10 ms·

Oakland robberies surge as investigations sputter

59 points by teamgb 13y ago

cobrausn 13y ago
So, after reading the article and seeing that smart devices are often targets... I have to ask, is there an app that would help in these kinds of cases? I'm picturing an app with a button on the main screen. Press the button, device location is uploaded periodically to a server. For bonus points, make the device look like it is powered off (although I suppose there really isn't much you can do if they pull the battery). After the fact, you might get lucky and the data reveals where the device went, which police might be able to use to track down who did it. Not sure if anything like this exists (don't have a smartphone), but it seems like something that might be useful if you live in an area where this happens a lot.
- mikeash 13y ago
  It's pretty common. Apple builds this functionality into all of theirs, for example: http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html There are Android apps that will do the same thing. The problem is getting the police to care about a relatively minor crime, and getting to the phone before the thief (or his fence) wipes it, or ships it to Vietnam or wherever.
  - mikeevans 13y ago
    It's built into Android as well: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager
- michael_michael 13y ago
  You're describing "Find My iPhone". I was mugged for my iPhone twice in NYC. The thieves turned the phone off relatively quickly and reset it, which rendered Find My iPhone useless at the time. It was tied to the Apple ID rather than the device (not sure if that's since changed). As of iOS 7, you can actually remotely render the phone unusable. I've heard NYPD is now handing out flyers advising people to update their iOS devices to iOS 7[1] so they can take advantage of this feature. While most crime in NYC has declined, smartphone robberies are -- as in Oakland -- majorly up y/y. [1]https://twitter.com/Hoffm/status/381564392602480640/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Hoffm/status/381564392602480640/photo/1
  - timcederman 13y ago
    To reset the device or turn of Find My iPhone, you now need to enter your Apple ID password. You've always been able to remotely disable.
- BrainScraps 13y ago
  This one is generally highly recommended. Didn't work for my laptop, but I think it was stolen by professionals that wiped it without ever powering it on. http://preyproject.com/ http://preyproject.com/
- not_rhodey 13y ago
  Shameless plug here for Zones: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Zones https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Zones I was robbed in West Oakland over the summer while developing the app. Funny thing, I actually had the app installed on my phone at the time it was stolen and made a bunch of design and feature changes after the fact.
- rhuppert 13y ago
  There are apps as you describe. A better solution would be to render the device inoperable after it has been reported stolen. I hate to be a cynic, but it seems Apple, AT&T, Verizon and others are resistant to this not because it is difficult to accomplish, but due to lower revenue possibly. Frankly, more people are getting assaulted and injured due to smart phone thefts, and while I do blame the perpetrators, I also find inaction on the part of smart phone vendors abhorrent. FYI, I've lived in Oakland over 30 years and have not been robbed yet. Not to say it won't happen, but people on their phones are generally more oblivious to their surroundings than usual. Oakland has its problems, but it gets an inordinate amount of this type of bad press that greases the public fear wheel.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    I'm afraid your cynicism is at least partially misplaced. Apple has now made it so that iPhones can do exactly what you say. If it's protected with a passcode already, you can't wipe the device. If it's not, you can remotely lock it until and unless you recover it. See: http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html
  - SiVal 13y ago
    an inordinate amount of this type of bad press So, what would be a more appropriate amount and type of press for the violent robbery capital of the country?
- dkl 13y ago
  Android: Cerberus.
- lwhalen 13y ago
  Not to be a complete schmuck about it, but Glock makes a wonderful 'app' for that. Unfortunately, California systematically denies its citizens the right to lawfully carry firearms concealed - and in many cases denies them the right to own at all. I would think that a straightforward fix for the robberies would be to enable 'self-service' self-defense and get the laws around legal gun ownership changed.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - rdl 13y ago
    San Mateo is sort of ok, for the Bay Area. You need "heightened good cause", but the standard isn't absurdly high.
  - allochthon 13y ago
    A Glock would not have helped in my case, when five or six young men attacked me at close range (in Oakland), unless I was Chuck Norris and willing to throw away my own life as well as theirs. More police on the streets, and more effective followthrough after the fact, would have helped, though.
    - lwhalen 13y ago
      Sounds like a great case for standard-capacity magazines (instead of the neutered 8-rounders they want you to have). But that's just me being snarky :-) There's firearms classes out there that teach you how to effectively deal with multiple attackers, but in general it just plain sounds like you had a bad day coming your way. Sorry to hear that, and I hope karma catches up with your assailants sooner rather than later.
      - allochthon 13y ago
        No worries. It was just a bad day. :) To be honest, I feel sorry for those guys. They're throwing their lives away.
niteshmehta 13y ago
