Shotspotter Middle Path; Thao Speech; Council Committees Roundup

Acknowledging Weak Data, Council Approves Modified Shotspotter Contract for 1.25 Years

As an acknowledgement of conflicting narratives of Shotspotter data and efficacy, City Council members voted 7 to 1 on a motion to renew Shotspotter’s contract—but over a modified contract timeline and other requirements from Soundthinking, the recently rebranded parent company that markets the Shotspotter technology. The new contract structure would allow an exit at 1.25 years instead of the sought-after 3, introduce a new contract stipulation allowing Oakland to retain ownership of its Shotspotter data, and require quarterly reports to the Privacy Advisory Commission [PAC], the city commission that has flagged the failings of the technology for several years.

The amendment was added initially to a motion made by CM Kevin Jenkins to accept the City Administrator and OPD’s recommended action to approve a 3 year contract at a cost of over $800k/year—a contract that would continue beyond the biennial budget process next year and bind the City Council to funding the service. Jenkins, who, like Gallo, telegraphed disinterest in the discussion—“called the question” on the original legislation even before Fife had gotten a chance to speak to offer her amendment. Later, Jenkins accepted Fife’s amendment into his motion as a “friendly amendment” which doesn’t require a separate set of votes. Fife noted her intent was to bridge the community’s support for the technology with the concerns about lack of data on efficacy and potential for the technology to be a waste of police officer time and focus.

The deliberation was a continuation of commentary made at a previous Public Safety Committee, but there were fewer speakers at the meeting—15 people spoke, but 2 of those were employees of Shotspotter who continued lobbying during public comment. Another speaker, former OPD officer Ersie Joyner, is currently a consultant hired by the City of Oakland to advise the OPD. Shotspotter employees identified themselves as such, but Joyner did not. The discourse was more contentious at the meeting, with frustration directed both at City Council members who could be considering the elimination of Shotspotter, as well as those who supported it.

OPD’s Lt Fred Shavies introduced the report, adding little additional data from the document included in the legislative packet. Shavies hewed to the selling point that casings are often examined as evidence and life-saving aid rendered at some level that lacks clear data. Shavies also brought out a new OPD argument, comparing the cost of Shotspotter to an estimated cost for each homicide and shooting [$3 MM and $1 MM respectively]. Though OPD repeats the Shotspotter claim that system is not designed to prevent crime, Shavies also contended that OPD’s use of it does act as a deterrent and thus is a cost-effective system, preventing costly homicides and shootings through evidence gathering and pinpointing actors in Ceasefire system that can be intercepted from the cycle of violence.

“Knowledge is power, and the knowledge added by ShotSpotter supports faster responses to violent crime, which underpins both life saving efforts for victims as well as immediate opportunities to interdict in the event or to apprehend offenders rapidly thereafter. In Oakland, ShotSpotter helps us reduce violence. After the implementation of the ceasefire strategy in 2012 the city of Oakland experienced large declines in shootings and homicides attributed to direct focus deterrence and ShotSpotter played a key role in that,” Shavies said.

Shotspotter brought in several high level administrators in the organization to buttress OPD’s arguments for the system. But many of their arguments seemed less grounded in the system, than in their personal experiences with crime and the Shotspotter staff complained about the “politics” in jurisdictions that eliminate Shotspotter.

Melissa Dooher, Senior Director of Forensics and Litigation Support is a former Assistant DA under Nancy O’Malley who has been an activist with SAFE, the organization behind the district attorney recall. Dooher used her background as a DA to argue for the system.*

“I tried homicides in Oakland for 25 years, the vast majority of that time, I lived in Oakland, and I love this city and its people, and it would be such a shame to do away with something that works, that is accurate. It provides an accurate location, it provides an accurate shot count. It sends officers to the scene faster than would ever happen with a 911 call if one ever comes. I implore you, as a former member of the Oakland Community, as a former member of the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, and someone who still very much loves this community, to keep saving lives, keep ShotSpotter,” Dooher said.

Dr Doris Cohen, the Vice President of Data and Analytics at the company also referred to her background growing up in East Palo Alto and at the police department there working in crime analytics as the more convincing lever for her advocacy. She added to Shavies’ argument that the Shotspotter system is wedded integrally to the work of Ceasefire, and conflated the credit for the over 30% reduction in homicides this year over the last three years.

