Oakland has one of the slowest 9-1-1 response times in the state. A likely time-saving technology was debated by citizen-run organizations that aim to use it for disciplining police officers too.
Why can't the GPS dispatch move forward and meanwhile details of using the system for police misconduct be conducted? I hope people who lose their lives due to slow response times don't sue Oakland...
Why this important component of 911 system has not been pursued by the management of the city’s 911 operations or OPD is not clear. Muir is long gone. This should be brought to the City Council. This reminds me of the discovery that HR had several hundred 911 applicants for a year with no action taken. There’s so little on the recent CC agenda that opportunity is not an excuse.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Rajni, didn't you recently note another potential proposition (tax increase) to further fund improving 911 response times? This follows a previous tax increase for the same purpose. In turn, I recall Kaplan and Thao increasing funding for 911 dispatch recruiting by roughly $2MM a few years ago - and then it was discovered that HR had interviewed NO candidates among 1000s for these roles. Certainly doesn't seem like a money issue here...
It seems like there would have been a logical and simple way to resolve this issue in the first place: allow OPD to use the GPS for 911 purposes and store the data for 30 days as requested, and defer the question of longer data retention. However, I haven't watched any of the video and am not privy to any other forces at work. But it certainly seems like this issue should come back to City Council again very soon to sort this out.
Another fine Oakland city government example of how they keep us under the fear of crime and those who, like their reflection on the far right, exploit it.
Our article provided a link to the July 9, 2024 PAC meeting video during which some of the concerns about a longer retention window came up (footnote #3 -- the discussion starts around the 44 minute mark).
Among the concerns about longer data retention mentioned during the discussion were data privacy concerns for the people in the vehicles, the financial and technical impacts of increased storage, and the need to meet and confer with labor groups and attorneys to understand the implications.
It's unclear why the city council has not scheduled the policy for their review, and we are not aware of a specific reason.
This article seems to falsely imply that the PAC obstructed implementation despite their recommending to the council to adopt the policy with minor changes.
Why didn't the council vote to approve? Even if you disagree with their recommended changes (one year retention and officer access to their own tracking data) I think the crux of the article should be asking why opd and the council haven't adopted the policy, with or without the PAC recommendations.
I do appreciate you bringing this up, though. I'm shocked to learn opd doesn't use gps to dispatch police. I'd really like to know why this was abandoned.
Hello again. We updated the article from its original version to make corrections and reflect new information we received shortly after the article was published. Some of these corrections were brought to our attention by our alert readers — Thank you!
The updates were: to make clearer that the PAC recommended (not blocked) an amended version of the GPS use policy with a longer retention period; to offer more detail on the concerns about a longer retention period discussed at the PAC meeting; and to emphasize that the city council has yet to take up the policy for discussion.
We, the editors apologize to the author of this article — we missed their final draft changes to the article before we published it. These updates reflect the author’s final draft changes, and their original intent.
Thanks for reading and for raising the question. To be clear, I am not affiliated with the police union or any advocacy organization. This article is based on public records, City Auditor findings, and oversight proceedings, and examines how a GPS dispatch tool became stalled after its use expanded from dispatch to discipline.
The piece does not question the legitimacy of civilian oversight. It focuses on the process and consequences of that policy shift, particularly its impact on 911 response times, which the City Auditor identified as a public safety concern. I appreciate the engagement and welcome continued discussion.
Uhh, what? "Reframing" a discussion caused the policy to fail? There is no mention of anyone being opposed to activating the GPS features of the system, including the PAC. Why pretend storing the GPS data indefinitely is not doable today? In fact, deleting it oddly fast quickly (30 days?! Spam emails are stored longer!) to only serve to undermine misconduct complaints.
So, who is opposed to the GPS data being used for oversight and why? That is the real question, which you evaded awkwardly. That party seems to be the one that is holding up implementing these improvements everyone wants.
And just a few other details - at the July 2024 PAC meeting, then-fire union president Zac Unger stated that they were in agreement with the 30 day retention period, upon discussion with the City Attorney and OFD. However, he said that OFD's final policy which was presented at PAC still needed "meet and confer."