PG please put a RFS for a crowd sourced security system for neighborhoods. Police forces are not scalable.
- taybin 13y ago
  Yeah, let's disrupt this with private security forces! When I think of what I want the future to look like, it's private security forces for the wealthy.
  - robbiet480 13y ago
    https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/security-patrol-for-lower-rockridge-northwest/description https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/security-patrol-for-lowe...
    - taybin 13y ago
      Ugh. Let's privatize the fire departments next.
      - rdl 13y ago
        Private and volunteer fire departments actually work really well, but that's mainly because people genuinely want to be firefighters -- it's a fairly unambiguously good thing, everyone is always happier when they show up, and they tend to get more women than virtually any other blue-collar profession (a stereotype, but from interacting with FD people, it's pretty much borne out by experience.) It doesn't work as well in big cities, and doesn't work in a place like SF because SFFD also does all the EMS calls (which tend to suck, and require much more hours of actual work, training, etc.). A rural or suburban volunteer or private fire department is fine, much more so than privatizing police forces.
        taybin 13y ago
        In NYC, they had to take over the private fire departments since multiple ones would show up and fight each other over who had the right to get the money from fighting the fire. It was a mess.
j_baker 13y ago
We're talking about robbery rates doubling in two years. As far as crime stats go, that's a huge increase. I wonder what the cause of it is?
- potatolicious 13y ago
  Wild guess, but probably smartphones. Never before has something been so easy to take (it's just in your hand and not tied to anything, unlike a purse), worth so much money, is so easy to conceal, and is so universally demanded and easy to fence.
- rhuppert 13y ago
  As a startup venture, this rate of increase does not pass a significant investment criterion -- for me, at least.
- mmanfrin 13y ago
  I think the article had a good hypothesis: the duality of gentrification (there is no way Oakland can't gentrify given the price of living in the City) and that the other half of people in Oakland were hit unreasonably hard by the recession. A little microcosm of growing economic inequality.
smtddr 13y ago
So in light of previous comments[1] I've made, I will say that this article is an example of unbias reporting highlighting core issues to try and explain the observations. This kind of reporting allows one to think & reason about the issues & perhaps consider how to avoid(hopefully fix) the problem - instead of the blatant generalization like this[2][3] that only invoke fear and demoralize all the people in the city. Also, I support the headline change to match the article. The original headline is exactly what I'm talking about, just invoking fear. People who scan headlines will just memorize the headline instead of clicking into the article to understand why & how. We know far more people read headlines than read the whole article. We need more understanding about "why" and "how", not just "what". 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409 2. http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-king-oakland-funny.jpg http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-kin... 3. http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakland_shirt.png http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakla...
robbiet480 13y ago
I live at The Grand, which is close to Broadway and Grand. In the last 6 months, I have heard one purse snatched and one assault and carjacking. Both happened in broad daylight, in heavily trafficked areas with people around. I was unable to assist OPD with the former case, but for the latter I ran down to give a statement. OPD never caught them last I heard, the car hasn't been recovered, and an elderly couple was very shaken. I get the feeling that some elements inside OPD are trying to help the public, while others are cops for the power trip (see the Riders case of the early 2000's). OPD is absolutely stretched thin, but they are that way because Oakland is a big city and the command structure has previously had major run-ins with the DoJ (see Riders again) and therefore is very very careful about putting officers on the street. More so, they keep having issues with the DoJ (See Occupy Oakland, Scott Olsen), going so far as to the DoJ throwing down a threat of having the force taken over and reorganized, what would be a first for any organization in the US. We can't even keep a police chief for more then a few months, or days for that matter. Howard Jordan was around from 2011 until earlier this year. A day or two before another DoJ ruling/meeting, he suddenly retired due to a "medical condition", which he still hasn't disclosed. His replacement, Anthony Toribio, only lasted 2 days. Days. Not months. Days. The current interim chief, Sean Whent is still around, but we will see how much longer. We only have 637 officers as of last check. 637 for a town of 400,000 people. Oakland has a broken government, including OPD and other services. It caused all of it's own problems, mostly due to OPD. Oakland won't get better until crime gets better or people start caring more about Oakland. I love my city, but I can't do much to help, other than helping the community (see OaklandWiki.org). Maybe this is rambling, but whatever, it's out there. Oakland needs help, robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care. Edited to add more details and color.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  > Oakland needs help, robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care. This. Why have moderators changed the headline? Oakland is #1 for robberies in the country. People need to know this. To accept it for what it is. Sweeping the discussion away with a politically correct headline is part of the problem.
