Kaplan & Macleay Response to Questions regarding CPRB

Response to Questions from PUEBLO regarding CPRB From

Mayoral Candidates Don Macleay and Rebecca Kaplan

Questions:

1. If you are elected Mayor, do you commit to ensuring that the
Citizens? Police Review Board (CPRB) will continue to be funded by the
City? and

2. Do you commit to providing sufficient funding to allow the
CPRB to staff up to enable them to receive all citizen complaints.
This policy change, approved by the City Council overwhelmingly, would
allow for the redeployment of at least eight IAD officers to be
reassigned to functions that promote public safety and will become
cost-neutral by the third year and cost-savings thereafter.

RESPONSE:

We are writing jointly with our shared vision and plan to preserve and
strengthen civilian police review and improve public safety in
Oakland.

By Don Macleay and Rebecca Kaplan.

First, we would like to make clear that our answers to the two
questions above are both an unequivocal and strong Yes. Furthermore,
we have discussed this issue at length and want to make it known to
the public where we stand on the issue of the relationship between the
police the public.

Public safety is an essential goal for our city. All parts of our
community must be safe. Ensuring widespread public safety requires a
coherent set of actions, including effective use of police resources,
violence prevention, and strengthened community-police relationships.

Maintaining and strengthening the Citizens Police Review Board (CPRB)
is vital, not only because it is legally-mandated, but also because it
is good public policy and it is fiscally responsible.

>From a public policy perspective, we believe in the principal of
democratic civilian control, including over police. It is incumbent on
the elected officials, as the civilian government, to have the final
say over all police matters including, but not limited to, budgeting,
internal controls, and public complaints.

Intake of public complaints should be handled by civilians, for several reasons:

a) In order to provide effective policing, and to be fiscally
responsible, we should be working to ensure that as many police
officers as possible are deployed in a way that provides safety to the
public. When a task can be handled by a civilian, doing so makes it
possible to re-deploy sworn officers to the essential task of fighting
crime, while saving money due to the lower cost of civilian staffing.
Therefore, civilianizing this process is an important part of
providing effective policing for our city while reducing our budget
crisis for the long-term.
b) We believe that a member of the public who has been mistreated
by a police officer should have the right to speak to someone who is a
civilian when filing that complaint. A person who claims to have been
abused by a peace officer should not be forced to come to an officer
or be confronted by an officer in order to file their complaint.

c) Any reforms to the charter or budget should incorporate
principals of civilian control, review and oversight.

d) Our police officers work very hard, and should be treated with
respect, and should be expected to treat the community with respect.

In addition to the issue of handling complaints, we believe that
civilianization and improved connections with our local Oakland
communities should be used as a broader public safety strategy:

e) We propose that the police department itself become the
employer of more civilians. Trained civilians can do supportive
investigative work at the crime scene, in the lab, and in
neighborhoods. These strategies can be used to strengthen evidence
gathering and analysis, blight and illegal dumping enforcement, and
more. Use of trained civilians can help improve response times, ensure
that police officers are deployed to fight crime, and improve
community safety while balancing the budget.

f) We also want to see a police force with a higher percentage of
officers living in our city, which will improve neighborhood safety
and strengthen community-police relationships. Without violating legal
prohibitions on ordering officers to live in Oakland, we can improve
this situation by: recruiting Oakland residents to the police
department, including through strategies like the ?cadet? program;
providing homebuyer assistance to purchase homes in Oakland; and
ensuring that officers live close enough to respond quickly in an
emergency. In addition, we should ensure that a prior conviction does
not bar someone who has turned their life around from joining our
police department.

g) Lastly, we would like to add that there are additional
?civilian-based? strategies that should be strengthened to improve
public safety in the long-run, like Restorative Justice. Programs like
the McCullum Youth Court can be a very effective tool, by providing a
system in which victims receive restoration, and preventing a new
generation from entering the cycle of crime and revenge. People can
be held accountable for the harms they cause, and required to make
amends to those they have harmed, in a process that increases (rather
than decreases) the chances to then go on and lead a non-violent life.
h) Since California?s prison system is greatly harming our State
budget and our State economy, while simultaneously failing utterly at
the goal of ?corrections? ? with a recidivism rate so high that that
our incarceration system as a whole has actually been causing more
crime -- we must be willing to employ more effective options.