It is now firmly established that we no longer enjoy the title of “Safest City in America.” I am glad that it’s over because now we can continue the effort to make our city as secure in all its parts—each and every neighborhood—as any city can be in twenty-first century America. The title, awarded by some group in Washington D.C. (nobody can remember who; okay, who was it, wise guys?), now rests on the sun-kissed head of Honolulu. However, the real question is still the same: are people in San Jose safe in their homes and blissfully free of crime? The answer, as always, is a big “no.” But the struggle endures.
It is a fact that property crimes have been on the rise in our city for a number of years—notably burglaries and auto thefts. As awful as those are, the real crimes that haunt any citizen’s dreams are the random assaults, rapes, and murders. In our society, these are mostly committed by known associates, friends, relatives or spouses. It is the fear of terror striking from the darkness that terrifies us most of all, and some of that fear is present in our city now.
Much of the increased violence, including the 31 homicides so far this year, is in the “friend” category or the more worrisome category of gang violence. We have seen a steady surge in this latter type of violence and an increase in the percentage of murders that are gang related. Of course, young men—boys often—are both the targets and the perpetrators of this horror. At one time our gang prevention was thought to be first rate. However, given the spike, there are many new questions of how adequate our police staffing is today. We have the same number of officers that we had in 1994. The brief interest that the Clinton Administration had in a national program to fund local cops was met with a cynical reduction of that same number here in San Jose. The net result was many fewer cops than a very good budget would yield. And so we go on.
In New York City, a massive reduction in random violence can lend some answers, as can the good work that our police department has done here for many years. Get to know your beat and meet real people one on one. Be aggressive toward gang violence, add programs in tough neighborhoods that give young men another road out and continue to try and deal with the outrageous fact of high school dropouts. Do not accept the “It’s Chinatown, Jake” bromide that some areas are just too difficult or too lost to help. There is strength and wisdom in the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in our city, and it is the duty of City Hall to find those people and programs to support without the aid of any meaningless, Babbitt-like slogans. Good riddance to the title and here’s hoping for a simple but important improvement to take its empty, worthless spot.
Tom,
Per your 1st paragraph: The rankings are issued annually by CQ Press (formerly Morgan Quintno Press) which publishes the congressional Quarterly.
See, we’re not as dumb as you think we is.
Mr McEnery:
Nice post. You have a misplaced word, though, when you write, “random assaults, rapes, and murders”: As you assert in your following sentences, these actions are usually from known assailants, so they are not random at all.
I think what you mean is, we fear random crime from people we don’t know. However, most of the violent crime is committed by people who know their victims. (Or something like that.)
On a related note (i.e. escalating violence from familiar relations), a family I know has been having issues with their son, who is 15 and has been acting out. This might be easily handled if it were just an issue of cutting school from time to time, but instead he throws things at his parents, punches in walls, and has threatened the whole family with physical violence, at least once grabbing a knife.
When they call the SJPD (as they have on several occasions), police come over and say “there’s nothing we can do. Do you expect the police to do your parenting for you?”
My friend asked me this morning, does he have to stab someone before anything will happen? Yet if the parents hit the kid or try to discipline him, he can have them arrested (etc.) for child abuse.
My own mother’s philosophy was risky but clear and effective: “I would rather spend the rest of my life in prison than have disrespectful children who disobey me.” She raised six kids as a single mom and then two more with my dad. I think we all turned out alright, but using her “old school” techniques these days she would have ended up in prison, most definitely.
Growing up, we feared her; in adulthood, she was one of out best friends and supporters.
The point is, all this crime and violence on the street starts at home. What resources do parents have (besides namby-pamby-Dr-Spock parenting) to lay down the law without going to jail? Or, can’t the police just take these hoodlums out and rough them up a little bit, like they used to? (I should note that Mom resorted to this technique back in the 60s and 70s as well.)
No matter where you live in the city, as a law-abiding citizen the most important thing you can do to improve your safety is to demand objective enforcement from the police department. A department that operates in an objective manner assigns resources according to need, stops and identifies persons according to the legal standard, and keeps its community accurately informed—all without pause due to possible political implications.