  - 13y ago
jijji 13y ago
Its worth noting that every city on the list is a city with very strict gun laws. You won't find the robbery rates high in cities and states which allow citizens to properly defend themselves when confronted by an attacker committing a felony on his or her person.
- ffrryuu 13y ago
  Stand your ground?
  - jijji 13y ago
    Self defense?
- grannyg00se 13y ago
  How does the proper defense scenario play out with a gun? Someone pulls a gun on you to rob you, and you then pull yours out without getting shot? Once you do pull out your gun, do you shoot the robber(s)? I find it hard to imagine any of this working out very well. Or is the possibility that you may be armed supposed to act as a deterrent?
  - jijji 13y ago
    In states that have strict gun laws, the way it plays out is that the victim never has the opportunity to defend themselves. Read any story where an attacker tries to rob a person with a concealed firearm to figure out how it plays out when the victim is armed. It usually doesn't end up well for the attacker. So I guess we should just all be victims and never defends ourselves when attacked. It actually drives crime up when everyone plays the victim and doesn't defened themselves. The attackers feel emboldened to commit the act over and over and over again with impunity. Why should they stop? No one is preventing them they should continue to rob people, it is working for them.
  - rdl 13y ago
    It's sort of a deterrent from "herd immunity", but it's mainly so that if a crime escalates from property crime, you can defend yourself. I'd toss my wallet/cash/etc. in one direction and move to cover/flee/draw, depending on the circumstance. I'm fine with losing whatever cash/credit cards/etc.; I'm not fine with being under the control of an attacker and potentially moved elsewhere, taken to an ATM, kidnapped, shot, etc. The bad thing about CCW is it turns any assault into a likely-to-end-in-someone-shot situation; if you're carrying and potentially will be knocked unconscious in an assault, or are being grappled, the attacker may grab your gun and shoot you; your correct course of action is to shoot him first.
sixQuarks 13y ago
Not enough police enforcement. How much does the city pay in pension obligations? That's what's killing a lot of cities.
- genwin 13y ago
  Bingo. Likely many more cities and counties will go bankrupt. Mid-level employees across the land have been promised a retirement payout the equivalent of $1M+. It would take $1M+ to buy the annuity that would cover their pension.
- sanskritabelt 13y ago
  Too much police "enforcement", you mean: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/investigation-reveals-east-bay-city-paying-out-ext/nFdWy/ http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/investigation-reveals-east-bay...
  - sixQuarks 13y ago
    so ridiculous. The problem is that voters, as soon as they hear BS about police officers and teachers being laid off, blindly support rises in the budgets, unaware that so much money is being wasted and not being put to good use.
leokun 13y ago
This lady: > Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who represents West Oakland, said joblessness is a big factor in the city's robbery rate. I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job. > "We have a lot fewer jobs for adults so kids experience a lot more lack, so they are not able to get things," she said, noting that some turn to robbery to get money. "Really what they are after is really basic things - shoes, jackets. The things these kids are buying with money from stolen things are not flashy things. She goes on like this, defending criminals and criminal activity and blaming the system. The system may suck, but resorting to guns, scaring people out of their lives and taking things from them that belong to them is not excusable. It's criminal, and she's a terrible person for commenting this way, and a terrible official.
- mattzito 13y ago
  > I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job. Of course not, neither am I. Of course, I'm a white-collar professional, in an in-demand industry, with savings, and consequently, even if I had to really scale down my career level to make ends meet, I could definitely find a job. On the flip side, if I was largely unemployable aside from menial jobs with long hours, low pay, and lousy job security, and then I lost my job, I'd have a lot fewer options. I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low. Why is it so crazy to think that some people who steal would do something else if they were given the opportunity for real advancement?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low. You would? Do you think of respecting others, their property and the law as some kind of luxury you could do without if you were sufficiently needy? We could have a philosophical discussion about free will and the irresistible forces of circumstance, but in order to have a civil society we have to at least pretend that people are responsible for their own actions and will respect the law even if they might not get caught breaking it. And indeed, most poor people aren't thieves.
wehadfun 13y ago
I've had an iPhone stolen in Dallas. I tried to show them iPhone "Find my phone" feature they would not send an officer to investigate claiming that the number was only accurate to 500ft.
- bsimpson 13y ago
