Oakland Observer Week Ending 7/9/2023: OPD's License Plate Readers Went Down During Ransomware Attack, Then Stayed Down Due to OPD Decision to Keep Them Offline; Last Committees Before Summer Recess: Update 7/27/2023
OPD License Plate Reader System Has Been Inactive Since February
Oakland Police representatives revealed that the OPD's license plate reader system has been offline since February’s ransomware attack at a Privacy Advisory Commission [PAC] meeting Thursday. The February ransomware attack was responsible for shutting down the department's Automated License Plate Reader [ALPR] system initially, OPD’s ALPR Program Manager, Dr. Carlo Beckman told the Commission. But Beckman added that once the system was operational again, the department made a decision to keep it off line due to concerns about fulfilling the requirements in new ALPR use policies passed last October.
“The ALPR system is currently non-functional and has been not functional, willingly, by our decision even after we were able to bring it back after the ransomware attack,” Beckman told Commissioners.
Beckman went on to describe a series of failures that began last October that he says led to the decision to keep ALPR shut down after Council passed an ALPR use policy and directed a software investment to facilitate it. OPD argued last year that both would actually streamline and improve its ALPR program.
The new use policy has its roots in an ALPR impasse at the PAC going back several years, beginning with the PAC's discovery that OPD did not track its ALPR usage and was not meeting the requirements of the surveillance ordinance in its reporting over multiple years.
History of Clashes Over ALPR Use Policy at PAC Come to Rushed Politicized Solution
In Fall 2022, the Public Safety Committee directed the PAC and OPD to create a use policy that would comply with the City’s surveillance ordinance and respond to many of the PAC’s criticisms of OPD’s reporting failures. The PAC agreed, and put aside its earlier recommendation for an ALPR moratorium in order to hash out a compromise policy with OPD. OPD for its part, via then-Chief Leronne Armstrong, argued that the department needed a software upgrade to better fulfill its reporting requirements–but to purchase the software, OPD would need a Council-approved use policy. The OPD proposed use policy, however, was less robust than the PAC's recommended policy.
Just a week after the process had begun, however, CM Loren Taylor scheduled a meeting on the use policy to full Council from the dais at a regular council meeting with backing from Treva Reid. The two CMs sent out a press release as they did so, backed by Mayor Libby Schaaf, strongly implying that Oakland was in danger of losing its use of ALPR due to the PAC's process, and argued that it was a critical crime-fighting tool. Local corporate media outlets picked up the story and ran it from the two CM's perspective, arguing, as NBC Bay Area did here, that ALPR was a critical tool to lower Oakland's violent crime.
The rushed PAC/OPD process created conflict at the PAC meeting where a final compromise couldn't be reached between the PAC and OPD use policies. Sheng Thao in her then-capacity as Council Member brokered a compromise at the October Council meeting that would release $16 K in funds to invest in a software upgrade OPD argued would allow easier compliance with reporting, along with increased policy requirements, including quarterly reports. During the meeting, former OPD Chief Leronne Armstrong praised the new policy and upgrade.
“We recognize that there’s issues around reporting that need to be improved and hopefully with the upgraded new technology that will get done, so appreciate the hard work that’s put forth to get us to this point,” Armstrong told the body. Taylor and Reid also indicated that they approved of the policy. The Council vote for the ALPR use policy was unanimous.
Failure after Failure in Implementing the Use Policy
Beckman did not contradict Armstrong’s claims nor bring up any issues with the software or the additional requirements at the October meeting. But Thursday, Beckman described a cascade of failures after the legislation was passed that, he argued, prevented adherence to the new policy into December. Those failures then culminated in a sudden realization that the new policy could not be adhered to, Beckman told Commissioners.
The first roadblock, according to Beckman, was the City’s laws requiring all purchases to have a request for proposals; he said he’d been unaware of that and it delayed discussions with the vendor about the new software until November. After clearing the update with the agreed provider, Beckman said it then became clear that the department would need more server capacity to run the software–Beckman said that due to nation-wide shortages at the time last year, he could not purchase new servers. Beckman then said that in the meantime, while researching the potential to run the system in the cloud, he had a negative discussion with OPD’s legal counsel about the “feasibility” of the new reporting requirements.
