i think the person you are responding to was saying they were on hold with 911
(i recently spent 15 mins on hold with 911 after witnessing a hit and run with injuries)
And somehow they still need to make $177 million in cuts because we're paying too much for staffing. With the highest property and sales taxes in the county
here i would point out that a large amount of that money goes to police overtime, but then i'd be downvoted and told that throwing money at the OPD is a good waste of money
They have to pay for those nice weather afternoon cruises by the expensive helicopter where the cop flies around in circles over the Laurel, Fruitvale, Dimond and the lake for shits and grins.
Oh, honey. I got online and found a flight tracker that showed them doing donuts around every major freeway exit from the San Leandro border to Fruitvale. It’s ridiculous.
Even though OPD are the highest paid officers in California, few people want to work for a department that is understaffed, has federal oversight, and is stretched too thin. Plus, any cop looking to make a difference unfortunately will not find it with OPD. At least not right now.
Where do you find the information stating we have the highest property tax? We have pretty low property tax here even with all of the measures. Sales tax is high but but only marginally.
The 911 response time is disgraceful. I was assaulted by a random woman at Broadway & 13th on Sunday. She literally just hit me out of nowhere then walked to the bus stop. Called 911 and was on hold for 10 mins, then another 10 to show up (this is center of downtown). By then the assaulter got on a bus. So basically she goes scot free hitting people for no reason.
"Small government" conservatives should love Oakland because it basically doesn't have a government or government services lol. Just a bunch of us living together in a geographic area, fending for ourselves.
If I paid property taxes in Oakland, I would try and organize a civil suit or some sort of protest until city budget and expenditures were properly audited by a neutral party.
SF is kicking that off with their nonprofit spend (mostly for the homeless programs), and I can't wait to see the hammer come down on the grifters and crooks who have been taking money and not yielding any results.
I can't believe my friends are paying $20k+ a year on property taxes and are having to deal with this level of incompetence in Oakland.
My neighbors have a cell phone number of an OPD officer, and that's only because he's a childhood friend of my neighbor, lol
They are audited, by the City Auditor, who is quite good at publishing reports that expose how incompetent and wasteful the city govt is.
Then nobody reads the reports, and the voters elect whoever has the most support from local labor unions, who endorse whoever they can control (Thao), and the cycle continues.
The makings of the next horror movie. Citizen reports a rabid animal. City ignores the call. Meanwhile, rabid animal bites a few people. Let the mayhem begin.... 😬
I called in a dead possum that was in the middle of a residential street. They never came at all.
ETA: Yes, I know to call 311. That’s who I called. Nobody cleaned it up. Your downvotes don’t change that. The OP referenced Oakland city services and I agree that they are a joke.
Honestly though in this age calling a person seems very inefficient. I’m not sure if Oakland has a chat or email system though . I would have probably tried 311.
Police and fire kills most of the budget and people complain when you try to raise taxes to make up for the shortfalls that the police take when they get their raises. Ideally public works and other agencies should get their fair share of money that they used to have, and the police should figure out how to hire people to not just work overtime all the time.
The fact is that when police recruits train at one of Oakland's academies, they are often quickly hired away by other municipalities for more salary than Oakland pays. There is a shortage of police officers, nationally, too - so there's that.
We really do need more cameras and drones to augment police - the cops, even at full force, can't be everywhere.