  Part of me thinks that it's obvious that high-end bikes need a GPS-enabled anti-theft system, and is flabbergasted that there are still barely any options for that. (The only one I'd buy is Helios, but it requires new handlebars that wouldn't fit my bike.) That said, I've also wondered about the efficacy of such a system. If the bike was still moving, you'd have a decent chance of finding it, but if it was stashed in somebody's apartment waiting to be sold, how would you know where, precisely, to find it? It's a hard problem, especially considering housing is probably pretty dense in the places most thieves live. Maybe a camera and/or an alarm would be helpful, but good thieves would learn where the cameras are and to cover them up. An alarm would give itself away before you'd have a chance to find it, and would probably entice the thief to destroy your bike. Maybe there's a way to echolocate the bike, using a frequency outside the range of human hearing: - The owner goes to the rough location of the stolen item, as determined by GPS. - The owner sends a signal to the anti-theft inside the stolen item to start emitting a signal that the thief can't hear. - Using his phone (and maybe a friend's to aid in triangulation), the owner deduces where the signal is coming from, and is better able to recover his item. The problem with bolt-on antitheft (like the BikeSpike) is that once thieves realize what a GPS beacon looks like, they'll destroy it ASAP after stealing the bike. Therefore, options like Helios where the GPS is hidden in the bicycle itself are the much preferred option, but even then, the thief can hide the stolen goods in a basement or a Faraday cage where any signals the device emits can't reach the outside world. The more I think about this, the more I realize that if your bike is stolen, you are basically screwed.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Bait bikes seem like the solution to bike theft.
wehadfun 13y ago
I have not scientific, references, ... but I think if 10% of the money/effort that has gone into the drug war went into robberies it would be stamped out. It cant be hard to find a cell phone, it has a connected GPS, mike, and camera.
ddlatham 13y ago
Some interesting numbers and quotes from the article when you put them together: "As of July 31, Oakland had 626 officers - still far less than the 800-plus officers the city had in 2010." 2010: 2917 robberies 2013: 5311 robberies (pace through Sept. 22) "In early 2013, police Lt. Chris Bolton analyzed robberies across the city and found that roughly 75 percent involved a smartphone." "So far this year, crime, as a whole in Oakland is stagnant. Shootings are down. Homicide has dropped by 13 percent...But robberies are up. A lot."
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Smartphones are just one more thing to rob, along with cash and jewellery. With smartphone penetration on the rise, it's pretty obvious that more robberies would involve smartphones, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that smartphones are responsible for a rise in robberies. Having said that, waving a $700 smartphone around in public will mark you as a potential target, rather than the person next to you with an old-school flip-phone.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Freakonomics discussed crime decreasing in New York. A lot of it was just due to more police.
rdl 13y ago
I live in Oakland now (although I plan to be in Issaquah or Bellevue WA by the end of 2013, thank god). I'm not really a good robbery candidate (which should be obvious just by appearance), but I'd never use a cellphone, laptop, etc. in public (including in cafes) in Oakland. I leave my house by car. I'm more than adequately armed and secured at home. I've never had a problem with crime in Oakland personally, perhaps due to this level of precaution, but I know a lot of people who have (generally females walking or using public transit, in the afternoon or at night, in uptown and affiliated areas). Think about how much your laptop/phone/ipad/mifi/etc. together are worth, and whether you want to be displaying that on the street, at a bus stop, etc. The weird thing is Oakland rents in the Grand/Broadway/Adams Point/etc. area are starting to approach ~2004 SF rents; a 1BR is about $1800-2k, up from about $1200 a couple years ago. I'm not sure if increasing rents will lead to less crime, since most of the people moving to Oakland are "hipsters" or "young single people", who generally don't prioritize security as much as families or older people. (The huge amounts of crime in Oakland, which largely influence the stats, and most of the violent crime, are in the large gang/etc. areas where no hn reader would be likely to go. A friend of mine lived in a warehouse in one of those areas, and I ended up having to drive and walk through active ~50 cop police raids on the neighbors to get to her place several times. It was pretty lulz; I would not recommend it.) If Alameda became as "issue on good cause" as the San Mateo County Sheriff, I'd more seriously consider living here again.
- allochthon 13y ago
  I don't think one needs to be flashing anything to be assaulted. Just be at the wrong place at the wrong time -- perhaps walking through a transitional neighborhood near a BART station in the late afternoon.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Not necessary, but it helps. Being aware of your surroundings does generally help, not obviously burdened by bags, etc.
malyk 13y ago
I live in Northwest oakland (near san pablo and stanford/powell) and the amount of robberies/burglaries that have happened in the greater neighborhood is kind of crazy. It's rarely more than a couple of days between reports of a break in on our Nextdoor neighborhood group. It's quite shocking how frequent the crimes are. What seems to be happening is what seems like a standard burglary scenario. Someone walks around the neighborhoods checking out places, identifies a few and candidates and takes a closer look, and then the burglary happens. The officer in the article caught a couple of people in the act after being notified about a casing incident, which is great, but it's a drop in the bucket.