When OPD made their presentation, they alluded to their policy matching OFD due to similar discussion with the City Attorney and administration, but that they had not had any "meet and confer" sessions yet.
Of course, this was over a year ago, so it is unclear why neither of these policies have been presented to City Council for final approval. Of note, retention times for both OFD and OPD must match given the technology constraints.
Hello Lynne. I wrote this article after listening to the Auditor's presentations to the Public Safety Committee and the Public Safety Planning and Oversight Commission meetings last month.
During the first meeting, the auditor mentioned that the GPS in police vehicles was in "meet and confer" and then-Assistant City Administrator Joe DeVries mentioned that there was an issue at the Privacy Advisory Commission meeting about data retention times for both OPD and OFD which was delaying the process. At the OPSPOC meeting, OPD Deputy Chief Tedesco said that the last time he had heard this policy discussed was during a PAC meeting in the summer of 2024.
My goal was to inform the community and stakeholders of what happened at that meeting, in order to hopefully jumpstart implementation in light of the auditor's recommendations.
As a side note, OFD went ahead with a pilot program, but it is unclear what their final use policy retention time is or what process they used for approval, since this hasn't been presented to City Council.
For more information on the City Auditor's recommendations city-wide, check out the latest Auditor's Follow-up Report (ARFU).
Hi Lynne, thank you for your additional observations. The point of the article is that the GPS-enabled function still has not been implemented more than a year later, which impacts the city's ability to reduce police emergency response times. The PAC's and CPRA's addition of investigatory considerations to what was otherwise a purely technical and operational policy appears to have been the initial cause of the delay. Notably, the PAC did not add those investigatory considerations when they recommended the fire department's policy minutes prior. (They then retroactively went back to the fire policy and extended the data retention period for that policy too.)
We do not know why the city council and/or police department have not moved forward with implementation since. Again, that is the main point of the article. We presented the evidence so that readers can inspect it and decide for themselves what to make of it. Thanks again for the discussion.
Thank you for your prompt and thoughtful reply to mine. I appreciate your willingness to engage.
Why is it notable that the Privacy Advisory Commission did not appear to have the same investigatory considerations when they recommended the fire department's policy? The system is shared between fire and police, so the data will be saved regardless of which department responds to the call, correct? If expediency is the goal, it seems PAC did well to make their argument for data saving only once.
Additionally, I hope we can agree that firefighters do not have the same poor track record and are simply not in a position to engage in the type of misconduct we have seen police officers historically engaging in with the public. Fire departments interact with the public a very different capacity that doesn't involve having excessive power over members of the public, especially those from communities that have been traditionally targeted by police. While both are public servants, the two are not comparable in regard to their capacity to abuse their power.
Should PAC ignore their own obligations for the sake of expediency? I don't want them to do that. It's a false choice to propose that we must either choose oversight or GPS functionality. We can definitely have both.
As a reader, I did not find that the main point of the article was a critique of city council or police department for not moving forward with implementation. PAC seemed targeted specifically. I would ask why both council and OPD didn't advocate for extending data storage for investigatory purposes themselves. Do they not want public trust restored in the police? Are they not also obligated to serve the public through sensible oversight?
Agreed. I watched the meeting video because I was unclear from the article what happened: the PAC recommended implementation of the proposed policy with an amendment to extend retention from 30 days to one year and a right for officers to have access to the data to defend themselves from accusations.
The article implies that the PAC threw sand in the gears, and the video of the meeting tells a completely different story. The PAC clearly advocated for the protection of city employees privacy.
Hi Andy. Thanks for raising this very important part of the story. As Sean alluded to, this was lost in the editing process, and I'm glad that it's back. I'd love to know what your opinion is as to what is within PAC's jurisdiction.
Hello again. We updated the article from its original version to make corrections and reflect new information we received shortly after the article was published. Some of these corrections were brought to our attention by our alert readers — Thank you!
The updates were: to make clearer that the PAC recommended (not blocked) an amended version of the GPS use policy with a longer retention period; to offer more detail on the concerns about a longer retention period discussed at the PAC meeting; and to emphasize that the city council has yet to take up the policy for discussion.
