How Will The Police Leadership Vacuum In Oakland Affect San Leandro?

Crisis is an overused word but what else describes the Oakland crime scene that may be having a spillover effect on San Leandro.

When Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan resigned last week, Mayor Jean Quan appointed Deputy Chief Anthony Toribio as interim chief.

Now we learn that Toribio has reverted to the rank of captain and stepped down as interim chief.

As of now Oakland's interim police chief is Sean Whent, a 17-year veteran who has served in that department's internal affairs division, according to KTVU.

It seems like our neighbor to the north is a mess.

It's the robbery capital of the United States, the Oakland Tribune reports.

It's leaders have so little faith in their department that they hired an outside consultant.

And it's a city that doesn't seem to trust its police. Last year Oakland fired two officers and disciplined 42 others for how they handled the Occupy protests. Hardly a move calculated to boost police morale in a city where thugs paralyze traffic by holding sideshows, such is their contempt for the law.

But enough about Oakland.

What do its crime woes mean for San Leandro?

Perhaps the City Council will ask the San Leandro Police Department to use its new number-crunching capability to tell citizens whether crime here is up, down or sideways, statistically-speaking.

What little we do know comes from an analysis of arrest records compiled in December by school board member and citizen journalist Mike Katz. He showed that Oaklanders accounted for three out of every 10 arrests made in San Leandro in the 12-month study period. San Leandro residents accounted for four out of 10 arrests during that time frame. 

It would further analysis to tease out the Oakland effect: some people were arrested multiple times; most of the arrests were for minor offenses; the three most serious categories of arrests -- felony warrants, resisting arrest and burglary -- accounted for about one out of six offenses.

What was the representation of Oaklanders among these more serious offenses?

And what of the unsolved crimes, like the armed store robberies we're heard about?

SLPD has not been idle.

Indeed the department has campaigned for public support with the strategic use of press releases. They follow a formula: citizen sees crime; citizen reports crime; SLPD makes arrest.

No doubt each parable is true.

But they don't tell the whole story: is Oakland's crime flu infecting San Leandro? What is the trend in public safety?