Currently your police department is not operating objectively. Chief Davis is well aware that an existing policy, that being the race-data program, has significantly reduced the number of car and pedestrian stops made by officers (a 39% reduction the first year of the program, according to information published by the police association). It is significant that the two areas mentioned by Mr. McEnery, auto theft and burglary, are exactly the kinds of crimes (along with robbery and rape) that are suppressed by enforcement stops (where officers stop, identify, arrest, or dissuade criminals targeting your neighborhood). That the police command (people we pay $80/90 an hour) didn’t flinch over this drop in activity is beyond depressing.
What, you should ask, could possibly be worth sacrificing such a big part of your safety? The short answer: Rick Callender, head of the NAACP and a man who, besides having a conviction for violent assault himself, Chief Davis “considers a friend” (this quote from a disgusted subordinate attending a chief’s presentation). You see, Mr. Callender and others like him across the nation were screaming racial profiling so loud that former chief Lansdowne saw a chance to make a national name for himself by initiating a program tracking the race of those stopped by the police. (The publicity paid off: Lansdowne now collects a $180k a year as San Diego’s chief, $160 in pension from SJ, plus whatever he gets from his stint as Richmond police chief. By contrast, Mr. Callender was able to parlay his skin color and notoriety into a $170k a year liaison job with the water district. Playing the race card pays!)
If this race-tracking system seems reasonable to you it is only because you haven’t thought it through. Imagine yourself in traffic, day or night, and you see a car up ahead run a red light or pass when unsafe. Now, try to describe the driver. Most likely you can’t. You can describe the car and the dangerous driving, but you just don’t have enough visual information to identify the driver and/or occupants. If you’re a cop, you are going to make the decision to make the stop based on the driving, not the race. But it doesn’t matter to the program: log it.
Now, picture an officer hiding in dark lot writing a report when he spots a car with three occupants driving into your neighborhood at 4:00 AM. He thinks the three are young men, but he can’t tell anything for certain. Ten minutes later, still in your neighborhood, the officer sees the same car driving slowly on a side street, braking momentarily, then moving along again at a slow speed. One of the brake lights is out. Should the officer stop the car? Should he be concerned that the two other stops he made that night turned out to involve minority drivers? Do you, as a resident, want that car stopped?
Well, here’s my take: you don’t deserve to have that car stopped. Yes, you pay taxes, but paying taxes does nothing to provide the cops on the street with what they need to do their jobs in an objective and efficient manner. That officer needs to know he can do his or her already-dangerous job without having to fear the jaws of political jackals. Your taxes pay the officer’s wages and provide them with the equipment they need, but only your voice can provide them with the necessary political support. We have a chief who will kowtow whenever it suits his needs, and that is our fault for allowing our elected officials to put a lamb in a bull’s job.
The current state of affairs is nothing new. The gang problem that now accounts for half of our homicides can be attributed in part to the politics of former police chief Joe McNamara, who, despite the evidence and to the chagrin of his own troops, for years felt the need to deny the existence of gangs in SJ—the same gangs that have, as will any cancer, spread when left unchecked.
Nice job, Joe! (He also did quite well for himself, winding up at the truly gang-free Hoover Institute.)
We pay our police chiefs over $200,000 a year. It’s high time we stop allowing them to rob us of our safety.
There is some good news on the horizon. The Spice Girls will be performing at the HP Pavilion, Tuesday, December 4, 2007. Show starts at 7:30 pm, doors open at 6:30 pm.
#5
Great. That’s all we need. Gangs of roving, rampaging, pubescent girls loose on the street. Throngs in thongs.
Lock up your sons for their safety.
TOM
Another good post. I always enjoy your metaphors. I hope most of the readers got it.
YO!!!
Finfan… you saying that a police will not stop a suspicious vehicle because they already made too many “minority stops” is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read.
#4 Finfan, if your perception and date are correct and I believe it is, just think what one or two more tickets per SJPD beat-shift could do and how far that would go toward…
– calming traffic in our neighborhoods
– making us all more aware of posted speed limits and driving safely
– increase the focus on civility and lawful behavior
– and help our financially troubled city…
357 patrol beats times two shifts, times 1 or 2 additional citations at $200 per, for 365 days; that’s $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 per year.
