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Matthai Kuruvila’s front page article on crime and the Oakland mayor’s race is a sweeping take on public safety’s political impact in the Bay’s second city. This is an issue we tackled back in July, and it’s good to see it surface again in the public discourse. However, the article’s second paragraph caught my eye:
“The homicide rate remains stubbornly high, even though overall violent crime has declined in recent years. The city just laid off 10 percent of the police force after a battle over officers’ pensions, an action their union said made the public less safe. If voters don’t approve a costly parcel tax and an amendment to another tax the same day they elect a new mayor, hundreds more officers could go.”
Sweeping generalities like “the homicide rate remains stubbornly high” are frustrating to everyday readers to begin with, but are even more agitating when they are not backed up by the facts.
According to the Oakland Police Department’s latest weekly crime statistics (from 9/20/10-9/26/10), there have been 62 murders in Oakland this year, down from 80 in 2009. That’s a 23 percent drop, and a 39 percent decrease from the 101 murders in 2008. Many police departments would give an arm and a leg for those kinds of numbers – and it’s worth keeping in mind that this reduction has occurred as the police department is losing officers.
So why is the Chronicle still pushing this image of Oakland as a hyper-violent city? We’d expect this sort of coverage from the resident Don Perata supporter and columnist Chip Johnson, but the editorial slant seems to have crept into the hard news items.