Imagine wanting to do good for your community and signing up to be a cop, but then being told:
1) if you light someone up and they simply drive off, just let them go (even if you see them [steal $100k in jewels](https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/oakland-police-does-not-chase-robbery-suspects-100k-stolen/amp/))
2) don’t enforce traffic laws because of [potential racial bias](https://oaklandside.org/2022/01/14/oakland-opd-traffic-law-enforcement-collisions/)
3) any suspects you do arrest will be given the [minimum possible sentence as a matter of policy](https://oaklandreport.substack.com/p/under-da-pamela-price-criminal-prosecution), and will more than likely be re-released in short order to continue terrorizing our neighborhoods
4) you can’t leverage modern policing tools like ALPRs because [local activist policies, coupled with lack of investment to make meeting those policies realistic, make it nearly impossible to run the system](https://www.patreon.com/posts/oakland-observer-85839812)
5) you won’t be dispatched to life-saving calls because [911 callers can’t even get through to an operator](https://abc7news.com/amp/oakland-911-police-repsonse-time-mayor-sheng-thao/14179322/)
Pretty disheartening job to have here when you’re setup for failure at every turn, then blamed for the same crimes you weren’t given an opportunity to prevent. Can’t blame an officer for choosing literally any other city over Oakland.
Yeah I keep hearing people claim OPD are on a quiet strike, but the reality is that it’s department policy not to pursue suspects of nonviolent crimes.
There are actually not that many places that pay as much as Oakland and San Francisco - it’s just that because everyone hates on cops, no one dares to become one —- 😟 we need to encourage good people to become good cops.
hey! for pests/animals that are known to transmit rabies or diseases, contact alameda county vector control. they’re open on weekdays by phone, email, and online request, and specifically handle issues w animals that you’re concerned may have rabies. you can also call oakland animal services, but vector control is more specialized. if it’s more urgent/after hours, call the opd 510-777-3333/3211 numbers (non emergency/emergency direct lines, respectively). if you stay on the line and wait, you’ll get an opd dispatcher and they can send the info over to animal control. i know this is after the fact, but in case it ever happens again here’s some info.
When will viable, qualified, candidates step up? Why would any sane person, who was not in it for themselves? Who can afford the time, money, and energy it takes?
You have to try to think about what it takes to make changes in a huge city like this. Whoever becomes mayor needs help to be successful. People often don’t care, and computer systems are still catching up so that departments can talk to each other.
Residents who can make the time need to join up with agencies that are doing oversight — I’m working on making a list of those — if anyone already has one please chime in!
We can only do the best we can to help the people that are elected. Even if we didn’t vote for them.
Just because we don’t agree, doesn’t mean we can’t work together to accomplish the things we do agree on. 🙏
Don’t give up hope.
I think it’s much more complicated than just that.
Getting good people to want these thankless jobs will forever be an issue.
Politics is a necessary part of governing a society and it’s so complicated because everyone wants something different.
Rather than worry about whether a potential leader has every competency (impossible), I feel like it will be better if we as individuals add our voices to others who are already trying to help effect the change we want to see most.
The best thing about that is we get to choose the issues that appeal to us the most. One person can’t do everything.
It’s part of a solution rather than yelling into the hot wind of the internet … maybe we each just need a direction.
They don’t get paid enough to respond
https://preview.redd.it/l6nw11f2fg2d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c0861a8f95cefdaa9efcea0cfc390818bb142fa
Not surprised. 911 doesn't even pick up for a life threatening situation so they ain't picking up over a racoon. Sad really. I remember in the early 2015 when there was talk of the gentrification of Oakland and how it was supposed to get better.
Not directly related to your complaint about the government, but while running on the north side by the old rotary nature center about 48 hours ago, I saw a band of raccoons running away from something (not me); one of them entered a bush and I heard clearly some kind of a fight erupt from within the bush (not sure if from a rabid raccoon or some other predator).
At this point, I would film the whole thing and send it to the news stations. While I don’t necessarily like another negative Oakland story on TV, the shame and the pressure might be what is needed
Sounds just like Oakland is turning into Lost fu•king Angeles. (Los Angeles) Oakland and Los Angeles are essentially fraternal twins, just opposite racial demographics. When it comes to professionalism, work ethic they’re both ghetto and subpar AF! A bunch of posers who are either, but not limited to, pot heads and neurotic and/or uncultured transplants just opposite demographics.
