities.

~~~
sanskritabelt
Too much police "enforcement", you mean:
[http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/investigation-reveals-east-
bay...](http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/investigation-reveals-east-bay-city-
paying-out-ext/nFdWy/)

~~~
sixQuarks
so ridiculous. The problem is that voters, as soon as they hear BS about
police officers and teachers being laid off, blindly support rises in the
budgets, unaware that so much money is being wasted and not being put to good
use.

------
niteshmehta
PG please put a RFS for a crowd sourced security system for neighborhoods.
Police forces are not scalable.

~~~
taybin
Yeah, let's disrupt this with private security forces! When I think of what I
want the future to look like, it's private security forces for the wealthy.

~~~
malyk
While I completely agree that this problem is the responsibility of the
government you have to understand the frustration of the people whose houses
are being broken in to on a regular basis. Ok, not the same house (usually),
but the same neighborhoods over and over and over, week after week.

My neighborhood is considering hiring private security. The initial estimate
is $15 a household per month given N neighbors sign up. I forget what N is,
but it wasn't that many. So yes, it would be a real monetary sacrifice to a
lot of the residents around me, but the alternative, given that the police
can't really help right now, is to be at a very high risk of being burglarized
with basically no chance of the perpetrators being caught.

Sometimes you have to take things into your own hands. I think oakland is
making strides to hire and train more officers, but that's going to take a few
years to get back to the 2010 level and we probably need more officers than we
had then. Until then...what do we do? Keep getting robbed/burgled?

~~~
potatolicious
I can't speak for OP, but my feeling from his tone is frustration that the
failings of government, and the subsequent privatization of key services is
frequently treated by the Valley as some kind of disruptive innovation, rather
than a pyrrhic victory.

Take Uber for example - Uber only exists due to the complete failure of SF's
public transportation network, as well as its horrifyingly corrupt taxi
industry. The fact that it exists may be necessary, but it is indicative of a
malaise, not a leap forward.

I personally find it very annoying at how self-congratulatory our industry is
on these matters. A private police force is nothing to celebrate, it's cause
for sober reflection on just how badly we've completely fucked up to even make
it necessary.

~~~
malyk
I hear that, for sure.

Oakland has a serious problem with burglaries/robberies. The police force is
understaffed and, while oakland is finally trying to add more officers, it's
going to take years to get back to a level of staffing that is sufficient to
fight crime in the city. What is the alternative here?

And my neighborhood is one of the poorest in the bay area. If you look at
richblockspoorblocks.com for oakland north of 580 and west of 24. Those are
some of the neighborhoods that are looking to hire private security (among
others). My census tract (4007) has a median household income of $38,646!!!
These aren't "rich" people that want to hire security to protect their gated
community (:cough: piedmont :cough:). These are working class neighborhoods
fed up with the crime rate and powerless to speed the process of growing the
policing power of the city of oakland. The only thing they can do with any
speed is hire someone to help out.

------
wehadfun
I have not scientific, references, ... but I think if 10% of the money/effort
that has gone into the drug war went into robberies it would be stamped out.

It cant be hard to find a cell phone, it has a connected GPS, mike, and
camera.

------
smtddr
So in light of previous comments[1] I've made, I will say that this article is
an example of unbias reporting highlighting core issues to try and explain the
observations.

This kind of reporting allows one to _think & reason_ about the issues &
perhaps consider how to avoid(hopefully fix) the problem - instead of the
blatant generalization like this[2][3] that only invoke fear and demoralize
all the people in the city. Also, I support the headline change to match the
article. The original headline is exactly what I'm talking about, just
invoking fear. People who scan headlines will just memorize the headline
instead of clicking into the article to understand _why & how_. We know far
more people read headlines than read the whole article. We need more
understanding about "why" and "how", not just "what".

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409)

2\. [http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-
kin...](http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-king-oakland-
funny.jpg)

3\.
[http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakla...](http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakland_shirt.png)

