Oakland Residents Crowdfund Their Own Private Police Force, Because They Can

[KamaAina]

https://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/10/09-0

In a move that reflects America's growing chasm between haves and have-nots, the residents of three middle and upper class neighborhoods in Oakland - close by moneyed Silicon Valley but home to rising crime rates and a "broken" undermanned police department with a history of violence and racism - have banded together to crowdfund their own private security patrols. Supporters argue they're entitled to feel safe, even when it means "taking matters into (our) own hands." Critics question a social contract that only offers a basic civic good to those who can afford it. As to the rest, let them eat poverty, unemployment, chaos and crime.

“We shouldn’t have to do this,” says Steven Kirsh, running the last of three Rockridge campaigns, “but we need to do this."



Why don't they crowdfund a police force for the whole city? It's called "taxation". It doesn't even require a fancy website.

[11cents]

1. Hardly that simple. I live in Oakland.

(...and not in an affluent area). There have been many attempts to increase the size of the police force via property tax hikes. One succeeded (but hasn't been well implemented); others failed in part because of distrust of the police and disagreements over how to address the crime rate. I'll tell you why they didn't fail: because people in Oakland fucking California are right-wing anti-tax zealots who need a good talking to by DU.

[KamaAina]

2. So these yuppies have decided to bypass the system

and protect only themselves, rather than work to address those issues citywide.

From a Rockridge resident, via FB:

"More than 75% of Rockridge residents (myself included) identify as White. The average home in Rockridge worth nearly $1,000,000, and the median income here is more than double than the Oakland average. I believe it is accurate to say that most of us are benefitting from both White privilege and economic privilege. On the other side of the "tracks" (whether those tracks are considered Telegraph Ave, or MLK, or all of Oakland east of Lake Merritt), our fellow Oaklanders are struggling to find jobs, feed their families, and even stay alive.

Those of us with racial and economic privileges should understand that the same laws and institutions that afford us these privileges are not innocuous - their existence simultaneously creates and maintains conditions that institutionalize poverty and breed violence.

The plan to hire a private police force to protect "our" community is a striking example, in my opinion, of an effort by privileged people to protect their privileges at the continued expense of those who have truly been victimized by this system. This "solution" will not build capacity in lower-income neighborhoods to increase economic or educational opportunities, it will not create a safer Oakland for everyone, it will not promote community-building across racial and geographic boundaries.

Until we are as outraged about the violence elsewhere in our city as we are about it in our neighborhood, and until we mobilize our resources to create safer conditions for communities in Oakland that are darker and poorer than our own, we are only exacerbating the problems that have understandably found their way into our mythical utopia."

[11cents]

3. Do you live in Oakland?

[KamaAina]

4. San Jose. Many friends in Oaktown. Would consider settling there.

In fact, a former coworker left our agency to join the Oakland police academy!

I can certainly understand the growing frustration over crime. But private police forces a la RoboCop aren't the answer. For one thing, they'd lack even the minimal public accountability that the Oakland PD has.

[11cents]

6. Of course it's not the answer. But the problem isn't feckless "yuppie" stereotypes.

Chances are the majority of these "yuppies" voted to raise their own property taxes to fund cops. They didn't drop out of the system, but they system didn't work and they have the means to fund an alternative. The problems here simply aren't about them. Oakland is hardly a bastion of anti-tax teabaggery; it's a city with a low tax base. (Starting to rise now, though, along with the rest of CA. And the violent crime rate is actually falling this year.)

[KamaAina]

7. I'd rather see the people driving this working together with leaders from other parts of the city

who are dealing with crime at even closer range. That way something could get done for everyone.

But that would involve crossing some uncomfortable race and class barriers. I'm not holding my breath.

[KamaAina]

8. "Low tax base" = Prop 13

Million-dollar homes exist not only in Rockridge but throughout the Oakland hills. But the city doesn't get much revenue from them because of Prop 13. It's supposed to get its revenue from offices (many of which decamped for Pleasanton and environs years ago) and shopping (much of which set up shop next door in Emeryville).

[KamaAina]

5. Here's more

http://techpresident.com/news/24395/oakland-neighbors-crowdfund-private-security

The campaigns illustrate the power of crowdfunding tools to propel civic action, but they also point to the potential of crowdfunding to increase urban inequality in the name of a civic virtue like neighborhood safety.

“Crowdfunding a solution for one neighborhood without working on the larger, underlying issues is concerning to me,” says internet scholar Ethan Zuckerman. Last year he wrote about the potential of civic crowdfunding in cash strapped cities to abet inequality and erode faith in government’s ability to provide public goods like police forces, or parks. In his piece he stated “Unless done very carefully, crowdfunding a city’s projects is likely to favor wealthy neighborhoods over poor ones.” In the case of Rockridge, where the median home price of late is almost a million dollars, it seems like the downside of Zuckerman’s prediction has come to pass. ...

Other civic crowdfunding platforms might not give the citizens of Rockridge that chance. “We would not allow this project to be posted,” says Jordan Raynor, co-founder of Citizinvestor. “We believe that local government entities are best qualified to make decisions for the good of all citizens,” and so projects on his site require that funds be raised on the behalf of a local government agency.

It’s not only Rockridge residents taking security into their own hands in Oakland. An article last month in the San Francisco Chronicle detailed an increase in Oakland residents relying on private security. The article points out that Oakland, a city with near 400,000 residents, had 830 officers patrolling the city in 2009, while today that number is down to 615.