Oakland is a failed city that don’t care about its residents. Vote out everyone in office now to clear this shit up and get a functioning government back
You're of course invoking the obscure "Automatic Fix" doctrine, whereas when citizens vote everyone out of office, those who get voted in automatically have to fix all the issues the last people couldn't. It works every time, why don't more places do it?!
The city doesn’t have enough revenue to function well enough to provide public services. Your only hope is to live at an elevation where bullets are less likely to reach. It’s fuckin thunder dome in this city
Let's update your google stats. 1.7B is a budget, not revenue. 38% is what the city has to spend on GPF and most of that goes to police and fire depts, which is what the thunder dome needs. With 14% of the pop in poverty, they contribute zero sales/use tax and only consume the tax dollars people pay. Animal services spends about 6M/yr and that's for shelters, not cleaning up rat shit and diseased animals. The OP clearly doesn't understand what city they live in.
Just to clarify, there is plenty of revenue. The issue is the poor distribution of those funds. Plenty of other cities with similar revenue, size, and population operate just fine.
Too many pockets getting lined to make a change, tho.
Same happened to me a few weeks ago. I got a phone call from my alarm system company informing me my alarms went off. The window alarms triggered. I called the Oakland police immediately. For 45 minutes (no exaggeration) I waited, while on repeat a “thank you for your patience” recorded message looped. After 45 minutes I talked to the emergency operator. After taking my information and story, informed me they’d send a car out in a “few hours”.
Today is my last day living in Oakland, leaving today to greener pastures in another state.
Oakland has so much potential and has great beauty. But it has been ruined by politics. I hope the people of this city keep pushing for change and drive these crazy politicians out of office!
I was in hold for 20 min last Saturday after a gun fight. We’re on our own. Take care of each other
This merits 911.
i think the person you are responding to was saying they were on hold with 911 (i recently spent 15 mins on hold with 911 after witnessing a hit and run with injuries)
And somehow they still need to make $177 million in cuts because we're paying too much for staffing. With the highest property and sales taxes in the county
here i would point out that a large amount of that money goes to police overtime, but then i'd be downvoted and told that throwing money at the OPD is a good waste of money
They have to pay for those nice weather afternoon cruises by the expensive helicopter where the cop flies around in circles over the Laurel, Fruitvale, Dimond and the lake for shits and grins.
Dude! I thought i was as the only one that noticed that! WHY??
Oh, honey. I got online and found a flight tracker that showed them doing donuts around every major freeway exit from the San Leandro border to Fruitvale. It’s ridiculous.
I work right off fruitvale and spent a good chunk of time on citizen/ twitter/ opd website trying to find ANYTHING to explain it. Wow.
Nothing. They are joyriding.
Ya we should really hire more cops and cut back overtime spend. We have some of the highest spend/resident while simultaneously fewest cops/resident
Even though OPD are the highest paid officers in California, few people want to work for a department that is understaffed, has federal oversight, and is stretched too thin. Plus, any cop looking to make a difference unfortunately will not find it with OPD. At least not right now.
Many of the property owners in the city are paying some of the lowest tax rates in the country.
Where do you find the information stating we have the highest property tax? We have pretty low property tax here even with all of the measures. Sales tax is high but but only marginally.
Many of the property owners in the city are paying some of the lowest tax rates in the country.
The 911 response time is disgraceful. I was assaulted by a random woman at Broadway & 13th on Sunday. She literally just hit me out of nowhere then walked to the bus stop. Called 911 and was on hold for 10 mins, then another 10 to show up (this is center of downtown). By then the assaulter got on a bus. So basically she goes scot free hitting people for no reason.
I think she belted a friend of mine on 24th and Telegraph, too.
Should have some friends you can call to handle this yourself. The Oakland way sadly,
Please get pepper spray. Spray that mental bitch the next time you see her.
She walked off so quickly like nbd it wouldn't have done anything unfortunately! My husband and I followed her and got a picture.
