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Two years after the North Oakland community successfully fought to regain their Oakland Police Department Crime Reduction Teams (CRT), the new chief of the Oakland Police Department has removed them again. 

In a message e-mailed this week to North Oakland residents, District 1 Councilmember Jane Brunner urged constituents to oppose the CRT removal. 

“In neighborhoods where the work of the CRTs has been demonstrated to be the difference between a dangerous neighborhood and a safe one, removing them is just irresponsible,” Brunner wrote. 

A spokesperson for the Oakland Police Department did not return telephone calls in connection with this story. 

And concern over the reduction in the CRTs was not helped by rumors that Chief Wayne Tucker was also considering either reducing or eliminating foot patrols in some of the city’s business districts. 

Oakland’s CRT units are roving patrols designed to concentrate on the city’s street level drug-dealing and felony crime trends. The city operates six such teams, assigned to specific areas of the city on a four-day-a-week basis. OPD Lieutenant Lawrence Green, North Oakland Area Commander, reported two years ago that the North Oakland CRT had been responsible for 1,000 arrests, including six homicide arrests, in the preceding 13 months. 

But in 2002, then-Chief Richard Word cut both North Oakland’s and West Oakland’s CRT patrols from four days to two, diverting the teams for the remaining days to “sideshow abatement” activities in East Oakland. Violent crime in North Oakland immediately skyrocketed, jumping 14 percent. North Oakland murders averaged 11 per year in the two years that the CRT was reduced, jumping 200 percent from the murder rate when the CRT was fully operational. 

The North Oakland CRT patrols were restored in late 2003 following intercession by BrunBrunner’s office and complaints from North Oakland residents and businesses. 

Speaking to a North Oakland community meeting hosted by Brunner in the fall of 2003, Chief Word admitted that his office had “made a mistake” in reducing the CRT patrols. Word promised that the CRTs would not be moved again under his administration. 

Now, according to Brunner, Word’s replacement, Chief Wayne Tucker, has again moved half of the North Oakland CRT patrols from North Oakland, effective Tuesday of this week, as well as from Montclair, the Lake Merritt area, and the San Antonio and Fruitvale districts. Brunner said that Tucker plans to divert the patrols to “focus on other areas of the city.” 

She said that Tucker had originally proposed eliminating the North Oakland CRT altogether, but after meeting with Brunner and hearing from North Oakland citizens, Brunner said the chief agreed to let half of the CRT patrols remain in force, with a promise to return to full service in seven weeks. She called Tucker’s compromise a “small victory.” 

“The chief told me that he is trying to lower the rate of violent crime in other parts of the city, and he doesn’t want to use overtime to do that,” Brunner said. “That’s why he’s using the CRT. But I clearly disagree with that tactic.” 

In her e-mail message, which she said received “tremendous response” from North Oakland residents, Brunner wrote that “many of [our] neighborhoods are right on the edge, and taking CRT’s out of the areas they’ve been working on threatens to throw away the progress that’s been made. I predict there will be an increase in crime in many North Oakland flatlands neighborhoods if we remove the CRT’s. We cannot let that happen.” 

On the issue of the foot patrols, Rockridge District Association secretary Louise Rothman-Reimer said that “it has been rumored for a long time” that Chief Tucker is considering their elimination or reduction. 

The rumors have become so persistent, Rothman-Reimer said, that the Oakland Merchants Leadership Forum, a citywide merchants group, has scheduled a meeting with the chief on the issue, to be held on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 8 a.m., in Hearing Room 4 at Oakland City Hall. 

“The citizens of Rockridge are very concerned about this possibility,” Rothman-Reimer said. “Their presence is needed on the street.” 

Discussion of both the proposed CRT reduction and the possible foot patrol reduction was circulating this week on a North Oakland police-community e-mail list sponsored by Lt. Green. 

Councilmember Brunner said that while she had heard the rumor of the possible foot patrol reduction, she could not confirm it.(