Certainly in a city our size, it shouldn’t be too hard to find one or two more traffic violations per beat-shift deserving SJPD attention.
A traffic unit can rack up figures like this working ‘Duck Ponds’ throughout the city on a rotating basis, but it does not have near effectiveness on making neighborhoods safer and calming traffic.
If San Jose is going to be the bedroom community for the Bay Area working folks, shouldn’t the bedroom be the safest place?
Tom,
What you need downtown to get these out of control people on the right track is Joe Costa SJ and Mr Ed Nolan. This done you could free up 50 SJPD officers to work in the other neighborhoods.
Joe and Ed can get things staightened out quick, too bad it`s too late.
Finfan! That is some great writing. You’ve put your finger on a problem, when political correctness trumps public safety.
Tom and finfan have the cojones to touch the Third Rail of San Jose security politics—gang activity—and my hat’s off to them for it. Police, schools, and politicians all soft-pedal the dangerous presence of gang activity all over the city—for p.r. and political correctness reasons—and it’s creating an environment where we’re unable, as a community, to honestly address fundamental crime issues. This is only going to get worse if we put our heads in the sand for fear of ruffling feathers or impacting real estate values. Ask the high school kids what’s going on. They know the truth.
YO!!!
A 39% reduction in stops doesn’t tell us anything about the nature of stops that weren’t made. For all we know, all of that 39% of stops were purely DWB. Because you’ve decided that we all have to be writing term papers, FinFan, do you care to produce some kind of evidence that shows that this reduction of stops has caused a 39% increase in crime?
YO!!!
Eastside Dre… are you saying that cops are immune from having their production and morale affected by suppressive, insulting policies? Are you saying that the drastic reduction in car stops following the policy change is not clear evidence that a substantial number of cops are ignoring traffic violators and suspicious cars? Such stops are volitional acts, thus the drop-off can only be interpreted as a reflection of the policy’s negative impact on the working cop (which explains why the impact has been ignored by the police command and the news media).
I provided you with a statistic (from a police union official) to substantiate my point, but that didn’t stop you from branding it as stupid. Okay, your up: cite your evidence to refute my post.
$$$$$$
I will gladly provide you with the requested statistic as soon as you admit to believing that every car stop, or even one in every five car stops that are made based in part on an officer’s suspicions lead directly to a statistically equivalent reduction in crime. The moment you admit to that is the moment you admit to not knowing anything about the issue.
What, were you under the impression that cops were clairvoyant?
As for your cheap shot about driving while black, well that says everything we need to know about your objectivity and common sense. Oh, and since you seem so convinced about the pervasiveness of DWB stops, why don’t you share with us all the number of confirmed DWB stops attributed to SJPD?
YO!!
So Fish fan, you’re stating that being transparent and accountable is both suppressive and insulting?
What about police work needs to be so secretive that it is going to have such a high impact on morale, if it has to be reported to the public?
So the SJPD collectively thew up their hands and gave up. Is that what is going on?
REALLY??
WOW!!!
East Side Drool,
What is suppressive and insulting is being unfairly thrown to the wolves by your leaders. The transparency and accountability that you imply as the source of the cops’ dissatisfaction were non-factors: car and pedestrian stops have always been transparent and accountable, trackable long before the race-data program was initiated, with each stop logged for time, location, and (when a vehicle is involved) license number.
There was never any obstacle to a citizen questioning the reason for a stop. The information was readily available to command officers, internal affairs investigators, and field supervisors—none of whom would risk their careers to cover for a subordinate engaged in racism. In addition to police personnel, the data could also be accessed by federal agents (in the case of an alleged Civil Rights violation) or a civil attorney (in the case of a law suit). All this was quite apparent to the cops on the street, so is it any wonder that they looked upon the race-data program as professionally disingenuous and politically suspicious?
Who wouldn’t object to a program intended to measure a particular element, for the stated purpose of evaluating the workforce, when the workers themselves have next to no control over the element being measured? It was no secret what the command staff had in mind when they designed the program, that being to provide statistical evidence to appease local race merchants; but that goal, to anyone paying attention, set the alarms to sounding for the following reasons:
– Police commanders were well aware that a huge percentage of car stops are made without the officers knowing the race of the occupants. Including data from these stops contradicts the stated aim of the program (to determine if race profiling exists).