A somewhat startling and confusing turn in the public comment came from an actual employee of Shotspotter, who nevertheless scolded Council members, urging them to ignore data and issues of police resources.

PAC Continues to Point Out Lack of Data, Unsupported Claims

Unlike the Public Safety Meeting, Brian Hofer, the Chair of the PAC, was given a rebuttal period where he reiterated many of the same complaints with OPD’s collection and presentation of data as he has in the past—including that 75 jurisdictions over 25 years had walked away from Shotspotter in the past 25 years, some with over ten years of experience with the technology. Hofer also noted that the data being presented by Shotspotter is not independently evaluated and excludes jurisdictions that have terminated the contract. And Hofer questioned the OPD’s presentation of data to Council in the legislative package, which differed from the annual reports being brought to the PAC.

“In the very first annual report, we were told that the most [OPD] could account for was eight arrests… today, 252? I've never seen these numbers in my life…that's a 3,000% difference,” Hofer noted. The annual report in the packet for Council, is the same one presented to the PAC on which their analysis is based, shows 4 court cases connected to Shotspotter in 2023.

Shotspotter representatives rebutted much of Hofer’s statements, but without citations, and with often proprietary information that couldn’t be independently validated. Dooher, for example, responded directly to Hofer’s claims about jurisdictions dumping the system.

“I would like to point out that we have 170 customers, the vast majority of whom re-up. In fact, we have had more people or more jurisdictions expand their coverage in the last 18 months than have canceled us over the entire existence of our company. I must say, in some jurisdictions, this is purely politics over public policy, unfortunately, so they don't provide any information. Those few jurisdictions that do not use ShotSpotter anymore don't provide a reason, per se. But unfortunately, I would say that sometimes it is, like I said, purely politics over public policy,” Dooher said.

Shotspotter’s website shows a claim of 99% retention, but that’s only between 2020 and 2022 for reasons not made clear.

Misunderstanding About the PAC’s Role, Public Opposition

Many commenters seemed misled by the name of the Privacy Advisory Commission, and believed that the issues being outlined were those of surveillance and civil rights. Abdou told Council members that the City needs any technology it can get, but thought the concerns were about 'privacy', not efficacy.

“So we don't want people to just be bringing out allegation and then put all of us at jeopardy because somebody has a concern about privacy…And if you are so concerned, what is the alternative? What is the alternative? If you don't have any, then you don't need to be coming here trying to oppose what we have,” Abdou said.

Barbara Lafitte also misunderstood the PAC’s analysis and complained about the focus on “civil liberties.”

“In Brian Hofer’s report, he mentions civil liberties six times. One of the most important civil liberties is the right to live, which wasn't among the six he mentioned with the delay in OPDs 911, system, we need ShotSpotter to help officers identify potential shooting victims and evidence, even when the 911 system gets up to par, many people don't call 911 or the police when they hear gunfire because they're not sure where it's coming from, or because they're afraid of retaliation,” Lafitte said. Lafitte said that many residents are afraid to call 911 due to fears of retaliation, and that Shotspotter could bridge the gap of slow 911 response.

The PAC cited no such issues and no Commissioner believed that the system poses a threat to rights to privacy—rather the PAC is fulfilling one of its other functions, evaluating technology on its cost and benefits and making a recommendation to Council. Most of the commenters advocating against the system argued the opposite facts about its efficacy and 911 response—that Shotspotter is a contributor to slowing down 911 response, not supporting it.

“80% of the ShotSpotter alerts are false alarms alerts where no report is filed because nothing is found. That means that there are approximately 6,500 priority one calls that our first responders are supposed to be dispatched to with the worst dispatch times in the state of California. The flood of false calls is overwhelming and creates a situation where first responders do not make it to actual calls because they are busy responding to fake Shot Spotter alerts,” said James Burch, Policy Director of the Anti-Police Terror Project. Burch read a list of other cities that had discontinued the service for similar reasons, including Houston, Durham and Charlotte.

