Dealing with Crime in Oakland

by David A. Stein

Reducing crime is more than catching criminals. It also requires consistent efforts to prevent crime and remove its causes.

We must invest in our children, create jobs, and reduce drug use. Our City Council needs to build community partnerships that prevent crime and get criminals off the streets.

Create Jobs, Invest in Children, and Reduce Drug Use

Crime and unemployment rates rise together. Serious crime prevention starts with being serious about job creation. Jobs help create stable families; stable families build safe neighborhoods.

We must have strong relationships between citizens, business, and the city to bring jobs to Oakland. As a small-business owner with over 10 years of involvement in city government, I have built these relationships.

Through increased support of our job training and placement programs, Oaklanders will get their fair share of those jobs.

We have neglected Oakland's children for too long. After-school programs have been cut, and job opportunities and adult support reduced.

As president of Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation, I know how our recreation programs have suffered. I will work to return our recreation programs, particularly after-school programs, to the nationally respected levels that existed when I was a child.

I have been a coach, mentor, and friend and to many Oakland children. Nothing is more important for children than positive adult contacts. For almost 30 years I have built partnerships between the community and schools.

Drugs and crime are linked. I will fight to strengthen our partnerships with OUSD and Alameda County to keep our residents off drugs and to help those addicted to recover.

Neighborhoods and the City Working Together

Neighborhood-city partnerships reduce crime. Community policing, neighborhood watch, and NCPCs are the cornerstones for the partnership.

The city's actions have not matched its words when it comes to community policing. We need real community policing officers who are trained to work effectively with the community and who are given long-term neighborhood assignments. Consistent city commitment will create increased neighborhood involvement.

A strong city response to blight and targeted programs to protect children, seniors, and other at-risk groups and areas is also needed. City dispatch must work cooperatively with our citizens, providing accurate assessments and information. Finally, the police department must be fully staffed.

Practice Tolerance

Our city leadership must move away from the old rhetoric that divides us and move toward creating a dialog that unites us. Rhetoric that labels and divides us by class, neighborhood, race, religion, or sexual preference needs to be replaced with discussions that bring us together for the common good. As a trained mediator, I bring people together. I will work for tolerance in words and deeds from city leaders.

I welcome your comments. Please call me; my cellphone number is 326-8898. For more specifics regarding my background, endorsements, and positions on the issues, visit my Web site, www.David4council.org.