– A significant percentage of stops made with the knowledge of the person’s race, gender, age, etc. are directly related to descriptions of perpetrators as provided by crime victims and witnesses. In such stops the officer is exercising no discretion as to race or any other factor, thus including this data in the program also contradicts the stated aim.
– Stops made by officers for investigative reasons or mere suspicion, the kind of stops where a lot of great police work occurs and where the officer’s motives are most open to question, are more easily and effectively analyzed by means other than raw data collection. These stops are assigned case numbers and are subject to a supervisor’s review. Had the chief requested increased scrutiny of these stops, including a review of their legality and reasonableness, he would’ve been able to assure the public that his officers were not engaged in racism. That he eschewed this avenue is telling.
Let me be blunt: the race-data program was a fraud from the outset. Of course cops stop Hispanics and Blacks at a rate disproportionate to whites and Asians; when a disproportionate percentage of serious crime (murder, rape, robbery, etc.) and problematic incidents (club problems, cruising, etc.) is committed by specific groups, the police would be remiss if they failed to recognize that and respond accordingly. But the police chief can’t change or admit to reality, so he did what he could do, which was initiate a program that would reduce the proactive efforts of his force.
And reduce it they did, which should surprise no one. Officers with promotional hopes or those who’d prefer to avoid increased scrutiny understood the new rules of the game. Handle your calls, cover your teammates, but don’t you dare saddle the chief with numbers he doesn’t have the courage to explain. Have a hunch about a particular car? Forget stopping it unless your reasons are so solid they’d satisfy Al Sharpton. Let ‘em go… let the city go to hell and eventually the crime rate will soar high enough to turn things around.
And here we are.
David D #17
There are not 357 patrol beats.
The city is divided into about 15 police districts. Each district has between 5-6 patrol beats. There are about 85 total patrol beats. This does not take into account that the midnight patrol shift goes out every night with 10-20% fewer officers than beats due to a shortage of officers.
If you or anyone else is concerned about traffic safety and revenue, please ask your council person why the traffic enforcement unit of the police department has been cut in half in recent years. I think this issue along with the brewing crisis of a shortage of officers needs the council and mayors immediate attention.
Tom: now that you’ve opened the can…
357 patrol beats times two shifts, times 1 or 2 additional citations at $200 per, for 365 days; that’s $50 to $100mil per year.
If only 13% comes stays in San Jose and rest goes to the state, county and court system, that leaves $6.5 to $13mil here.
At roughly $150k/SJPD officer/yr., that translates to 40, 60 or 80 more officers to deal with our growing population and complexity.
Is this right? Could it be that easy?
Even if only have of that 13% went back into calming traffic and making our streets safer, that would still put 20, 30 or 40 more officers out there; or maybe a few less the first year and provide a radar gun for every patrol car, just to support all our neighborhoods.
And the best part, radar guns are not capable of profiling anything but bad behavior.
Dave #18
You probly know best. I just took this information off the SJPD web site page entitled “Public CADmine FQA” as follows:
“What is a BBB? BBB stands for Beat Building Block. A BBB is the smallest police patrol service area. Bureau of Field Operations (BFO) patrol service areas are utilized for resource deployment throughout the City. San Jose Police has 4 patrol divisions (plus San Jose Airport), 16 patrol districts, 83 patrol beats and 357 patrol BBBs. Patrol BBBs taken together comprise larger patrol beats. Similarly, patrol beats taken together comprise patrol districts. Finally, patrol districts taken together comprise patrol divisions. To view a citywide map of all BBB’s, please click here.”
That clarifies it some. I take it 83 patrol beats have to cover 357 BBBs or the smallest police patrol service area.
On average, how many patrol officers work the city in any 24 hr. period to include all shifts? Thanks.
OK, the 39% of stops that were DWB didn’t contribute toward a reduction in crime. Thanks, finfan.
$$$$$$$$$$
What do you view as the greater threat, the DWB stops you claim to be occurring everywhere, or the UFO’s that chase you nightly?
