Oakland Police Department: Missed Opportunities with Technology

Note: Missing finding numbers detected: F23

Conclusions 15

• CL1 Page 21
  An overall existing technology and infrastructure review.
• CL2 Page 21
  A list of future goals and plans.
• CL3 Page 21
  An analysis and investigation of new technologies.
• CL4 Page 21
  A plan for the design and implementation of new technology.
• CL5 Page 21
  A process for coordinating with the PAC on privacy concerns and future technology implementation .
• CL6 Page 21
  A cost/benefit analysis including purchase/lease, maintenance/updates, administration, overall justification, and audits.
• CL7 Page 21
  Implementation of maintenance plan for updates and upgrades .
• CL8 Page 21
  Periodic reviews of procedures, reports and auditing requirements.
• CL9 Page 21
  Yearly audits and reports (intentional or inadvertent bias, pattern matching for trends, usage cost justifications.) The grand jury learned that OPD has a desire to build a Real Time Crime Center for Oakland and surrounding cities, but does not have a long-term plan to develop, structure, use, or integrate the existing technologies into it. The grand jury believes that a Real Time Crime Center would benefit the community but be more effective as a regional-based operation. The grand jury found that the OPD IT Unit is primarily staffed with rotated sworn officers; it is understaffed and has capacity limitations for maintaining existing technologies. During the 21
• CL10 Page 33
  The Oakland City Council did not act in the best interests of the city in selecting Becker/Outfront over Clear Channel. It was irresponsible of the city council to pass up $88 million over the extended term that could have been used for any purpose. Evidence reviewed by the grand jury showed that city councilmembers paid more attention to lobbyists for Becker and Outfront than they did to the city’s own staff. In fact, the Becker/Outfront deal was never put into the form of a written proposal; instead, the companies wrote their terms into the very resolution passed by the city council. The city council abdicated responsibility for selecting the nonprofits to receive substantial amounts of public funds. There should have been a points-based, open competition for these funds. The council should have debated the different proposals, instead of passing one opaquely on the consent calendar. The city did not give Clear Channel an opportunity to make its case or defend its proposal in a public hearing. Additionally, a city councilmember potentially violated the City of Oakland Government Ethics Act section 2.25.040(A) and section 2.25.040(C), by not publicly disclosing that this official's spouse was serving on the board of one of the nonprofits and was a paid consultant to another. Finally, this councilmember delayed providing information to the grand jury for four months, even after the city attorney’s office intervened. Section 2.25.040 states as follows: 2.25.040(A): “Financial Conflicts of Interests. A Public Servant shall not make, participate in making, or seek to influence a decision of the City in which the Public Servant has a financial interest within the meaning of the California Political Reform Act, Government Code Section 87100 et seq. and pursuant to City Charter Section 1200. All provisions of California Government Code Section 87100-87505 and City Charter Section 1200, as they relate to Public Servants, are incorporated by reference into this Act.” 2.25.040(C): “Conflicts of Interests in Contracting. A Public Servant shall not make or participate in making a contract in which he or she has a financial interest within the meaning of California Government Code Sections 1090-1097. All provisions of California Government Code Section 1090-1097, as the Sections relate to Public Servants, are incorporated by reference into this Act.” 33
• CL11 Page 50
  Given the interwoven structure of governance, effecting change, particularly with the hiring and recruitment process, is typically slow, complex and challenging. Meanwhile, testimony revealed that department heads cast blame on the Alameda County Human Resource Services Department for its inability to handle the recruitment workload, which in turn casts blame on the individual departments for their lack of timeliness in providing SMEs, interviewing and selecting candidates. The grand jury believes that a thorough analysis must be conducted to determine the true vacancy rate. The board of supervisors needs to define how long budgeted positions are allowed to remain vacant and under what circumstances. There must be transparency between departments, HRS, the board of supervisors and labor unions regarding salaries that have been budgeted for one position but were moved to fulfill another use. The grand jury recommends that the county allocate funding to hire an external human resource and organizational expert to analyze the total recruiting and hiring process from beginning to end, as well as data collection and analysis and additional issues in human resource management. The grand jury believes that all stakeholders must work together to shorten the recruitment and hiring process, increase salaries to competitive levels, allow flexible scheduling and hybrid work (including more remote work opportunities), and work with local law enforcement to address crime concerns in order to make Alameda County an appealing place to work.
• CL12 Page 60
  While office visits are more efficient, and home and field visits are important and at times required. The grand jury expects to see changes that will eliminate roadblocks to probation 60
• CL13 Page 61