Shotspotter Divides Council

On the dais, Shotspotter had the support of Jenkins, Noel Gallo and, more passionately, Treva Reid. CM Dan Kalb expressed some skepticism, echoing brief comments he made during budgeting that if the contract expense is not data-driven, the money could be spent better elsewhere. Prefacing her no vote, CM Janani Ramachandran said the system itself could not be evaluated correctly because of the City’s lack of police staffing to respond to the alerts.

Gallo and Jenkins treated the deliberation as unnecessary for the most part, continuing a pattern of appearing to publicly undermine good governance commissions as impractical and unnecessary that began with public statements about the Public Ethics Commission this year. Although, in the end, the shorter contract could lead to a fact-based review that could eliminate the program if it's found unproductive, the Council will have to agendize the contract to terminate it. Otherwise, the contract will auto-renew under the oversight of the City Administrator.

Thao’s State of City Speech Highlights Achievements, Steers Clear of Controversies

Mayor Sheng Thao gave her second state of the city address on Tuesday, this year in the shadow of a recall financially backed by landlords and regional financiers and investors. Like most Mayors do, Thao recounted her successes, but steered clear of more controversial topics like the FBI raid of her home in Spring and the recall itself—although in several interviews the same week, Thao gave candid comments about both.

Thao boasted of economic investments, reductions in violent crime and paving “57 miles of roadway and 53,000 potholes.” And just days ahead of a historic fire on the eve of the anniversary of the Hills Firestorm, the implementation of a “vegetation management” plan spearheaded by OFD. Thao also said that Vice President Kamala Harris’ Office of Gun Violence would be giving Oakland a $2 MM grant for Ceasefire and that another $3 MM is coming from Kaiser Permanente [with legislation to be introduced at Tuesday’s Public Safety Committee to accept the latter grant]. Thao also boasted of the repair, improvement and restaffing of the City’s long-standing dysfunctional 911 system.

Of all of Thao’s claims, the reduction in homicides is the most objectively compelling, with crime, and particularly violent crime, the greatest polemic driving criticism of her administration. While the statistics for non-violent property crime take time to appear stable enough to make a certain claim, Oakland’s homicide rate fell by a huge margin in 2024, reversing the escalating trend that began during the Schaaf administration and under the tenure of former Police Chief Leronne Armstrong. The Armstrong period was punctuated with months of spectacular robbery caravans and the targeting of cannabis industry sites, while OPD appeared helpless, still reeling from over-spending on protests, and new scandals.

Murders rose to their highest level in a decade under Schaaf and the rise continued through Thao’s rocky first year—the increase had been blamed on progressive council members in previous years, but once Thao was elected the blame came to the Mayor's office. In late 2023, under the recommendations in a study on the City’s Ceasefire program, Thao dismantled Armstrong’s Violent Crime Operations Center and rekindled Ceasefire, which the study found had gone under-funded and resourced in the last years of Schaaf’s administration. During this time, Thao also accepted help from the CHP, although the impact and extent of CHP activity and whether it continues today is unclear—CHP have not released statistical or verifiable information about their activity, not even to the OPD. Violent crime began to decline during that period beginning in late 2023. Thao touted that the City is on track to have fewer than 100 murders for the first time since 2019.

“After experiencing over 120 homicides in each of the 3 years prior to my taking office, including 134 in 2021—we are on track this year for under 100. That's 30% less families reeling from tragedy and 30% less community members impacted by trauma,” Thao said.

Thao briefly defended her budget choices, noting that the Coliseum sale and contingency component had provided the City “flexibility” in providing public safety and services to residents during a historic deficit.

“I will always look for a better path and a solution that will invest in every police officer and firefighter we have, to keep them on our streets and responding to your calls,” Thao said, a claim that may have had an almost immediate manifestation in Friday’s hill’s fire. It’s unclear when and how cuts would have occurred had the alternative budge favored by Treva Reid, Noel Gallo and Janani Ramachandran been passed—but Oakland’s biggest fire since its predecessor 30 years almost to the day earlier, but most residents had a clear view of how the funded OFD’s immediate response led to a muted outcome.

Thao lauded significant economic development projects supported by the City, including the transition of Raimondi Park to the new home of the Ballers, the Coliseum as the new home of the Roots soccer team and the Prescott night market, along with the deal with AASEG.