“The original upgrade was going to get us very basic auditing capabilities and was not going to fulfill all the requirements that were in the approved DGO I-12, so legal gave us advice to not upgrade the servers at that time, because OPD did not want to violate the new policy. So the upgrade was put on hold,” Beckman said.
OPD then decided, Beckman said, to “leave [ALPR] off.” Beckman later clarified that the system would be off line for the indefinite future until some kind of reporting/auditing system was put in place. Beckman did not specify who ultimately made the decision to shut down the ALPR system or to keep it off.
Commissioners Skeptical of Claimed Difficulty in Finding a Reporting System
After the explosive revelation, which was only vaguely alluded to in Beckman’s agenda report to the PAC, much of the remainder of the meeting was taken up in examining Beckman and other OPD representative’s claims that the department is currently incapable of providing the new policy's robust level of data gathering–including the history of officer queries into the license plate database. Commissioners were unified in their skepticism, and some also noted that OPD had not kept up with reporting even when there were fewer data capture requirements. Chair Henry Gage, a former Police Commissioner, noted that OPD is required to adhere to policy regardless of the servers or software upgrade, and that the department was currently in violation of its own policy.
“None of us want you to spend officer man hours or person hours digging through documents if they can be replaced by a computer query. But if you come here and say ‘we didn’t want to opt in’, that kind of language starts to become really problematic, because it’s not optional,” Commissioner Henry Gage, a former Police Commissioner, said.
Commissioner Robert Oliver, a former OPD officer, also found the excuses to be not credible given his own experiences on the force.
“Not too long ago, we didn’t have servers and we turned out reports all the time…let’s put two or three bodies on this, go through it manually and turn it out the numbers. This is not an issue of it cannot be done, it’s just that people don’t want to do it, because it’s a manual process and it’s a tedious one,” Oliver said.
PAC Chair Brian Hofer reminded OPD staff that he helped design a reporting system for both City of Berkeley and BART’s ALPR that utilizes an Excel spreadsheet to track data for reporting–a solution he has suggested to OPD for several years whenever the issue of lack of capacity for reporting on ALPR has come up.
“This has been a seven year refusal to report on ALPR and honestly I think it's because you don’t want to show the lack of efficacy,” Hofer told the OPD representatives.
Later in the meeting, Commissioner Reem Suleiman also wondered how effective the system could actually be after months of being quietly offline.
“I’m kind of reading between the lines that it’s not worth the effort…it doesn’t seem like a priority if you’d rather just sit and turn it off versus an administrative inconvenience to have the reporting requirements met,” Suleiman said.
Hesitance to Adopt Practical Reporting Systems Used in Berkeley
OPD Captain Anthony Todesco admitted that because of the hesitance to seek out some other process for recording data, OPD currently has no process for recordation of the data.
“We don’t have the ability in the field, we don't have the ability to capture it in the office, except for manually. We’re talking about either paper documents to fill in all of their queries and turn those back in, or some kind of cloud sharing document to get that done. We don’t have an answer, we don’t have that process, which is the reason it’s off,” Todesco said.
The volume of data is the source of the difficulty, according to the OPD representatives at the meeting, but those representatives also admitted that they hadn’t even investigated the reporting process Berkeley is using. OPD is also requesting amendments to the policy that would lessen the reporting burden–by providing a low-volume sample audit quarterly–while agreeing to research Berkeley's reporting process to see if it can handle the data volume.
Commissioner Chloe Brown complained about the OPD’s slow move toward adopting a reporting system, despite years of the Commission's suggestion to adopt something along the lines of what Berkeley uses.
“It sounds like a great idea to talk Berkeley and other divisions that are doing this successfully regarding what is a cost-efficient way to solve the problem, but it is also just a little bit frustrating to me as somebody who’s seen this come back year after year to think, why did we have to get this point…it would have been nice to have that chat a little bit earlier.”