59 points by teamgb 13y ago

So, after reading the article and seeing that smart devices are often targets... I have to ask, is there an app that would help in these kinds of cases? I'm picturing an app with a button on the main screen. Press the button, device location is uploaded periodically to a server. For bonus points, make the device look like it is powered off (although I suppose there really isn't much you can do if they pull the battery). After the fact, you might get lucky and the data reveals where the device went, which police might be able to use to track down who did it. Not sure if anything like this exists (don't have a smartphone), but it seems like something that might be useful if you live in an area where this happens a lot.

mikeash 13y ago
It's pretty common. Apple builds this functionality into all of theirs, for example: http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html There are Android apps that will do the same thing. The problem is getting the police to care about a relatively minor crime, and getting to the phone before the thief (or his fence) wipes it, or ships it to Vietnam or wherever.
- mikeevans 13y ago
  It's built into Android as well: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager
michael_michael 13y ago
You're describing "Find My iPhone". I was mugged for my iPhone twice in NYC. The thieves turned the phone off relatively quickly and reset it, which rendered Find My iPhone useless at the time. It was tied to the Apple ID rather than the device (not sure if that's since changed). As of iOS 7, you can actually remotely render the phone unusable. I've heard NYPD is now handing out flyers advising people to update their iOS devices to iOS 7[1] so they can take advantage of this feature. While most crime in NYC has declined, smartphone robberies are -- as in Oakland -- majorly up y/y. [1]https://twitter.com/Hoffm/status/381564392602480640/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Hoffm/status/381564392602480640/photo/1
- timcederman 13y ago
  To reset the device or turn of Find My iPhone, you now need to enter your Apple ID password. You've always been able to remotely disable.
BrainScraps 13y ago
This one is generally highly recommended. Didn't work for my laptop, but I think it was stolen by professionals that wiped it without ever powering it on. http://preyproject.com/ http://preyproject.com/
not_rhodey 13y ago
Shameless plug here for Zones: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Zones https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Zones I was robbed in West Oakland over the summer while developing the app. Funny thing, I actually had the app installed on my phone at the time it was stolen and made a bunch of design and feature changes after the fact.
rhuppert 13y ago
There are apps as you describe. A better solution would be to render the device inoperable after it has been reported stolen. I hate to be a cynic, but it seems Apple, AT&T, Verizon and others are resistant to this not because it is difficult to accomplish, but due to lower revenue possibly. Frankly, more people are getting assaulted and injured due to smart phone thefts, and while I do blame the perpetrators, I also find inaction on the part of smart phone vendors abhorrent. FYI, I've lived in Oakland over 30 years and have not been robbed yet. Not to say it won't happen, but people on their phones are generally more oblivious to their surroundings than usual. Oakland has its problems, but it gets an inordinate amount of this type of bad press that greases the public fear wheel.
- mikeash 13y ago
  I'm afraid your cynicism is at least partially misplaced. Apple has now made it so that iPhones can do exactly what you say. If it's protected with a passcode already, you can't wipe the device. If it's not, you can remotely lock it until and unless you recover it. See: http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html
- SiVal 13y ago
  an inordinate amount of this type of bad press So, what would be a more appropriate amount and type of press for the violent robbery capital of the country?
dkl 13y ago
Android: Cerberus.
lwhalen 13y ago
Not to be a complete schmuck about it, but Glock makes a wonderful 'app' for that. Unfortunately, California systematically denies its citizens the right to lawfully carry firearms concealed - and in many cases denies them the right to own at all. I would think that a straightforward fix for the robberies would be to enable 'self-service' self-defense and get the laws around legal gun ownership changed.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rdl 13y ago
  San Mateo is sort of ok, for the Bay Area. You need "heightened good cause", but the standard isn't absurdly high.
- allochthon 13y ago
  A Glock would not have helped in my case, when five or six young men attacked me at close range (in Oakland), unless I was Chuck Norris and willing to throw away my own life as well as theirs. More police on the streets, and more effective followthrough after the fact, would have helped, though.
  - lwhalen 13y ago
    Sounds like a great case for standard-capacity magazines (instead of the neutered 8-rounders they want you to have). But that's just me being snarky :-) There's firearms classes out there that teach you how to effectively deal with multiple attackers, but in general it just plain sounds like you had a bad day coming your way. Sorry to hear that, and I hope karma catches up with your assailants sooner rather than later.
    - allochthon 13y ago
      No worries. It was just a bad day. :) To be honest, I feel sorry for those guys. They're throwing their lives away.

niteshmehta 13y ago

PG please put a RFS for a crowd sourced security system for neighborhoods. Police forces are not scalable.