Keep the faith, $$$$$$$$$$… it’s all you’ve got.
—Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.—
Richard Dawkins
how sad. you think ufos are real and chase people.
I feel sorry for you, but I guess it’s no crazier than believing white privilege doesn’t exist.
#23- $$$$$$, I’m curious about something, could you explain to me what you mean by,
“white privilege?” The reason I’m asking is because I have been doing several conflict resolution trainings for different non-profits. In at least three of my trainings, Asian, Hispanic, and Pilipino students have asked me how to deal with their anger regarding privileged whites. I was very shocked to hear that question. As a white woman, I have worked hard for everything I have, paid my own way through college holding down a full time job, at the age of 26, gotten a lower wage than men for the same job with the same skills, and education. I have been paid less because I’m not bilingual, and even passed over for jobs because I’m not bilingual in Spanish, or Mandarin. (I speak some French and German.) I feel confused, and I’d like to hear your reasoning on what you consider “white privilege” to be exactly.
Are you saying just because someone is white, that everything is handed to them on a silver platter, or are you saying that just by mere virtue of being white, we some how suffer less than people of color? I’m seriously interested in hearing your view because I must admit I just don’t get it. Being raised European I was raised pretty much to be color blind. Also, not that it matters in the long run, but may I ask your ethnic origin? Have you had some really bad experiences with white people?
Just think how many police officers we could have hired if we had the $4million it cost us to move palm trees down town for the races. Using the math, at $150,000 cost per officer we could have hired another 27 officers. Hopefully the enforcement type.
#21 Richard
I’m not a big fan of speed bumps, humps or lumps… roundabouts, bulb-outs or choke points. But those radar speed notification signs that tell you how fast you’re going seem to slow the majority decent people. And those tend to slow traffic behind them They enable drivers to benchmark their perception of speed against that of lawful speed; and over time that builds safer driving habits.
That $4mil you speak of… that would buy over 200 of those signs – more than 20 per district. In cooperation with their council person, SJPD and DOT, each district could have them placed in areas of greatest concern or need.
That should have a huge payback in taking the load off SJPD as it relates to bringing traffic speed city wide closer to the posted limits.
Add 27 officers and you need to support that another $40mil+ over the following 10 years.
Add 200 flashing radar speed notice signs to our streets and that might cost only $1mil over the next 10 years.
And. . . they work 24/7. They don’t get a raise every year, don’t take vacations, don’t require health care, retirement plan, supervision or training. They have zero impact on emergency response vehicles and they won’t have to spend any time in court defending their judgement.
Thoughts?
White privilege is the accumulated benefit of 400 years of holding other kinds of people down. This is everything from slavery to the clearing of non-white neighborhoods to make room for white development, to the race terrorism prior to the 1970’s in both the south and north, to even a qualified non-white person being turned down for housing or employment to make way for a less qualified white person. Racists, non-racists and anti-racists alike benefit from it. There are lots of examples listed in papers on the subject online, but, because they’re all written by college professors, some of the examples can be goofy. (Example: “White privilege means that I can be sure to find a publisher for my paper on white privilege.”)
One way if affects American life is that colorblind programs benefit white people disproportionately more than they do black people. (I posted an example in another article here that was about college admissions. It also talked about privilege a little more generally.)
Another is that, because white is the norm in the USA, people who aren’t are seen as outside of the norm. The aspect of this that upsets me the most is that white people often take their wealth and prosperity for granted, and don’t acknowledge that they didn’t really make themselves what they are. They then see that poverty is so high in black and latin-american populations and conclude that they are poor just because they don’t want to work hard enough. This ignores the huge benefits that white people get for being born white, like being part of wealthier families, living in neighborhoods with better schools, not being prey to overt and covert racist acts, etc.
Oh, und ich bin vierundzwanzig Jahre alt und weiss. Ich liebe weisse Leute, besonders meine Familie. Ja klar hatte ich schlechte Erlebnissen mit weisse Leute. Ich habe dieses Blog gelesen! Und ich hatte nicht Soziologie oder Kulturwissenschaft gestudiert.