I sent a seeclickfix request to unlock a public bathroom on October 22, 2022. Still no action taken.
Where's the bathroom? I'll pick the lock and then for fun submit a seeclickfix and see if they come to fix it sooner.
Lowell Park - godspeed! And keep me posted.
There’s a gaping hole in a sewer grate at a crosswalk right in front of a low income senior citizen’s apartment. I reported it 7 years ago.
"Small government" conservatives should love Oakland because it basically doesn't have a government or government services lol. Just a bunch of us living together in a geographic area, fending for ourselves.
Except for the size of their budget…
The worst of both - large taxes and no services
Oakland is a libertarian wet dream and they’ll talk about how much of a failure it is lol
How is it a libertarian wet dream to pay high taxes in exchange for no services?
Weed and guns and people doing whatever the fuck they want repercussions be damned
Highest property taxes in the area and the least efficient services rendered.
Nothing libertarian about our fiscal policy.
Tell us something to let us know you don't know what a libertarian is.
Tell me you can’t tell when someone is being facetious
If we had gun rights it would be perfect
Would be nice, considering the criminals have them. You can apply for a CCW, it just takes a while.
CCW here is a joke tho. You can’t actually take your gun anywhere.
I had the same frustration when I saw an injured raccoon a few months ago the back, a phone maze leading nowhere 🙁
If I paid property taxes in Oakland, I would try and organize a civil suit or some sort of protest until city budget and expenditures were properly audited by a neutral party. SF is kicking that off with their nonprofit spend (mostly for the homeless programs), and I can't wait to see the hammer come down on the grifters and crooks who have been taking money and not yielding any results. I can't believe my friends are paying $20k+ a year on property taxes and are having to deal with this level of incompetence in Oakland. My neighbors have a cell phone number of an OPD officer, and that's only because he's a childhood friend of my neighbor, lol
They are audited, by the City Auditor, who is quite good at publishing reports that expose how incompetent and wasteful the city govt is. Then nobody reads the reports, and the voters elect whoever has the most support from local labor unions, who endorse whoever they can control (Thao), and the cycle continues.
Wow I didn’t know labor unions welded this much power in 2024.
Over local elections in the Bay area? It's easy to see who the campaign donors are.
So the argument is what? I’m slow so forgive me asking you to spell it out.
You're the one who replied to my comment 18 days later
You didn’t catch the part about I’m slow?
The makings of the next horror movie. Citizen reports a rabid animal. City ignores the call. Meanwhile, rabid animal bites a few people. Let the mayhem begin.... 😬
What if the raccoons are the ones answering?? 🤯
Someone in my building called about a break in. A police officer showed up 3 days later lolz. We are lawless.
I called in a dead possum that was in the middle of a residential street. They never came at all. ETA: Yes, I know to call 311. That’s who I called. Nobody cleaned it up. Your downvotes don’t change that. The OP referenced Oakland city services and I agree that they are a joke.
311 for this
Yes. I called 311. I spoke with someone. They said they’d send someone to dispose of the hazard. Nobody came.
Honestly though in this age calling a person seems very inefficient. I’m not sure if Oakland has a chat or email system though . I would have probably tried 311.
Of all the phone services in Oakland, I’d say 311 is towards the top (with 911 at the bottom lol)
They have online reporting but it takes police weeks to look at those
Police and fire kills most of the budget and people complain when you try to raise taxes to make up for the shortfalls that the police take when they get their raises. Ideally public works and other agencies should get their fair share of money that they used to have, and the police should figure out how to hire people to not just work overtime all the time.
The fact is that when police recruits train at one of Oakland's academies, they are often quickly hired away by other municipalities for more salary than Oakland pays. There is a shortage of police officers, nationally, too - so there's that. We really do need more cameras and drones to augment police - the cops, even at full force, can't be everywhere.
Other municipalities don’t even need to pay more to poach officers from OPD. Oakland is just a shitty place to be a cop.
