Oakland – During the July 21st Council meeting, The Office Of Oakland City Council President Rebecca Kaplan successfully passed our Resolution redirecting the Special Event function from OPD, allowing for a more effective process, while saving money on policing costs, and keeping more money in our community.
OPD Special Events Functions
The Kaplan resolution to move the Function of Special Event from the Oakland Police Department, was unanimously passed by the Oakland City Council. Moving Special events out of the Police Department will improve our community, by making the permit process easier and clear. Allowing the special event permit process without the deterrent of interacting with law enforcement, will encourage broader safe compliant community events, and will save money.
In addition to making the permitting process more inclusive and coherent, this action would save money on OPD overtime. The Oakland Police Department overtime costs were an additional $16,937,304 dollars over budget the past year.
Many community stakeholders have expressed concerns about Oakland’s special events systems, which are difficult to navigate, expensive, and allow the police department to impede events by requiring organizers to pay for vast numbers of police. There have also been complaints about disparities in the system, with some groups, primarily African Americans, being made to pay for more police. Many of these functions can be better conducted by other personnel, which will make the overall system more effective and less expensive.
Memo and Resolution:
https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4594710&GUID=2D7FC011-0595-46DD-AC93-979CB6DFD17D&Options=&Search=
In addition, several other action items which we worked on, passed on the July 21st Council Meeting:
RV Pilot Program
Moratorium on arrests for Pedestrian And Bicyclist Non-Violent Violations and calling for the creation of a longer-term policy on bike/ped/traffic stops, to reduce over-policing and racial disparity
Providing funding for programs to help our community respond to COVID-19 and provide vital needs for hard-hit communities, including for BWOPA-TILE, Good Good Eats and Meals on Wheels.
RV Pilot Program
The RV Pilot Program establishes permits for up to one year at a time, to allow owners of vacant residential lots to have the option to have no more than one recreational vehicle to be used for residential occupancy on their lots.
The Temporary RV Occupancy Permit would include health and safety conditions requiring a safe, unblighted condition, and requiring the property owner to provide trash removal, electrical sewage, and water utility services.
This opens the opportunity for a win-win, to provide safe, sanitary locations for RVs, reduce pressure on our streets and communities, and allow for an effective use of lots that are currently not in use. When areas of the North Bay previously lost thousands of housing units due to fire, they passed local policies allowing the use of RV’s on lots to house people. Our housing crisis is no less severe, even if it wasn’t caused by fire this time. Thank you to my colleagues for your support.
Memo and Legislation:
https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4594939&GUID=E965FE6E-4413-4441-AB48-653E82F2843C&Options=&Search=
Moratorium for Arrests for Pedestrian And Bicyclist Non-Violent Violations and Traffic Enforcement Policy
My resolution to stop OPD from making arrests for non-violent bicycle and pedestrian violations, and calling for the creation of a longer-term policy on bike/ped/traffic stops, to reduce over-policing and racial disparity, passed. Throughout the City of Oakland, 24% of the residents are Black, yet 68% of police bicycle/pedestrian stops are of African Americans according to a 2019 study done by Bike-Lab.org.
See data at: https://bike-lab.org/2019/05/20/biking-while-black-racial-bias-in-oakland-policing/
Memo and Legislation:
https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4593477&GUID=8A0F0FC6-DD3E-4CB2-8B27-6275EA718E55&Options=&Search=
Best wishes and health to you,
Rebecca Kaplan