Damning New Report Finds Less Than 10% of Calls for Service to Oakland Police Department Are For Violent Crime, More Than Half Are Not Crimes At All

OPD’s failure to prioritize officer time on violent crime — even as homicides spiked — shows necessity of expanding the MACRO non-police response program

Oakland, CA — A bombshell new report finds that the Oakland Police Department (OPD) wastes most of its officers’ time responding to interactions that are not even crimes at all — and just a small fraction of their time is spent on serious or violent felonies. 

The report — an analysis of OPD calls for service from 2018 to 2020 conducted by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) — found that just 9% of calls to which OPD responded were for violent crimes — and roughly 60% were for non-criminal activities like noise complaints. 

This translates to more than half of actual OPD officer time wasted on activities that are not even criminal offenses under the California Penal Code — and roughly 84% of officer time spent on matters other than violent crime. These data include 2020, when homicides increased sharply because of the pandemic and while OPD claimed to be understaffed.

Out of 625,915 officer-responded calls included in this analysis, 368,000 were not crimes at all. Every single one of those calls could be handled more effectively by other city departments, such as the Oakland Fire Department, which houses the City’s new Mobile Assistance Community Responders of Oakland (MACRO) non-police response program. 

“This report proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that OPD spends the vast majority of its time on nonviolent, non-criminal issues like harassing unhoused people or towing abandoned cars instead of focusing on violent crime. It proves their claims of being understaffed are a lie,” said James Burch, policy director for the Anti Police-Terror Project. “There is no staffing crisis, there has never been one — but there is a crisis of corruption and mismanagement within OPD and the Mayor’s office.”

The report was ordered by the Oakland City Council a year ago and due in March. City council explicitly directed the city administrator not to allow OPD to review and alter the draft report before it was released.

In response, the Schaaf administration appears to have delayed the report’s release until after the midcycle budget adjustment process was already underway. Mayor Schaaf has proposed an $11 million increase to OPD’s FY22-23 budget even though the department already receives over 40% of the general fund. 

The report will be presented at a special City Council meeting on Tuesday at 10:30am, when the mid-cycle budget allocation will also be considered. A broad coalition of residents, city workers and community groups are calling for greater investment in the MACRO program instead of more wasteful police spending. 

The report corroborates previous analyses — long denied by OPD — that as much as 90% of officer time is spent on nonviolent and noncriminal matters, responsibilities that could be transferred to other city departments and programs (like MACRO) at significant cost savings.

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