Oakland fights crime by calling in suspected criminals and having a serious chat with them about their nefarious ways

Oakland Fights Crime With Talk
By JESSE McKINLEY

Stuck in the grips of a violent crime wave, including a soaring murder rate, the authorities here are taking a page from juvenile hall that has become increasing popular nationwide: They have decided to call in the bad guys and tell them to knock it off. Or else.

The Oakland police have drawn up a kind of criminal hit parade that includes the top 100 “persons of interest” in the city, primarily ex-convicts, who the authorities believe are causing trouble and contributing to a climate of lawlessness.

Under the plan, which will be rolled out over the coming months, the police will call the suspects into court and inform them that they must behave.

“We’re going to tell them that we know they’ve been responsible for a number of things in your neighborhood, and that we’ve been watching you,” said Howard A. Jordan, a deputy police chief. “And we want you to change your life around. And if you don’t, you will suffer the consequences.”

Called Operation Cease-Fire, the program builds on an experiment that was first tried a decade ago in Boston, where law enforcement officials credit the straight-talk approach with helping sharply reduce the number of killings within months. Dubbed the “Boston Miracle,” it caught the attention of police departments nationwide, including those in Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, all of which have tried variations of the approach.

David M. Kennedy, the director for the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice , and one of architects of the approach, said Oakland’s decision to single out 100 troublemakers had a basis in studies on the causes of crime.

“The kind of serious gun, street, drug-related violence that Oakland is dealing with right now is deeply embedded in a very small population of very active offending groups on the street,” said Mr. Kennedy, who is traveling to Oakland this month to consult with police officials. “You can call them gangs or sets or crews or whatever, but what you always get is this very active, group-based street scene. And this approach was developed to change the behavior of those groups.”

The Top 100 group is subject to change. Since Operation Cease-Fire was announced on Aug. 3, one of the list’s members has been killed.

“Unfortunately,” Deputy Chief Jordan said, “he was easy to replace.”

Details are still being worked out, and the list is still being put together by beat officers, specialized narcotics units and community-based crime reduction teams. But the police expect to use the leverage afforded by the conditions normally placed on parolees and probationers to encourage them to attend the “call-ins.”

Victims of violent crime will be on hand to bring emotional pressure to bear, as will community activists and in some cases people from the suspects’ neighborhoods.

People suspected of committing crimes who are not already in the justice system will be asked to come in voluntarily, with the authorities using relatives, friends and girlfriends to entice them to cooperate.

Once in the courtroom, the suspects will be warned by various local and federal law officials that they will be subject to the full weight of the law if they are arrested again. A gun charge, for example, may be made federal, rather than state, so the penalties can be more severe, Deputy Chief Jordan said.

“It’s a question of ‘Do you want to do five years or do you want to turn your life around?’ ” he said.

Mr. Kennedy said a large part of the approach’s success came from the social impact of being called out, and called in.

“These guys think they are anonymous,” he said. “They do not know they’ve been singled out. By the time they get caught, its too late for them to change their behavior. They don’t know that there’s help they can take advantage of. And they don’t know the community they are in desperately wants them to stop what they are doing.”

There will be enticements in Oakland, not just threats. The authorities will offer social services, including job training, help with substance abuse and educational opportunities to help increase the odds that suspects do not return to the criminal world. Such services are already offered to offenders, but Operation Cease-Fire will make them much more readily available.

“You have to replace a negative with a positive,” said Capt. Rod Yee, the program’s co-chairman.

One place where the approach has worked is Stockton, Calif., about an hour east of Oakland, which began it in 1997. The three-pronged program included an aggressive arrest policy, street-corner community outreach and intervention-style forums like those planned for Oakland. The result was a major reduction in murder and violent crime, said Wayne Hose, the city’s chief of police.

“You get some of those guys right on the edge that could maybe go one way or another, and maybe you can reach them,” Chief Hose said.

Still, he said, the program was labor-intensive and eventually started to lag. Now, though, with its murder rate rising again, Stockton has decided to reinstitute it.

“There’s a whole new set of players this will be new to,” Chief Hose.

In Boston, too, after a spike in violent crime, the police have recently “reinvigorated” their program, said Elaine Driscoll, the department’s director of communications.

Like many other American cities, Oakland is experiencing a surge in crime, including 89 murders through Monday, compared with 94 all last year. Assaults and other violent crime have also increased, Deputy Chief Jordan said, including the Aug. 14 beating and sexual assault of a 89-year-old woman who had been gardening in her yard in broad daylight.

“It’s all drugs or gangs or people getting caught in the crossfire,” said Mayor Jerry Brown, one of the main backers of Operation Cease-Fire and a candidate for state attorney general. “It’s not people who are working at the local insurance company, wearing a suit and tie, I’ll tell you that.”

Deputy Chief Jordan was less willing to blame drugs or gangs. “If I were to attribute this to anything, it would be just a wanton disregard for each other’s lives,” he said.

The police force is also understaffed, with only about 700 officers for this city of 400,000 across the bay from San Francisco.

In the Allendale neighborhood of East Oakland, near where the assault on the 89-year-old woman took place, residents say they have seen more police officers in recent weeks. Not that Rick Anderson, 43, a former auto detailer, is not still afraid.

“You could be walking by, and someone could be shooting, or stabbing something, and you could get hit,” Mr. Anderson said. “It’s wild wherever you go.”

Mark Schlosberg, the police practices policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, said that he was not familiar with the exact legal mechanisms of Operation Cease-Fire but that the program could raise some constitutional red flags.

“To the extent that law enforcement is going to take somebody into custody to talk to them, without probable cause or other legal justification, that’s problematic,” Mr. Schlosberg said.

The Oakland police say that they are well aware of the constitutional restrictions, and that the people invited in are not being taken into custody. They say they are also moving slowly to make sure that those on their list really are causing trouble.

“We still have to respect people’s Fourth Amendment rights,” Mr. Jordan said. “You can’t just go out and arbitrarily arrest them.”

Their care is well-advised. The Oakland police are already operating under a federal court order that forced the department to revamp its supervisory and command structures and realign many of its operations and command structures.

“It’s like turning around a big ship in the ocean,” Mayor Brown said of changes in the police force. “It happens slowly.”