“This investment into the Deep East is long overdue - decades overdue . . . and I am honored to be in the position to bring this community led vision to reality,”

Thao also boasted of evicting homeless encampments, including Wood Street and her EMP executive order, and claimed that a majority of residents accepted offers of shelter, a claim that was disputed later by homeless advocates during public comment.

Public Criticism Along Lines Unfamiliar to Media-Led Narrative

After her address, about 10 residents gave public comments on a broad spectrum of topics that ranged beyond the scope of Thao’s speech. Several speakers lauded Thao’s address and her accomplishment, including Julian Ware, the Vice President of IFPTE Local 21’s city chapter, who urged her to stay the course on the AASEG deal and its temporary financial bridge, but to scrutinize the budget—especially for departments that consistently go over budget, a seeming critique of the police department, which is on course to have a $30 MM overage under Thao’s administration.

“We need a line by line review of the budget, a reigning in of departments that consistently spend money the city does not have. And we need a commitment to legislate instead of pontificate. Anything less only contributes to the negative and unhelpful narratives that do nothing to uplift residents or improve the lives of the least among us. It also actively discourages future investors from seeking opportunities in the city. We ask that this body look at our overtime budgets, establish processes for accountability in the city spending, and push for improved hiring, so that the city's work gets done and residents get the sport the support that they deserve,” Ware said.

One speaker, a staff member from Communities for a Better Environment, communicated a shift in the organization’s stance on the sale of the Coliseum to AASEG—CBE has been critical of the rushed sale’s failure to frontload the community benefits agreement process before the property changes hands. CBE lauded AASEG, also a significant indicator that the parties may be close to a settlement on CBE’s lawsuit against the county and A’s.

No one representing the recall spoke, and only one speaker mentioned it at all, a surprise given proponents’ claims that support for the recall is popular and pervasive. Most criticism of Thao came from perspectives almost universally ignored by corporate media. Several speakers chastised the administration for expanded homeless encampment evictions under the Mayor’s new executive order, complaining that the new push lacks the housing or support services to avoid causing hardship for the unhoused.

Some residents also complained about stalled Head Start enrollment. Clarissa Doutherd of Parent Voices, a group that advocated for the revival of Head Start facilities in East Oakland and Chinatown that would have been shuttered under the Schaaf administration. Doutherd started her comments by praising Thao’s address—Thao is also one of several council members opposing the move to close the Head Start locations in 2021, originally facilitated by Loren Taylor when he chaired the Life Enrichment Committee. Thao, Fife, Kaplan and Bas helped find alternate funds to save the programs and facilities, which are an important employer for single mothers. Now, Doutherd says, enrollment at the centers is stagnating despite a long waiting list. Later in the meeting, during a legislative item to accept funding for Head Start programs, the program’s manager at the City of Oakland admitted that the sites are stagnating, mostly because Oakland does not offer competitive wages for legally mandated certified roles in each facility. [More on this story in the weeks to come].

Council Responds

Council response to the state of the city address was fairly muted but ironically divided on the definition of unity, a theme Thao struck various times during the address. CM Treva Reid took liberty for an extended monologue that lasted nearly five minutes about the Mayor and her policies that’s become the hallmark of the last days of her role as CM. Reid, who said in July that she favored harsh, immediate budget cuts including brownouts for OFD and the deletion of a police academy, criticized Thao’s budget on the potential for cuts to those same services four months later. Reid said that it was Thao that had actually fractured the Council and misled the public on the budget issues.

Reid’s commentary about the budget prompted rebuttals from several council members. Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said she wanted to remind the public that the City Administrator had already communicated that the rushed schedule favored by Reid and her council colleagues was too short a window to prepare an accurate assessment—which needs both the last FY’s quarter 4 report and the current quarter’s report to be of use.

CM Carroll Fife pushed back on claims that she had deliberately denied quorum to the hastily called meeting by Reid, Janani Ramachandran and Noel Gallo in early October. Fife said that she was at a meeting for the Alameda County Transportation Commission, where she serves as Oakland’s representative and was voting on critical legislative items that will bring funding and support for Oakland’s infrastructure.