  officers conducting home visits. Additionally, the probation department needs to work with the General Services Agency to determine the cause of inoperable vehicles and resolve this issue. Security at probation department parking lots also needs to be improved, including 24/7 surveillance and better fencing. Closing the Oakland probation department lot resolves the security issues in Oakland, but the vehicles at that location will be moved to the Hayward and Dublin locations, and the security at those locations will need to be enhanced to prevent thefts and vandalism to prevent putting vehicles out of commission. The grand jury learned that a vehicle was stolen from the Hayward Probation Department parking lot just prior to the printing of this report. Training for new supervisory personnel should be reinstated and made mandatory. The probation department is still using materials from the New Supervisors Training Academy, which is a good start. This training will encourage consistent best practices across the department in many areas, including enforcing the disciplinary process and ensuring cases are reviewed within policy requirements. With respect to case management review timelines, the case management system used by the probation department should be enhanced to provide notifications when cases are approaching their mandatory review deadlines. The case management software used by the probation department already provides notifications (called ”ticklers”) for other tasks, so an additional tickler is certainly possible. These additional ticklers would help to ensure that case reviews happen within the required timeframe. While alternative reporting probationers are much lower risk, they still could be helped by the additional services offered by the probation department. Probation officers need to be encouraged to offer these services to alternative reporting probationers in their initial meeting. Additionally, if possible, the phone system should be enhanced with specific prompts, such as “press 2 for housing assistance, press 3 for job placement programs,” etc. Finally, the probation department needs a better process to develop and approve policies. Both probation department management and the labor unions who represent department employees have valid concerns that should be considered. It is the opinion of the grand jury that it would be beneficial to probationers and the community for policy changes to be approved much faster, including a policy containing specific, additional contact requirements for sex offenders. The Alameda County Probation Department is staffed with long-term employees who are committed to guiding probationers to live better lives. With improvements to vehicle availability, better supervisor training, adoption of best practices across the department, and an improved policy approval process, the Alameda County Probation Department will be better positioned to serve probationers and the community. 61
• CL14 Page 76
  When a 9-1-1 call is made to report a medical emergency, a process is set into motion that runs from the dispatch of an ambulance and ends The grand jury found the off-load times in when the ambulance returns to service, ready to respond to another Alameda County call. One part of that process critical to the smooth operation of were unacceptable, ambulance service is the time it takes for the ambulance EMTs to with only one hospital, Alameda transfer the patient to the care of the hospital personnel so they can Hospital, meeting the respond to another call. This off-load time may be invisible to the 30-minute standard public, but it is well known to the professionals involved, and has called for in the recent state law AB been the subject of studies, state law, and most recently for Alameda 40, let alone the 20- County, the focus of a new contract that has strict standards for minute standard patient off-load times. envisioned in the latest county request for proposal upon The grand jury found the off-load times in Alameda County were which the future unacceptable, with only one hospital, Alameda Hospital, meeting the contract for county ambulance services 30-minute standard called for in the recent state law AB 40, let alone will be based. the 20-minute standard envisioned in the latest county request for proposal upon which the future contract for county ambulance services will be based. When the grand jury examined the operations of the emergency department of Highland Hospital, it was clear that meeting such standards will be challenging due to the shortage of 76
• CL15 Page 77
  space in the ED, and the lack of effective discussions between Alameda EMS and Highland Hospital regarding the nature of the delays. Critical to an accurate picture of the problem is reliable data and good data analysis. After a close look at the numbers provided by Alameda EMS, the grand jury found that its calculations of the county hospital off-load times were actually higher than those calculated by Alameda EMS. Further, where Alameda EMS estimated that excess off-load times resulted in the need for 12 additional ambulances, the grand jury’s calculations put the need at between 1.3 and 2.2. Finally, the grand jury found that the terminology in the RFP regarding off-load times rendered the proposed target unobtainable. The grand jury found it encouraging that the problem of long off-load times is clearly recognized and that possible solutions were being explored. The grand jury considers it important that both the Alameda EMS agency and the county hospitals prioritize the search for solutions to the off-load delay problem by evaluating emergency department sizes, staffing levels, and data collection and analysis. The interaction between the hospital emergency department staff and the ambulance teams is critical to emergency patient care. The delays in off-load times are an important issue that may not be well-known to the public but is too important to ignore.

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