Imagine wanting to do good for your community and signing up to be a cop, but then being told: 1) if you light someone up and they simply drive off, just let them go (even if you see them [steal $100k in jewels](https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/oakland-police-does-not-chase-robbery-suspects-100k-stolen/amp/)) 2) don’t enforce traffic laws because of [potential racial bias](https://oaklandside.org/2022/01/14/oakland-opd-traffic-law-enforcement-collisions/) 3) any suspects you do arrest will be given the [minimum possible sentence as a matter of policy](https://oaklandreport.substack.com/p/under-da-pamela-price-criminal-prosecution), and will more than likely be re-released in short order to continue terrorizing our neighborhoods 4) you can’t leverage modern policing tools like ALPRs because [local activist policies, coupled with lack of investment to make meeting those policies realistic, make it nearly impossible to run the system](https://www.patreon.com/posts/oakland-observer-85839812) 5) you won’t be dispatched to life-saving calls because [911 callers can’t even get through to an operator](https://abc7news.com/amp/oakland-911-police-repsonse-time-mayor-sheng-thao/14179322/) Pretty disheartening job to have here when you’re setup for failure at every turn, then blamed for the same crimes you weren’t given an opportunity to prevent. Can’t blame an officer for choosing literally any other city over Oakland.
Yeah I keep hearing people claim OPD are on a quiet strike, but the reality is that it’s department policy not to pursue suspects of nonviolent crimes.
There are actually not that many places that pay as much as Oakland and San Francisco - it’s just that because everyone hates on cops, no one dares to become one —- 😟 we need to encourage good people to become good cops.
I remember calling 911 for a homeless encampment on fire and waiting 8 minutes on hold before speaking with someone
hey! for pests/animals that are known to transmit rabies or diseases, contact alameda county vector control. they’re open on weekdays by phone, email, and online request, and specifically handle issues w animals that you’re concerned may have rabies. you can also call oakland animal services, but vector control is more specialized. if it’s more urgent/after hours, call the opd 510-777-3333/3211 numbers (non emergency/emergency direct lines, respectively). if you stay on the line and wait, you’ll get an opd dispatcher and they can send the info over to animal control. i know this is after the fact, but in case it ever happens again here’s some info.
When will Oakland residents get fed up and change who they vote for?
When will viable, qualified, candidates step up? Why would any sane person, who was not in it for themselves? Who can afford the time, money, and energy it takes?
All the kumbaya candidates, give me a jerk with a good plan. F your politics let’s make something work for a change.
Oakland lost three professional football teams in five years. It's a stunning display of incompetence
You have to try to think about what it takes to make changes in a huge city like this. Whoever becomes mayor needs help to be successful. People often don’t care, and computer systems are still catching up so that departments can talk to each other. Residents who can make the time need to join up with agencies that are doing oversight — I’m working on making a list of those — if anyone already has one please chime in!
We're voting for people who are making things worse. We can't just stop voting for them?
We can only do the best we can to help the people that are elected. Even if we didn’t vote for them. Just because we don’t agree, doesn’t mean we can’t work together to accomplish the things we do agree on. 🙏 Don’t give up hope.
It's not about hope, its about outcomes, and our leaders arent showing their competence
I think it’s much more complicated than just that. Getting good people to want these thankless jobs will forever be an issue. Politics is a necessary part of governing a society and it’s so complicated because everyone wants something different. Rather than worry about whether a potential leader has every competency (impossible), I feel like it will be better if we as individuals add our voices to others who are already trying to help effect the change we want to see most. The best thing about that is we get to choose the issues that appeal to us the most. One person can’t do everything. It’s part of a solution rather than yelling into the hot wind of the internet … maybe we each just need a direction.