“My integrity was called into question from a few of my colleagues, who stated that I intentionally did not attend a meeting on October 7 that was scheduled at the same time as the Alameda County Transportation Commission…And so I want to list out the Oakland Alameda Access Project, the West Oakland link, the Seventh Street Connections Project, the Calm East Oakland Streets project, the battery electric street super project,...the Laurel access to Mills, Maxwell Park and Seminary project, and the Martin Luther King Junior Way Complete Streets project. This item is bringing in millions of dollars to the city of Oakland for very desperately needed work that we need to do,” Fife said.

Here is the address as recorded by KTVU, the only station that recorded it live.

Council Committees Roundup

Finance

Q4 Report: The committee will hear the final Q4 expenditure and revenue and some insight into current revenues and expenditures. Though the report seems to show that last fiscal year’s deficit was not as bad as was initially predicted, it’s still difficult to tell the repercussions of that ahead of the report, or whether it represents the outcome of cost-cutting undertaken in the fourth quarter that fell short. Usually the Q4 report is presented alongside the first quarter report for the current fiscal year. But political pressure rushed the presentation of the 4th quarter report about a month ahead of its historical production in November and December and its being presented ahead of the Q1. Alongside the report, will be an oral report demanded by Janani Ramachandran, Treva Reid, and Noel Gallo about the current state of the Coliseum sale and its associated impact on the budget.

Timeline of Rushed Scheduling on Report Back: The report-back Coliseum/Budget meeting had originally been scheduled by the trio with only 24 hours notice [from Friday noon to Monday morning] ahead of an already scheduled special council meeting that itself was designed to optimize the potential passage of another piece of Ramachandran legislation to increase candidate fundraising limits. With only weeks left of the election period, Rules Chair Bas scheduled a special meeting in order to give the legislation the best chance of having a positive, rather than confusing, impact on the election fundraising environment—the polling of Council member availability offered no other date that could fit into a window that would facilitate the legislation, but the odds of getting quorum or the necessary six votes to enact the legislation immediately instead of a week later was always in question. There was no quorum for either meeting, causing the scuttling of the legislation which could no longer be passed in time to be more than a confusing element of the process.

During a Rules committee meeting the subsequent week, Bas again found a scheduled date for the item at request of Ramachandran, a fellow committee member, and again with little advance notice. The City Administrator canceled with Finance Chair Jenkins the night before last Tuesday’s meeting, unable to meet the deadline to deliver an accurate oral report, according to an email viewed by this publication. That leaves the legislation arriving on the date that the City Administrator, Finance and Rules all said was the preferable date for an accurate and comprehensive oral report, October 22.

OPD Overtime Report: Though the reports usually focus on stale data from previous quarters, they do provide a historical measurement of how OPD spends its prodigious overtime. Current discussions of overtime, given a parallel Q4 report that suggests OPD is again going to drive an expenditure deficit this fiscal year, are likely to occur during the meeting.

Public Works and Transportation

Annual Report for Illegal Dumping Surveillance Cameras: Some nuggets: the cameras are not effective in producing prosecutions, but do seem to have had some success in reducing dumping in certain hotspots where they were placed by the sheer reality of their advertised surveillance. The report also notes that DPW will soon be trying to bring true ALPR capacities to the system, noting that one weakness of the system is that it is not specifically designed to capture license plate data.

Community and Economic Development:

Amendments to Rent Adjustment and Just Cause for Eviction Ordinances: CM Dan Kalb is bringing this elegant response to recently revealed business license tax revenue data that shows landlords are the biggest scofflaw group driving business tax delinquencies. Kalb’s legislation would add language to the existing legislations barring landlords from raising rents or no-fault evicting tenants if they are on the delinquent list for business tax.

Public Safety

Kaiser DVP Grant: The Committee will deliberate on accepting a Kaiser grant to DVP that would add 3 MM over three years to life coaching and other violence prevention tactics, with a proposed 20% increase in service capacity.

**Dooher was also significantly sourced in a San Francisco Chronicle article about Price which alleged that hundreds of misdemeanor cases have languished under Price’s charge without being adjudicated, though not named as a recall proponent nor a Shotspotter employee.