Just The News

Police Chief Takes To The Airwaves

This morning, Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts appeared on KQED Forum, with Host Scott Shafer.  Some of this interview amplified what Batts has discussed at recent strategic plan meetings.  While the Chief pointed out the recent double-digit declines in crime, he didn’t sugar-coat the challenges ahead.

Plenty was covered in the radio interview, so we selected and interpreted these points of interest:

  • Priorities – The Police Department is going to staff to address the highest crime-ridden areas.  Everyone deserves to live in safe neighborhoods.   Hard to argue here, tough to achieve.
  • Beats Matter – Beat officers will be assigned to their beats, full time.  When there’s crime, they might leave their posts to attend to emergencies.   Local focus with some interruptions seems reasonable.
  • Volunteers – Like Long Beach, Oakland expects to develop a volunteer force in the hundreds.  We need to get things set up to manage these citizen volunteers.   What are incentives to work well?
  • Interface – When you want to report a crime, we won’t make it as tough to file as today.  It shouldn’t even require a visit to police station in the future.  This is something we have to fix.   Yes, doesn’t this all cost real money?
  • City Budget – There are obviously not enough cops on the street.  Our $35 million shortfall next year (2010-2011) is creating a challenge, to say the least.   To us, this is Everest challenge!

Finally, the honeymoon period is drawing to a close for Police Chief Batts.  We have the right leader in place, who signed up to the job knowing he would be jumping over many hurdles here.  He still approaches the role with plenty of focused energy.

If you haven’t been at any live meetings with the Chief, then we encourage you to listen to his archived interview now.

Merger Planned In The North Hills

Who said jurisdictional changes can’t be made?  At least two Oakland neighborhood councils noticed they shared interests and territories.  If all proceeds smoothly, then a peaceful merger will take place under the newly-created North Hills Community Association (NHCA) banner.

One of the groups, the North Hills Phoenix Association, formed after the 1991 Oakland Hills fire and initially helped locals re-build from the ashes.  Since then, Phoenix volunteers have focused on ensuring a safe environment for residents living between Claremont Avenue and just beyond Highway 24.

Meanwhile, the North Hills Neighborhood Council launched as a more typical Oakland crime prevention group and wanted to expand into other quality-of-life concerns.  Their larger territory mirrored all of Police Beat 13Y, ranging from the Berkeley border through Thornhill Drive.

With the new North Hills Community Association, volunteers will join forces.  Four representatives from each group are drawing up the structure and by-laws of their combination, and have already drafted a unified mission:

We strive to realize a cohesive community that is environmentally healthy, safe and secure in the hills area north of Thornhill Drive.  Our organization coordinates with the Cities of Oakland and Berkeley, especially the Fire and Police departments and City Council members, and with other government, neighborhood and volunteer organizations to accomplish these goals.

The organization represents the interests of the residents of the North Hills to the cities and beyond on matters addressed by the group with a particular focus on preparedness, safety, and security.  Our goal is to keep our community safe, beautiful and a pleasure to live in.

The new association seeks to help northern Montclarions with “emergency preparedness, vegetation control, erosion control or construction management” as well as crime-related matters.  Are there other priorities that concern you as well?  Please reach either the North Hills Neighborhood Council (at info@northhillsnc.org) or the North Hills Phoenix Association (at executive@nhphoenix.org) with your thoughts.

Crime Stats Reveal Leap In Burglaries

When you dig into the Montclair crime statistics, there’s a real story around here.  In the Montclair core, burglaries increased nearly three-fold during the past month:  from five to 14 hits.

As a public service, below are Oakland Police Department crimes reported over the past 60 days.  We divided the relevant stats into two 30-day chunks, to see what’s changed or not changed.

When you look at the entire 94611 zip code, overall reported crimes dropped slightly.  The northern Montclair (13Y beat) dropped a bit, with fewer burglaries but increased thefts.

The Montclair core (13Z beat) was hardest hit by burglaries, while the area’s overall crime count remained steady.  Our village also experienced an obvious spate of vandalism earlier this year, only slightly visible in the reported stats.

One last observation:  we have noticed that traffic tends to drop when reporting crimes stats and subjects.  With the burglary news, we hope you were able to swallow this dose of cod-liver oil.

Oakland Wins An Oscar

It’s true!  At the Oscar awards this weekend, Pixar’s Up received golden guys for best original score and best animated feature.  We watched locally-based director Pete Docter accept the feature award on primetime TV – and loudly hooted and hollered for Oakland.

Pixar sometimes sneaks a Bay Area reference into their movies, which makes sense considering the animators work in nearby Emeryville.  Oakland made a cameo this go-around, as the place where you could eat ice cream and truly appreciate life.

Pete Docter lives somewhere in spitting distance of Piedmont Avenue.  So when our Oscar winning director decided that an ice cream shop belonged in the story, he naturally cast Fentons Creamery as the idealized spot.  According to Fentons folks, he goes there all the time with his family and friends.

We are now officially immortalized by Members of the Academy, no less.

No Longer Welcome In Montclair

We are no longer welcoming visitors to Montclair Village these days:  our southern “Welcome to Montclair” sign is not there!

Remember when there was a graffiti hit on the village, in early December?  This very same sign, located on the corner of Mountain and Park Boulevards, was broken as well as spray-painted back then.  We noticed the welcome got fixed in record time – within days.

Welcome to Groundhog Day, here in Montclair.  Fast forward three months, and our well-worn sign was attacked once more.  Apparently it’s just too weakened to be repaired quickly and has been removed, temporarily.

Montclarions are deluging Roger Vickery, who serves as the Montclair Village Association (MVA) director, about the sign’s disappearance and status.  Here is his pre-emptive response:

Yes, the Montclair Village Welcome sign…has been removed for repairs and repainting.  Vandals, you may recall, smashed the top of the sign last December.  We made a repair on site but the vandals returned and tried to break off the top again last week.  And, in our attempt to remove some graffiti late last year, we removed some of the paint on the sign.

So, we’ve asked Dave Strong, of Strong Signs in Oakland, to take the sign back to his shop so he can do a proper fix and repaint the sign.  Dave is the guy who created this sign as well as our Welcome sign in the MSIC Shortline Pocket Park on the other end of town.

We hope to have the sign back in place in the next couple of weeks.

We understand the refurbishment is in safe hands and getting done, but still couldn’t resist the symbolic removal of our red-carpet welcome.  Keep in mind that Montclarions took immediate notice, yet visitors wouldn’t know they missed anything.

And here’s hoping the second time is a charm.