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An agreement between the chief of the Oakland Police Department and the powerful Oakland Police Officers Association union to put more officers on Oakland’s streets at peak crime times delivers considerably fewer officers than first proposed by the chie f, and appears to do so at considerably greater cost.  

The police agreement was announced by OPOA and city officials last week, and helped to avert a proposed “state of emergency” declaration by the Oakland City Council that would have allowed Chief Wayn e G. Tucker to implement the plan without union approval. 

But as of Monday afternoon, many city officials did not have a copy of the agreement, even though it was the subject of widely covered press conferences by both the police officers’ union and city officials last week. Neither Councilmembers Jane Brunner and Desley Brooks had copies, nor did the public information officer for the Oakland Police Department. With the assistance of Brunner’s office, the Daily Planet was able to obtain a copy of the agreement from the office of the personnel director of the City of Oakland.  

It is scheduled to be presented to the Oakland City Council tonight (Tuesday) at the council’s regular meeting at Oakland City Hall beginning at 6 p.m. 

Under the agreement, only 64 on-call patrol officers will be available at peak crime times in the city. That is an increase from the present 35 but is fewer than the original 84 officers proposed by Tucker. 

In addition, while Tucker’s proposal would have sharply curtailed police overtime pay, the newly signed agreement between the chief and the union leaves the existing overtime structure in place. Police overtime costs the City of Oakland millions of dollars a year. 

A separate plan to form a tactical squad to put an additional 24 to 30 officers on Oakland streets during weekend hours was included in the agreement, but plans for the tactical squad formation had been announced by Chief Tucker’s office several weeks ago and had not been contested by the union. 

The Oakland Tribune reported union officials as praising Oakland City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and District 1 Councilmember Jane Brunner (North Oakland) for what the newspaper called “helping to broker the deal.” 

Oakland District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks, who first revealed the existence of Tucker’s deployment proposal at a PUEBLO meeting in Oakland earlier this month, criticized the agreement, saying, “I’m not clear why reducing overtime became a less important goal than continuing to give some people m ore money.” Noting that OPOA President Bob Valladon had initially rejected the chief’s proposal, Brooks said, “a week ago, Bob Valladon was saying that the chief’s plan would not work. What happened in a week? Does it work now because they have been promi sed more money?” 

Brooks called the agreement “the Raiders deal all over again.” 

Councilmember Brunner’s office could not be reached later on Monday to comment on Brooks’ statement. Neither Councilmember De La Fuente’s office nor a spokesperson for Mayor Jerry Brown’s office returned telephone calls related to this article. Oakland Police Lt. Pete Sarna, who wrote Chief Tucker’s original deployment plan, was also not available for comment. 

Though the agreement itself was widely reported last week, with press statements issued by the police union on Thursday and a city administration-sponsored press conference held on Friday, city officials would not comment on details as revealed in the text obtained by the Planet. 

Police Public Information Officer Rol and Holmgren said on Monday that “I’m looking for a final copy myself. I’m interested in getting one so that I can inform my officers.” A secretary in the office of City Administrator Deborah Edgerly said that copies of the agreement could only be obtaine d from Press Secretary Karen Boyd, who was “out for the week.” Councilmember Brunner’s office did not have a copy of the agreement either. 

Councilmember Brooks, who had not seen a copy of the agreement herself as of Monday, said that “I received a briefi ng on it on Thursday, but [officials in the city administrator’s office] wouldn’t give us anything in writing. They said they wanted it all to be released together on Friday.” 

The two page agreement itself does not detail the number of police officers to be reassigned to peak crime periods, nor does it mention how those officers would be paid for. 

But Chief Tucker’s original redeployment plan called for realigning the police department’s current three 8 hour shift plan to a series of overlapping shifts that would include some officers working five days a week for eight hours, some working four days a week for 10 hours, and some working three days a week for 12 hours. Under the current schedule, when more officers are needed for high crime times, they ar e allowed to work over their regular eight-hour shifts for overtime pay.  

Chief Tucker’s proposed overlapping shift schedule would have eliminated much of the need for overtime pay. That schedule does not appear in the new chief-police union agreement, a nd thus appears to be a casualty of the negotiations. 

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