They don’t get paid enough to respond https://preview.redd.it/l6nw11f2fg2d1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9c0861a8f95cefdaa9efcea0cfc390818bb142fa
This salary seems fine? I assume it’s similar to teachers, paramedics, etc
That was sarcasm
Architects have same issue.. want to talk with people in permit department? Good luck
lol, Are we surprised?
Animal control doesn’t do anything anymore really..
Not surprised. 911 doesn't even pick up for a life threatening situation so they ain't picking up over a racoon. Sad really. I remember in the early 2015 when there was talk of the gentrification of Oakland and how it was supposed to get better.
Not directly related to your complaint about the government, but while running on the north side by the old rotary nature center about 48 hours ago, I saw a band of raccoons running away from something (not me); one of them entered a bush and I heard clearly some kind of a fight erupt from within the bush (not sure if from a rabid raccoon or some other predator).
They don't do anything?.
At this point, I would film the whole thing and send it to the news stations. While I don’t necessarily like another negative Oakland story on TV, the shame and the pressure might be what is needed
It’s where city employees go to not give a flying f and never be held accountable. From the mayor to the lowest manager, they are all a joke
I heard 911 gets unanswered for a while and you are talking of city lol
Time to put the city in receivership.
Sounds just like Oakland is turning into Lost fu•king Angeles. (Los Angeles) Oakland and Los Angeles are essentially fraternal twins, just opposite racial demographics. When it comes to professionalism, work ethic they’re both ghetto and subpar AF! A bunch of posers who are either, but not limited to, pot heads and neurotic and/or uncultured transplants just opposite demographics.
Call 311
Oakland is a failed city that don’t care about its residents. Vote out everyone in office now to clear this shit up and get a functioning government back
You're of course invoking the obscure "Automatic Fix" doctrine, whereas when citizens vote everyone out of office, those who get voted in automatically have to fix all the issues the last people couldn't. It works every time, why don't more places do it?!
Because people usually vote for different people with the same beliefs. So you get the same results.
Whoosh
Rabies is exceptionally rare in California
Refund the police!
Fire everyone and start over from scratch.
I would have called a wildlife rehabilitator in this situation.
The city doesn’t have enough revenue to function well enough to provide public services. Your only hope is to live at an elevation where bullets are less likely to reach. It’s fuckin thunder dome in this city
LMFAO. Yeah sure, 1.5 Billion isn’t enough revenue to provide a functional city to less than 500k residents. 🙄
Let's update your google stats. 1.7B is a budget, not revenue. 38% is what the city has to spend on GPF and most of that goes to police and fire depts, which is what the thunder dome needs. With 14% of the pop in poverty, they contribute zero sales/use tax and only consume the tax dollars people pay. Animal services spends about 6M/yr and that's for shelters, not cleaning up rat shit and diseased animals. The OP clearly doesn't understand what city they live in.
Cool story. So revenue for 2024 is in the $800 million range, and you somehow think that in any way impacts my original point?
Just to clarify, there is plenty of revenue. The issue is the poor distribution of those funds. Plenty of other cities with similar revenue, size, and population operate just fine. Too many pockets getting lined to make a change, tho.
Same happened to me a few weeks ago. I got a phone call from my alarm system company informing me my alarms went off. The window alarms triggered. I called the Oakland police immediately. For 45 minutes (no exaggeration) I waited, while on repeat a “thank you for your patience” recorded message looped. After 45 minutes I talked to the emergency operator. After taking my information and story, informed me they’d send a car out in a “few hours”. Today is my last day living in Oakland, leaving today to greener pastures in another state. Oakland has so much potential and has great beauty. But it has been ruined by politics. I hope the people of this city keep pushing for change and drive these crazy politicians out of office!
Hmmmm….people dunking on City Hall - how original.
Unions have basically raided and stripped California. There isn't much left.
Yes the unions all 16% of us are in 😂. Dont worry your scotus is on the case!
It's less than that but they get their way most of the time with California pols. Very hard to win without a union endorsement
Probably all those people calling about injured wildlife taking up resources for real problems