taybin 13y ago
Yeah, let's disrupt this with private security forces! When I think of what I want the future to look like, it's private security forces for the wealthy.
- robbiet480 13y ago
  https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/security-patrol-for-lower-rockridge-northwest/description https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/security-patrol-for-lowe...
  - taybin 13y ago
    Ugh. Let's privatize the fire departments next.
    - rdl 13y ago
      Private and volunteer fire departments actually work really well, but that's mainly because people genuinely want to be firefighters -- it's a fairly unambiguously good thing, everyone is always happier when they show up, and they tend to get more women than virtually any other blue-collar profession (a stereotype, but from interacting with FD people, it's pretty much borne out by experience.) It doesn't work as well in big cities, and doesn't work in a place like SF because SFFD also does all the EMS calls (which tend to suck, and require much more hours of actual work, training, etc.). A rural or suburban volunteer or private fire department is fine, much more so than privatizing police forces.
      - taybin 13y ago
        In NYC, they had to take over the private fire departments since multiple ones would show up and fight each other over who had the right to get the money from fighting the fire. It was a mess.

j_baker 13y ago

We're talking about robbery rates doubling in two years. As far as crime stats go, that's a huge increase. I wonder what the cause of it is?

potatolicious 13y ago
Wild guess, but probably smartphones. Never before has something been so easy to take (it's just in your hand and not tied to anything, unlike a purse), worth so much money, is so easy to conceal, and is so universally demanded and easy to fence.
rhuppert 13y ago
As a startup venture, this rate of increase does not pass a significant investment criterion -- for me, at least.
mmanfrin 13y ago
I think the article had a good hypothesis: the duality of gentrification (there is no way Oakland can't gentrify given the price of living in the City) and that the other half of people in Oakland were hit unreasonably hard by the recession. A little microcosm of growing economic inequality.

smtddr 13y ago

So in light of previous comments[1] I've made, I will say that this article is an example of unbias reporting highlighting core issues to try and explain the observations. This kind of reporting allows one to think & reason about the issues & perhaps consider how to avoid(hopefully fix) the problem - instead of the blatant generalization like this[2][3] that only invoke fear and demoralize all the people in the city. Also, I support the headline change to match the article. The original headline is exactly what I'm talking about, just invoking fear. People who scan headlines will just memorize the headline instead of clicking into the article to understand why & how. We know far more people read headlines than read the whole article. We need more understanding about "why" and "how", not just "what". 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409 2. http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-king-oakland-funny.jpg http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-kin... 3. http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakland_shirt.png http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakla...

robbiet480 13y ago

I live at The Grand, which is close to Broadway and Grand. In the last 6 months, I have heard one purse snatched and one assault and carjacking. Both happened in broad daylight, in heavily trafficked areas with people around. I was unable to assist OPD with the former case, but for the latter I ran down to give a statement. OPD never caught them last I heard, the car hasn't been recovered, and an elderly couple was very shaken. I get the feeling that some elements inside OPD are trying to help the public, while others are cops for the power trip (see the Riders case of the early 2000's). OPD is absolutely stretched thin, but they are that way because Oakland is a big city and the command structure has previously had major run-ins with the DoJ (see Riders again) and therefore is very very careful about putting officers on the street. More so, they keep having issues with the DoJ (See Occupy Oakland, Scott Olsen), going so far as to the DoJ throwing down a threat of having the force taken over and reorganized, what would be a first for any organization in the US. We can't even keep a police chief for more then a few months, or days for that matter. Howard Jordan was around from 2011 until earlier this year. A day or two before another DoJ ruling/meeting, he suddenly retired due to a "medical condition", which he still hasn't disclosed. His replacement, Anthony Toribio, only lasted 2 days. Days. Not months. Days. The current interim chief, Sean Whent is still around, but we will see how much longer. We only have 637 officers as of last check. 637 for a town of 400,000 people. Oakland has a broken government, including OPD and other services. It caused all of it's own problems, mostly due to OPD. Oakland won't get better until crime gets better or people start caring more about Oakland. I love my city, but I can't do much to help, other than helping the community (see OaklandWiki.org). Maybe this is rambling, but whatever, it's out there. Oakland needs help, robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care. Edited to add more details and color.

yapcguy 13y ago
> Oakland needs help, robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care. This. Why have moderators changed the headline? Oakland is #1 for robberies in the country. People need to know this. To accept it for what it is. Sweeping the discussion away with a politically correct headline is part of the problem.
- 13y ago

jijji 13y ago

Its worth noting that every city on the list is a city with very strict gun laws. You won't find the robbery rates high in cities and states which allow citizens to properly defend themselves when confronted by an attacker committing a felony on his or her person.

