San Leandro Police Officers Association Lies in Press Release

The SLPOA distributed a press release recently that was picked-up by several outlets. See https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-leandro-police-union-concerned-about-increase-in-violent-crimes.

Let's break this down piece by piece.

Where is SLPOA getting their stats from? Accordingly to city officials, such as city council member Benny Lee, SLPOA is getting their stats from https://cityprotect.com. If so, then we need to have an honest conversation about that website. All data it receives is taken from law enforcement's own reporting. It doesn't give aggregate numbers, but a data visualization. So SLPOA's numbers are coming from SLPD directly and not the website. In fact, those numbers are coming from data SLPD hasn't publicly disclosed because they don't match with what SLPD is supposed to report publicly. (See below.) This is concerning because SLPOA is not supposed to be using city resources for their own agenda and SLPD is not supposed to have two conflicting sets of crime stats.

That said, let's look at the source data from SLPD at https://www.sanleandro.org/depts/pd/crime_stats/default.asp, and the related pages. Notice how the crime rates, since 2010, have remained relatively stagnant? There was a high in 2013, a low in 2015, and a slightly higher 2019 than 2010. This despite SLPD's budget increasing from $25.5 million to $40.9 million, an increase of $15.4 million (or 60.6%) over that same period. Having seven more police officers in 2019 than in 2010, it doesn’t appear to have had a significant effect on the crime rate in San Leandro.

Let's compare this to the clearance rate, or the rate at which crimes are solved, for SLPD. The clearance rate has decreased since 2010, despite the increased budget and additional police officers. In 2010, the clearance rate for violent crimes was 40.9%, but in 2019, the clearance rate for violent crimes was down to 29.1%, according to the California Department of Justice. Similarly, the clearance rate for property crimes was 19.4% in 2010, but had decreased to 7.9% in 2019. This is similar to national trends -- police are terrible at solving crimes, let alone preventing them in the moment. (This despite Chief Tudor's widely reported chance encounter while getting his coffee.) See, for example, https://www.vox.com/2018/9/24/17896034/murder-crime-clearance-fbi-report.

So, if SLPD has a 60.6% larger budget than 2010 and seven more officers, but about the same crime rate and a lower clearance rate, what does that say about SLPOA's press released that was reported verbatim without any substantive review? Because to me this looks like canned propaganda. Shoot, here's an article all about the American phenomenon of "copaganda" at https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/07/9887229/copaganda-police-propaganda-protests-meaning.

Actually, a notable and interesting fact is that public records requested for SLPD's use of force data show that their use of force has increased by 16% since body-worn cameras were purchased in 2014. This despite the fact that when the city council approved more than $400,000 to buy body-worn cameras for police officers in 2014, SLPD's presentation said that it would result in a decrease in the use of force by police officers. And when a new no-bid contract for body-worn cameras came to the San Leandro city council in June 2019, there was no information on whether the hundreds of thousands spent on the cameras had achieved what was promised five years earlier. In fact, there was no data at all and the San Leandro City Council didn’t ask for any.

I hope this information is useful as more people get involved in these community conversations.

Take care.

(Credit for original research to Mike Katz-Lacabe.)

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