Bitte seien Sie nicht bitterböse über Ihrem Arbeitgeber. Deutsche ist in San Jose ganz nutzlos. Sie konnen ebenso gut Sanskrit oder COBAL als Deutsche sprachen. Freuen Sie sich über die Vergnügen der Deutsche, zB Bertholdt Brecht, Umläuten, Erich Kästner, Bauernbrot, Mozarts Opern, über Schwyzertütsch lachen, Deichkind, und Sektion Kuchikäschtli. (Suchen Sie die letzte zwei an youtube.)
#25- $$$$$ Thank you for explaining your views to me. (Sorry but my German is quite rusty, and I didn’t get everything you wrote!)
I would be a liar if I said that some of what you’ve said is untrue. Unfortunately, racism is alive and well even in this century. $$$$ I’m 51 years old, and I’ve seen a lot of injustices in my lifetime. A mother who survived Hitler raised me. She taught me to stand up for my beliefs, and never turn my back on anyone when I saw injustice in the world. I see that in you, and while I don’t agree with everything you say, I deeply respect your right to fight for your opinion on this and any other issue.
My Mom always told me that had the citizens of Germany questioned authority, and stood up for their beliefs, perhaps Hitler wouldn’t have gotten away with the horrific things he did. Having said that, I have two half black half sisters and in the early 60s, I saw how they were treated. Not just by whites, but by blacks too. As you know, racism exists within races too. My father was in the military so we grew up living in Army Housing, and attended schools on the base. My eldest sister is darker and was made to sit in the back of the school bus by white bus drivers. Kids made fun of her, and yes, beat her up. She came home crying a lot. I was very young, but even at that age I got the gist of the cruelty she was suffering.
When I was in my teens, we lived back East. My Dad had returned from Vietnam, left the Army, so we were living in civilian housing. I remember a race war broke out at my high school, and after being called a “Nigger Lover,” because I had a lot of biracial friends, I was in one hell of a fight. A fight to protect myself, and my friends that were jumped. I got suspended, but the white kids who started throwing the first punches didn’t. (Very much like the Jena 6 incident.) I was really proud of my white parents for marching into the school and demanding that everyone be suspended or no one at all. My parents won, and I went back to school the next day. I was pretty proud of my black eye too because I knew I had fought for what was right.
I guess my point to you is that we can’t judge a race; it is the individual and their behavior we must look at. I have and had some great friends, bosses, instructors, etc. from all races. I’ve been discriminated against by the best, but what I know in my heart is, people are basically good. There are some unkind, ignorant people, but on the whole I think that our world is made up of some awesome human beings. All I ask you to do is to keep that in mind when making statements about whites. We whites have marched along side Martin Luther King, we marched for Civil Rights, we set up the first ACLU and the first NAACP here in San Jose, and some of we Caucasians, do care very much about unfair treatment of people of color. And finally, I can assure that I believe even your nemesis “Frustrated Finfan,” would have your back, if he/she saw you being unfairly abused. You see, Frustrated Finfin has a lot of integrity and keeps the rest of us here on SJI in check with his wonderful arguments and views on vital issues. I have a lot of respect for him/her, even though I don’t always agree with him.
$$$$$$$ I admit it. I am guilty of being white – but it wasn’t my fault – I was born that way.
How can I atone for my whiteness? What can I do?
“I’m not a big fan of…roundabouts, bulb-outs or choke points.”
You should be! These things make speeding impossible for all but reckless drivers. We overengineer our roads in America. Take Camden Avenue between Coleman and Meridian as an example. It is as wide and uncluttered as an interstate highway. Reasonable drivers feel comfortable going 65 mph on it. Suburban neighborhood streets are 56 feet wide. That is huge! It is no wonder that reasonable—though unconscientious—drivers feel safe driving down them at 40 mph. The best way to slow traffic is to make a driver feel that to go any faster than the speed limit is dangerous to him or her.
The three design features above accomplish this. The best solution is make roads narrower all around and to provide tree canopies, but bulb-outs and round-abouts are considerably cheaper than narrowing an entire street.
“I am guilty of being white” -novice
I’m a convict
of a racist crime
I’ve only served
19 YEARS OF MY TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!