ffrryuu 13y ago
Stand your ground?
- jijji 13y ago
  Self defense?
grannyg00se 13y ago
How does the proper defense scenario play out with a gun? Someone pulls a gun on you to rob you, and you then pull yours out without getting shot? Once you do pull out your gun, do you shoot the robber(s)? I find it hard to imagine any of this working out very well. Or is the possibility that you may be armed supposed to act as a deterrent?
- jijji 13y ago
  In states that have strict gun laws, the way it plays out is that the victim never has the opportunity to defend themselves. Read any story where an attacker tries to rob a person with a concealed firearm to figure out how it plays out when the victim is armed. It usually doesn't end up well for the attacker. So I guess we should just all be victims and never defends ourselves when attacked. It actually drives crime up when everyone plays the victim and doesn't defened themselves. The attackers feel emboldened to commit the act over and over and over again with impunity. Why should they stop? No one is preventing them they should continue to rob people, it is working for them.
- rdl 13y ago
  It's sort of a deterrent from "herd immunity", but it's mainly so that if a crime escalates from property crime, you can defend yourself. I'd toss my wallet/cash/etc. in one direction and move to cover/flee/draw, depending on the circumstance. I'm fine with losing whatever cash/credit cards/etc.; I'm not fine with being under the control of an attacker and potentially moved elsewhere, taken to an ATM, kidnapped, shot, etc. The bad thing about CCW is it turns any assault into a likely-to-end-in-someone-shot situation; if you're carrying and potentially will be knocked unconscious in an assault, or are being grappled, the attacker may grab your gun and shoot you; your correct course of action is to shoot him first.

sixQuarks 13y ago

Not enough police enforcement. How much does the city pay in pension obligations? That's what's killing a lot of cities.

genwin 13y ago
Bingo. Likely many more cities and counties will go bankrupt. Mid-level employees across the land have been promised a retirement payout the equivalent of $1M+. It would take $1M+ to buy the annuity that would cover their pension.
sanskritabelt 13y ago
Too much police "enforcement", you mean: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/investigation-reveals-east-bay-city-paying-out-ext/nFdWy/ http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/investigation-reveals-east-bay...
- sixQuarks 13y ago
  so ridiculous. The problem is that voters, as soon as they hear BS about police officers and teachers being laid off, blindly support rises in the budgets, unaware that so much money is being wasted and not being put to good use.

leokun 13y ago

This lady: > Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who represents West Oakland, said joblessness is a big factor in the city's robbery rate. I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job. > "We have a lot fewer jobs for adults so kids experience a lot more lack, so they are not able to get things," she said, noting that some turn to robbery to get money. "Really what they are after is really basic things - shoes, jackets. The things these kids are buying with money from stolen things are not flashy things. She goes on like this, defending criminals and criminal activity and blaming the system. The system may suck, but resorting to guns, scaring people out of their lives and taking things from them that belong to them is not excusable. It's criminal, and she's a terrible person for commenting this way, and a terrible official.

mattzito 13y ago
> I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job. Of course not, neither am I. Of course, I'm a white-collar professional, in an in-demand industry, with savings, and consequently, even if I had to really scale down my career level to make ends meet, I could definitely find a job. On the flip side, if I was largely unemployable aside from menial jobs with long hours, low pay, and lousy job security, and then I lost my job, I'd have a lot fewer options. I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low. Why is it so crazy to think that some people who steal would do something else if they were given the opportunity for real advancement?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- twoodfin 13y ago
  I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low. You would? Do you think of respecting others, their property and the law as some kind of luxury you could do without if you were sufficiently needy? We could have a philosophical discussion about free will and the irresistible forces of circumstance, but in order to have a civil society we have to at least pretend that people are responsible for their own actions and will respect the law even if they might not get caught breaking it. And indeed, most poor people aren't thieves.

wehadfun 13y ago

I've had an iPhone stolen in Dallas. I tried to show them iPhone "Find my phone" feature they would not send an officer to investigate claiming that the number was only accurate to 500ft.

