When Gov. Gavin Newsom announced earlier this year that the California Highway Patrol would install nearly 300 new license plate readers in Oakland, it was the end of a roundabout way to fund, approve and implement the cameras. But the effect was the same: Oakland would see a nearly tenfold increase in the number of license plate readers.
But that increase in cameras won’t be matched by an increase in the number of officers at the Oakland Police Department. What’s more, the Alameda County Civil Grand Jury released a report questioning whether the department has the space for the new cameras.
“It is unlikely that OPD will respond to more than a small percentage of reports (of license plate readers),” the report said.
The license plate readers, which were approved by Mayor Sheng Thao, were approved by the commission in October. The cameras take snapshots of a vehicle’s license plates and compare them to a list of vehicles linked to serious crimes, alerting OPD if there’s a match. They were to replace OPD’s existing 30 license plate readers, which had stopped working after their software became outdated.
But for months, the grand jury could find no evidence that Oakland had signed a contract to operate these new cameras. In late March, Newsom announced that the CHP would install 290 cameras in the city.
“This investment marks another step forward in our commitment to improving public safety and addressing organized crime and traffic violence in Oakland and across California,” Newsom said at the time.
But the civilian grand jury, a group of citizens that monitors government practices, said responding to reports from all those cameras could be too much for the Oakland Police Department. The cameras, the grand jury report said, could generate dozens of reports, each of which would require an officer to respond.
It’s a similar problem for police as ShotSpotter, an audio system that detects gunshots. The jury found that OPD receives an average of 11 reports per day from ShotSpotter, but OPD officers can’t respond to all of them. Given that, the jury said police aren’t prepared to respond to the additional reports generated by license plate readers, which could potentially be more than 100 reports per day.
OPD also isn’t likely to see an increase in the manpower available to handle these reports. Oakland is in the final stages of passing a budget that could include cuts to OPD. The city is considering proposals to reduce police staffing to just 600 officers, well below the minimum staffing level of 678 officers mandated as part of Measure Z, implemented in 2014.
“If city leaders truly care about public safety, we need to seriously consider adequately staffing the Oakland Police Department,” police union president Huy Nguyen said last month.
Currently, OPD uses a patchwork system to handle ShotSpotter alerts, the grand jury report said. According to an OPD witness cited in the report, officers respond to alerts when they are “in the area and available.”
“There are no established procedures for determining when to respond to ShotSpotter alerts,” the report said.
The report speculates that this approach could violate Oakland city code, which prohibits a “viewpoint-based” process when using technology. Without a formal process for responding to alerts, OPD runs the risk of prioritizing reports based on officers’ biases, the report suggests.
The grand jury had similar concerns about license plate readers.
“(License plate readers) generate a much higher volume of reports than ShotSpotter, exacerbating the problem of intentional or unintentional bias,” the report said.
Questions about the viability of license plate readers were just a portion of the grand jury’s concerns about OPD’s use of technology. The report found that the department routinely installed ineffective and soon-to-be obsolete technologies.
The report also said OPD lacked a comprehensive strategy for implementing police technology, with only two sections on technology in the department’s 2021-2024 strategic plan.
“The City of Oakland appreciates the attention the Alameda County Grand Jury has given to these important matters,” OPD said in a statement Tuesday. “The City is reviewing the report and will contact the Grand Jury as appropriate.”
The grand jury, however, did not place all blame on the police. It also criticized an approval process, which requires approval from both the City Council and the city’s Privacy Advisory Commission, to delay tech projects until they are outdated.
“The grand jury examined numerous technologies introduced by OPD over the past decade and found a series of poor choices in technology selection, poor implementation of promising technologies, poor maintenance and updates, and a general lack of strategic vision,” the report said.
