Attendance: 21 neighbors + 4 OPD officers
- Crime Reports
- Occasionally the numbers for crime reporting can be misleading, although trending data is always quite useful.
- Sometimes data can be missing or not yet reported.
- Labels sometimes don’t match from one report to another.
- All services don’t report or count crimes the same way.
- Crime is down in our area for many reasons, including more visible patrols.
- Burglary and robbery crimes in the Grand Lake tend to happen between 8AM – 2PM, when people are at work.
- OPD recommends carefully avoiding circumstances where items can be stacked or otherwise used to gain entry into 2nd floor windows (like recycling containers).
- Phones, ipads and jewelry are the most common robbery targets.
- Four suspects have been arrested in July, 2 are gang members.
- Occasionally the numbers for crime reporting can be misleading, although trending data is always quite useful.
- Deterrents
- (also see 6/17/15 minutes): upgrade door jam kits, use alarms, lock doors & gates, install cameras.
- OPD also recommends making eye contact with people on the street – let them know you see them.
- For cars, burglars tend not to break into autos with tinted windows.
- Some neighborhoods are pooling resources to buy and install high quality cameras; if anyone is interested in pursuing that avenue, let David Flack know and he will help put people together.
- Neighborhood Watch training and groups are the best way for neighborhoods to get involved with crime identification and reduction.
- 911
- There was a somewhat heated discussion of why Oakland doesn’t provide its own 911 service for cell phone callers. Abel’s office will continue to look into this issue.
- Calls to 911 from cell phones go to CHP instead of directly to OPD dispatch. CHP then has to route calls to OPD. This process can result in delays. In the past, the city has justified this arrangement based on the fact that Oakland has many highways running through it, which are CHP jurisdiction, and OPD doesn’t want to get a lot of calls that it is not responsible for. Yet, Oakland is one of only two cities in California that does not handle all of its own 911 calls.
- There was a somewhat heated discussion of why Oakland doesn’t provide its own 911 service for cell phone callers. Abel’s office will continue to look into this issue.
- Grand Ave Resurfacing
- Discussions continue about the Grand Avenue road diet project, with a final public meeting scheduled for August 12.