We, the editors apologize to the author of this article — we missed their final draft changes to the article before we published it. These updates reflect the author’s final draft changes, and their original intent.
The statistics cited in this article are accurate, but they describe only part of Oakland’s emergency-response reality.
Oakland does have some of the slowest 9-1-1 answer and response times in California for ordinary civilians. What is missing from the analysis is a critical operational distinction: not all callers use the same dispatch pathway, and not all callers experience those delays.
In practice, Oakland operates two functional emergency-response tracks. One is the standard civilian pathway, where callers often wait extended periods for calls to be answered or dispatched, or receive no response at all. The other is a privileged pathway used by criminal informants or protected reporting parties, whose calls are routed through carrier-level Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) lines that bypass standard civilian queues and result in rapid police deployment.
This is not speculation. It is documented in Oakland Police Department records.
In my case, repeated false emergency calls were made against me in 2019 by the informant (Moses Jacko, Jr.) who lived next door to me, the cousin of Oakland Police John Jacko Romero. Those calls did not originate through the standard civilian 9-1-1 system.
An Incident Recall report created and released by the Oakland Police Department lists the “Original Location” of one such call as “T-MOBILE (877) 653-7911.” That number is a carrier-routed PSAP access line, not a residential phone or a standard cellular callback. The record was generated by OPD and disclosed by OPD in response to a public records request.
Calls routed through this channel produced near-immediate police response, despite the absence of any actual crime. By contrast, my own attempts to report harassment, threats, false reporting, and ongoing targeting through standard civilian channels were delayed, deprioritized, or ignored.
This routing was not incidental. The individual next door was acting as a criminal informant and was allowed, and effectively incentivized, to place multiple 9-1-1 calls against me. Incentivization is a known feature of informant programs, where cooperation may be rewarded with leniency, protection, or other benefits. In practice, this can encourage repeated calls and escalating narratives, particularly when the target is already flagged or illegally watch-listed.
The result is a predictable feedback loop. Informant-initiated calls are treated as credible by default, routed through privileged PSAP access, dispatched rapidly, and then used to justify further police action. Meanwhile, the civilian who is the target of those calls, especially when watch-listed, experiences the opposite outcome: delayed responses, dismissed complaints, and an inability to obtain protection or relief.
This distinction matters to the broader policy debate raised in the article. Oakland’s response-time crisis cannot be fully explained by staffing shortages or delayed deployment of GPS-enabled dispatch technology alone. Rapid response already exists in Oakland. It is simply selectively applied.
Any honest discussion of emergency-response inequity must examine who is granted PSAP-level routing access, how often informant-initiated calls are used to trigger police action against civilians, and how illegal watchlisting interacts with dispatch prioritization.
Without transparency on those questions, response-time statistics, while accurate, present an incomplete picture of how emergency dispatch actually operates in Oakland.
For that reason, I am providing a link to the actual public records request and OPD disclosure from which the PSAP routing information is taken, so readers can review the department’s own documentation directly. This is not an allegation. It is a matter of record.
Why can't the GPS dispatch move forward and meanwhile details of using the system for police misconduct be conducted? I hope people who lose their lives due to slow response times don't sue Oakland...
Why this important component of 911 system has not been pursued by the management of the city’s 911 operations or OPD is not clear. Muir is long gone. This should be brought to the City Council. This reminds me of the discovery that HR had several hundred 911 applicants for a year with no action taken. There’s so little on the recent CC agenda that opportunity is not an excuse.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Rajni, didn't you recently note another potential proposition (tax increase) to further fund improving 911 response times? This follows a previous tax increase for the same purpose. In turn, I recall Kaplan and Thao increasing funding for 911 dispatch recruiting by roughly $2MM a few years ago - and then it was discovered that HR had interviewed NO candidates among 1000s for these roles. Certainly doesn't seem like a money issue here...