bsimpson 13y ago
Part of me thinks that it's obvious that high-end bikes need a GPS-enabled anti-theft system, and is flabbergasted that there are still barely any options for that. (The only one I'd buy is Helios, but it requires new handlebars that wouldn't fit my bike.) That said, I've also wondered about the efficacy of such a system. If the bike was still moving, you'd have a decent chance of finding it, but if it was stashed in somebody's apartment waiting to be sold, how would you know where, precisely, to find it? It's a hard problem, especially considering housing is probably pretty dense in the places most thieves live. Maybe a camera and/or an alarm would be helpful, but good thieves would learn where the cameras are and to cover them up. An alarm would give itself away before you'd have a chance to find it, and would probably entice the thief to destroy your bike. Maybe there's a way to echolocate the bike, using a frequency outside the range of human hearing: - The owner goes to the rough location of the stolen item, as determined by GPS. - The owner sends a signal to the anti-theft inside the stolen item to start emitting a signal that the thief can't hear. - Using his phone (and maybe a friend's to aid in triangulation), the owner deduces where the signal is coming from, and is better able to recover his item. The problem with bolt-on antitheft (like the BikeSpike) is that once thieves realize what a GPS beacon looks like, they'll destroy it ASAP after stealing the bike. Therefore, options like Helios where the GPS is hidden in the bicycle itself are the much preferred option, but even then, the thief can hide the stolen goods in a basement or a Faraday cage where any signals the device emits can't reach the outside world. The more I think about this, the more I realize that if your bike is stolen, you are basically screwed.
- rdl 13y ago
  Bait bikes seem like the solution to bike theft.

wehadfun 13y ago

I have not scientific, references, ... but I think if 10% of the money/effort that has gone into the drug war went into robberies it would be stamped out. It cant be hard to find a cell phone, it has a connected GPS, mike, and camera.

ddlatham 13y ago

Some interesting numbers and quotes from the article when you put them together: "As of July 31, Oakland had 626 officers - still far less than the 800-plus officers the city had in 2010." 2010: 2917 robberies 2013: 5311 robberies (pace through Sept. 22) "In early 2013, police Lt. Chris Bolton analyzed robberies across the city and found that roughly 75 percent involved a smartphone." "So far this year, crime, as a whole in Oakland is stagnant. Shootings are down. Homicide has dropped by 13 percent...But robberies are up. A lot."

yapcguy 13y ago
Smartphones are just one more thing to rob, along with cash and jewellery. With smartphone penetration on the rise, it's pretty obvious that more robberies would involve smartphones, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that smartphones are responsible for a rise in robberies. Having said that, waving a $700 smartphone around in public will mark you as a potential target, rather than the person next to you with an old-school flip-phone.
mathattack 13y ago
Freakonomics discussed crime decreasing in New York. A lot of it was just due to more police.

rdl 13y ago

I live in Oakland now (although I plan to be in Issaquah or Bellevue WA by the end of 2013, thank god). I'm not really a good robbery candidate (which should be obvious just by appearance), but I'd never use a cellphone, laptop, etc. in public (including in cafes) in Oakland. I leave my house by car. I'm more than adequately armed and secured at home. I've never had a problem with crime in Oakland personally, perhaps due to this level of precaution, but I know a lot of people who have (generally females walking or using public transit, in the afternoon or at night, in uptown and affiliated areas). Think about how much your laptop/phone/ipad/mifi/etc. together are worth, and whether you want to be displaying that on the street, at a bus stop, etc. The weird thing is Oakland rents in the Grand/Broadway/Adams Point/etc. area are starting to approach ~2004 SF rents; a 1BR is about $1800-2k, up from about $1200 a couple years ago. I'm not sure if increasing rents will lead to less crime, since most of the people moving to Oakland are "hipsters" or "young single people", who generally don't prioritize security as much as families or older people. (The huge amounts of crime in Oakland, which largely influence the stats, and most of the violent crime, are in the large gang/etc. areas where no hn reader would be likely to go. A friend of mine lived in a warehouse in one of those areas, and I ended up having to drive and walk through active ~50 cop police raids on the neighbors to get to her place several times. It was pretty lulz; I would not recommend it.) If Alameda became as "issue on good cause" as the San Mateo County Sheriff, I'd more seriously consider living here again.

allochthon 13y ago
I don't think one needs to be flashing anything to be assaulted. Just be at the wrong place at the wrong time -- perhaps walking through a transitional neighborhood near a BART station in the late afternoon.
- rdl 13y ago
  Not necessary, but it helps. Being aware of your surroundings does generally help, not obviously burdened by bags, etc.

malyk 13y ago

I live in Northwest oakland (near san pablo and stanford/powell) and the amount of robberies/burglaries that have happened in the greater neighborhood is kind of crazy. It's rarely more than a couple of days between reports of a break in on our Nextdoor neighborhood group. It's quite shocking how frequent the crimes are. What seems to be happening is what seems like a standard burglary scenario. Someone walks around the neighborhoods checking out places, identifies a few and candidates and takes a closer look, and then the burglary happens. The officer in the article caught a couple of people in the act after being notified about a casing incident, which is great, but it's a drop in the bucket.