Questions About OPD's ALPR Efficacy from OPD Itself
Todesco also implied that the current aging system, with vehicle mounted readers, was not very effective, lending indirect credence to Hofer and Sueliman’s theory that OPD would rather shut it off than create reporting that would reveal its inefficacy.
“I don’t know that the mobile technology [car-mounted ALPR scanners] is the future of ALPR,” Todesco said.
By the end of the meeting, no resolution to the problem of ALPR being offline was offered. Hofer suggested that the department and PAC may pursue an ad hoc committee to create a reporting process in absence of software capacities.
The OPD was contacted for this story on Friday morning and a Public Information Officer responded, confirming receipt of the communication and directing the questions to command staff. The Oakland Observer is still awaiting substantive answers to questions about when the system was deliberately taken off line, by who and with or without discussion with the City Administrator or Mayor.
To date, none of the corporate media outlets that implied ALPR was a critical tool to reduce crime last October have reported OPD's revelation that the department declined to use its own technology.
Update 7/27/2023
Chair Hofer confirmed today that the OPD's ALPR system is still down by choice. Hofer said the announcement was a "bombshell" that came as a surprise, given the past wrangling over ALPR.
"I'm stunned, and very confused after the 3 year fight we had over use of this technology that OPD abandoned on its own," Hofer said.
Hofer also said that no elected official and no media, other than the Oakland Observer, had reached out to him for comment, explanation or verification that the system, once considered vital to public safety, is no longer active.
Committee Round Up:
At Council this week, the last day of Committee meetings before Summer recess is pretty packed.
Finance:
Brooklyn Basin CFD:
The Finance Committee will review legislation that would clean up Community Facility District” [CFD] agreements and language and set a new hearing for a new CFD to cover the expanded Brooklyn Basin project that was approved this year. The CFD will still need a public hearing. It's not clear what, if any, properties or property owners other than BB would be involved, but the CFD requires a majority vote of affected property owners, which would be held in September.
The City’s parcel tax funded bond measures require periodic issuance of the bonds and legislation allowing the city to take on debt. The process for Measures DD, KK and U will come before the committee.
Tax Rates for Measure W, Vacant Property Tax
The tax rates for the vacant property tax are periodically set, this time for 2022-24.
Public Works:
7th St Grade Separation Contract
A 3 MM contract for construction support services on the 7th St grade separation rehab, a project with the Port of Oakland, Alameda County and the City of Oakland.
Annual Report and Amendment Request for Illegal Dumping Surveillance Cam
OPW will report back on its anti-dumping surveillance program while also requesting addition of automated license plate reading technology to the system. OPW says they’ve already cleared the ALPR portion with the Privacy Advisory Commission.
Community and Economic Development
California Strategic Growth Council Application and Future Agreements
Legislation approving the application and subsequent expenditure if granted for a $10 MM state grant to share with partner organizations doing "resilience" work. The grant, if awarded, would go to several community center partners including the Lincoln Rec Center, the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, and Asian Pacific Environmental Network.
BID Annual Reports and Assorted Business
The annual reports for the City’s various Business Improvement Districts, including Lakeshore, Jack London, Temescal, Laurel, Koreatown/Northgate, Lake Merritt-Uptown, Chinatown and others.
Study Session On Proposed Revisions To The Planning Code And Zoning Map
Public Safety
The MACRO report reveals that the new program had nearly nearly 2,500 contacts with residents from April to June, but less than 5% of those were from 911 dispatch. the April-June level of monthly contacts was substantially lower than the number for March. A growing number of calls for service come from Oakland agencies, like the Public Library system and Parks and Recreation.
The last-minute $27 MM grant that saved a brownout budget balancing move last month will be heard and forwarded to Council for approval. The City has received the grant in the past, but it usually requires a City of Oakland match. No such match is requires in this grant for unspecified reasons.
A regularly scheduled report on crime trends in Oakland, usually about 6 months behind current.
OO will have more on some of these reports and legislation next week.
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