You are correct Barbara about the tax measures. Measure NN recently passed, and it included "improving emergency 911 response times and quality of response." The new parcel tax question includes "prevent longer 911 response times." References are in two Oakland Report articles - https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/measure-nns-oversight-commission and https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/public-safety-updates-a-look-ahead
It seems like there would have been a logical and simple way to resolve this issue in the first place: allow OPD to use the GPS for 911 purposes and store the data for 30 days as requested, and defer the question of longer data retention. However, I haven't watched any of the video and am not privy to any other forces at work. But it certainly seems like this issue should come back to City Council again very soon to sort this out.
Another fine Oakland city government example of how they keep us under the fear of crime and those who, like their reflection on the far right, exploit it.
Why didn’t OPD just agree to the longer retention window?
Lauren, thank you for your comment.
Our article provided a link to the July 9, 2024 PAC meeting video during which some of the concerns about a longer retention window came up (footnote #3 -- the discussion starts around the 44 minute mark).
Among the concerns about longer data retention mentioned during the discussion were data privacy concerns for the people in the vehicles, the financial and technical impacts of increased storage, and the need to meet and confer with labor groups and attorneys to understand the implications.
It's unclear why the city council has not scheduled the policy for their review, and we are not aware of a specific reason.
Appreciate your question, thanks again.
This article seems to falsely imply that the PAC obstructed implementation despite their recommending to the council to adopt the policy with minor changes.
Why didn't the council vote to approve? Even if you disagree with their recommended changes (one year retention and officer access to their own tracking data) I think the crux of the article should be asking why opd and the council haven't adopted the policy, with or without the PAC recommendations.
I do appreciate you bringing this up, though. I'm shocked to learn opd doesn't use gps to dispatch police. I'd really like to know why this was abandoned.
Hello again. We updated the article from its original version to make corrections and reflect new information we received shortly after the article was published. Some of these corrections were brought to our attention by our alert readers — Thank you!
The updates were: to make clearer that the PAC recommended (not blocked) an amended version of the GPS use policy with a longer retention period; to offer more detail on the concerns about a longer retention period discussed at the PAC meeting; and to emphasize that the city council has yet to take up the policy for discussion.
We, the editors apologize to the author of this article — we missed their final draft changes to the article before we published it. These updates reflect the author’s final draft changes, and their original intent.
Thank you again!
Police need to be accountable. Are you affiliated with the police union? Sure seems like it from reading this article.
Thanks for reading and for raising the question. To be clear, I am not affiliated with the police union or any advocacy organization. This article is based on public records, City Auditor findings, and oversight proceedings, and examines how a GPS dispatch tool became stalled after its use expanded from dispatch to discipline.
The piece does not question the legitimacy of civilian oversight. It focuses on the process and consequences of that policy shift, particularly its impact on 911 response times, which the City Auditor identified as a public safety concern. I appreciate the engagement and welcome continued discussion.
David, thank you for your comment. Oakland Report is not affiliated with the police union, nor with any other organization.
If that is the case, please indicate who is opposed to the GPS data being used in police misconduct investigations.
Hi Lynne, thank you for your question. Please see my response to a similar comment: https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/20260101-police-dispatch-time-improvements/comment/193987216
Uhh, what? "Reframing" a discussion caused the policy to fail? There is no mention of anyone being opposed to activating the GPS features of the system, including the PAC. Why pretend storing the GPS data indefinitely is not doable today? In fact, deleting it oddly fast quickly (30 days?! Spam emails are stored longer!) to only serve to undermine misconduct complaints.
So, who is opposed to the GPS data being used for oversight and why? That is the real question, which you evaded awkwardly. That party seems to be the one that is holding up implementing these improvements everyone wants.
This whole piece is disingenuous.
And just a few other details - at the July 2024 PAC meeting, then-fire union president Zac Unger stated that they were in agreement with the 30 day retention period, upon discussion with the City Attorney and OFD. However, he said that OFD's final policy which was presented at PAC still needed "meet and confer."
When OPD made their presentation, they alluded to their policy matching OFD due to similar discussion with the City Attorney and administration, but that they had not had any "meet and confer" sessions yet.
Of course, this was over a year ago, so it is unclear why neither of these policies have been presented to City Council for final approval. Of note, retention times for both OFD and OPD must match given the technology constraints.
