Yo! Youth OutLook

In another peaceful Piedmont week, the police have rushed to the rescue to resolve a variety of cases, among them five petty thefts, 13 parking complaints, and one barking dog. Their diligence has helped maintain Piedmont's status as the safest town of its size in
California.

Piedmont is surrounded by a very different city: Oakland. The police forces and crime rates contribute enormously to the dichotomy between the two cities. Why do they differ so much? What are the two police departments doing differently?

While Piedmont covers 1.7 square miles with 11,000 residents, Oakland has a population of about 400,000 over 56 square miles. Piedmont enjoys almost absolute safety and top-rate public schools and Oakland is infamous for inadequate education and poor safety. So far this year, Oakland has seen 82 homicides. In Piedmont, there have been none. In fact, the last time there was a homicide in Piedmont was eight years ago in 1998.

Piedmont is remarkably safe. The most serious crimes in Piedmont are theft and burglary, and the criminals are rarely Piedmont residents—often they're from Oakland. The most common police citations are traffic-related, and there is a curfew of 10 o'clock for all minors. It's not uncommon to see police on weekend nights herding youngsters out past curfew back to their parents' homes. The police don't have a whole lot else to do.

The local paper, the Piedmont Post, chronicles the week's calls to the police. Although in most other towns, reading about what people have needed when they've called 9-1-1 would probably not be amusing, in Piedmont the calls frequently elicit laughter. Many call to report a suspicious person who's been sitting in his car for too long, or a solicitor without a permit, or a rowdy youth party that's gotten too noisy. The editor even selects a “Pick of the Week”: the most ridiculous call of those seven days. The one this week was "Resident reported a suspicious male subject in backyard of neighbor's house; officer apprehended two subjects; one is the resident."

The calls and biddings of the Piedmont Police Department seem particularly ridiculous in comparison to the town that—although physically just next door—struggles with difficulties that have always been feared but never the reality in Piedmont.

The Oakland-Piedmont disparity is a blatant example of what economic segregation can do. “Piedmont is what Oakland wishes it could be,” said Malcolm Marshall, Oakland resident. High property values are the filter that exclude so many from obtaining Piedmont's fortunate resources—safety and good schools—that are basic desired necessities in every community. With hardly any residences for rent, and with housing prices that start at just a little under a million dollars, money makes those necessities into exclusive privileges. Piedmont has long been a town that's attracted the rich—in the 1920's it was called the “City of Millionaires” because it had the highest concentration of millionaires in the U.S. Since then, the town has continued on this trajectory of privilege.

It's definitely unequal. It's pretty unfair. But why is it?

Money makes a huge difference in the entire operation of Piedmont. The citizens frequently pass tax measures for education and are wealthy enough to donate generously to the public school system. They can afford high standards of city aesthetics; much ado is made over the selection of a proper tree species to line each street and securing both sufficient street lighting and attractive lampposts.

To be certain, the police department benefits from the wealth. Sergeant Shively, an Antioch resident, used to work in his hometown, which is “a lot busier,” he said. “Coming here to Piedmont, everything is staffed better and the workload is a little easier to take.”

Oakland hardly has an easy workload, and yet the pay is lower. While Oakland starting salary is upward of $70,000, Piedmont officers can make almost $100,000 early on, according to the department's front desk assistant.

Clearly, though, money is not everything in a town's safety. Oakland’s adopted budget for 2006-2007 fiscal year appropriates about $194 million to the police department. Piedmont spends about $5 million. The money spent on the police department is proportional in both towns: Piedmont spends about $454 per resident and Oakland spends roughly $485 per person.

Lack of staff does not add substantially to the disparity, either. "We presently have 803 sworn OPD officers," Police Chief Wayne Tucker said at a police-community meeting sponsored by the People United for a Better Oakland community organization (PUEBLO). The Piedmont Police department, on the other hand, has 20 officers. While there is one cop to cover about 500 people in Oakland, there is one cop for every 550 people per officer in Piedmont.

“That's pretty rich staffing for a city of this size,” Police Chief Tucker explained about Oakland. "I won't stand up here today and say that we are understaffed. We're not.” The disparity may be a product of something less quantifiable—the attitude between civilians and the police.

Amber Johnson, 16, of Oakland, described the general feeling of many Oakland residents towards their officers. “People hate the Oakland police. People don't trust them. Don't get me wrong, there are some officers that are out there that do their job, but I hate those officers that do something like they did to my friend. They shot and killed him and he wasn't even shooting back or anything.” Oakland police, in the mind of many residents, are the enemy. Many feel like the police are out to criminalize them rather than keep them safe.

Piedmont's relationship to police, however, lies on the opposite end of the spectrum. Sergeant Shively said, “I've been here 9 years and gotten many more compliments than I have in my first 17 years in the Antioch Police Department. We are appreciated more here and are trusted more here than other departments.”

Piedmont police work is primarily preventative, largely thanks to Piedmont's small size. “Our response time is a lot lower than Oakland's—it's around 2 minutes—because we're so much smaller,” said Shively. “If you call Oakland and say there's a suspicious looking guy in the corner, they're gonna get there in 45 minutes. They're not gonna catch anybody, whereas if we get there in 2-3 minutes, we'll find out who it is, check him for warrants, and everything."

In addition, “Our availability to take calls is also much greater,” said Shively.

Since Piedmont police mainly prevent crimes rather than try to go catch them, and since in the first place there is so little serious crime in Piedmont to delay them, there is much more trust, closeness, and appreciation of the police amongst Piedmont residents.

“The Piedmont police tend to treat their citizens with a certain level of respect,” explained Tom Brightbill, 18, a Piedmont resident all his life. “The cops in Piedmont seem to have a certain understanding of the population in Piedmont and act accordingly. For the most part, they realize that most of the kids in my town aren't out there doing anything particularly awful, because, well, nothing awful ever really happens in Piedmont."

Most of the serious crimes against Piedmont property and citizens are committed by people who aren't from Piedmont. This gives rise to a defensive sense of community that is on the lookout for “outsiders” and is dependent on the police for protection. “People here are much more likely to call the police when they see something going on than people in Oakland,” said Shively.

The police in Piedmont aren't solely responsible for the safety in Piedmont; as long as Piedmont attracts the wealthy and repels the underprivileged, the residents will remain in the law-abiding mainstream, able to afford protection from any outliers that might threaten their insular safety. Oakland police, however, do seem to contribute to the cyclical problem of violence by cultivating deep distrust and animosity through their focus on punishment over prevention. Still, these negative feelings are partially a product of the unique challenges of the Oakland job, working in a big and busy city. For these uncontrollable reasons, the police cannot work as preventatively as the Piedmont police. Subsequently, they easily fall into the role of the enemy in the public mind.

Obviously, comparing the two towns' police departments does not illuminate the key to Oakland and Piedmont's differences. After all, the police departments seem fairly similar, with proportional money and officers invested. What the comparison does highlight is the rigid nature of economic classes and the extensive, far-reaching power of wealth.

Sophie Theis, 17, is determined to understand why Piedmont is the way it is. 1 of 1