Hello Lynne. I wrote this article after listening to the Auditor's presentations to the Public Safety Committee and the Public Safety Planning and Oversight Commission meetings last month.
During the first meeting, the auditor mentioned that the GPS in police vehicles was in "meet and confer" and then-Assistant City Administrator Joe DeVries mentioned that there was an issue at the Privacy Advisory Commission meeting about data retention times for both OPD and OFD which was delaying the process. At the OPSPOC meeting, OPD Deputy Chief Tedesco said that the last time he had heard this policy discussed was during a PAC meeting in the summer of 2024.
My goal was to inform the community and stakeholders of what happened at that meeting, in order to hopefully jumpstart implementation in light of the auditor's recommendations.
As a side note, OFD went ahead with a pilot program, but it is unclear what their final use policy retention time is or what process they used for approval, since this hasn't been presented to City Council.
For more information on the City Auditor's recommendations city-wide, check out the latest Auditor's Follow-up Report (ARFU).
https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7703579&GUID=8A75961F-B6CD-471E-A870-884C04B8B491&Options=&Search=
Hi Lynne, thank you for your additional observations. The point of the article is that the GPS-enabled function still has not been implemented more than a year later, which impacts the city's ability to reduce police emergency response times. The PAC's and CPRA's addition of investigatory considerations to what was otherwise a purely technical and operational policy appears to have been the initial cause of the delay. Notably, the PAC did not add those investigatory considerations when they recommended the fire department's policy minutes prior. (They then retroactively went back to the fire policy and extended the data retention period for that policy too.)
We do not know why the city council and/or police department have not moved forward with implementation since. Again, that is the main point of the article. We presented the evidence so that readers can inspect it and decide for themselves what to make of it. Thanks again for the discussion.
Thank you for your prompt and thoughtful reply to mine. I appreciate your willingness to engage.
Why is it notable that the Privacy Advisory Commission did not appear to have the same investigatory considerations when they recommended the fire department's policy? The system is shared between fire and police, so the data will be saved regardless of which department responds to the call, correct? If expediency is the goal, it seems PAC did well to make their argument for data saving only once.
Additionally, I hope we can agree that firefighters do not have the same poor track record and are simply not in a position to engage in the type of misconduct we have seen police officers historically engaging in with the public. Fire departments interact with the public a very different capacity that doesn't involve having excessive power over members of the public, especially those from communities that have been traditionally targeted by police. While both are public servants, the two are not comparable in regard to their capacity to abuse their power.
Should PAC ignore their own obligations for the sake of expediency? I don't want them to do that. It's a false choice to propose that we must either choose oversight or GPS functionality. We can definitely have both.
As a reader, I did not find that the main point of the article was a critique of city council or police department for not moving forward with implementation. PAC seemed targeted specifically. I would ask why both council and OPD didn't advocate for extending data storage for investigatory purposes themselves. Do they not want public trust restored in the police? Are they not also obligated to serve the public through sensible oversight?
Agreed. I watched the meeting video because I was unclear from the article what happened: the PAC recommended implementation of the proposed policy with an amendment to extend retention from 30 days to one year and a right for officers to have access to the data to defend themselves from accusations.
The article implies that the PAC threw sand in the gears, and the video of the meeting tells a completely different story. The PAC clearly advocated for the protection of city employees privacy.
Hi Andy. Thanks for raising this very important part of the story. As Sean alluded to, this was lost in the editing process, and I'm glad that it's back. I'd love to know what your opinion is as to what is within PAC's jurisdiction.
Hello again. We updated the article from its original version to make corrections and reflect new information we received shortly after the article was published. Some of these corrections were brought to our attention by our alert readers — Thank you!
The updates were: to make clearer that the PAC recommended (not blocked) an amended version of the GPS use policy with a longer retention period; to offer more detail on the concerns about a longer retention period discussed at the PAC meeting; and to emphasize that the city council has yet to take up the policy for discussion.
We, the editors apologize to the author of this article — we missed their final draft changes to the article before we published it. These updates reflect the author’s final draft changes, and their original intent.
Thank you again!
The statistics cited in this article are accurate, but they describe only part of Oakland’s emergency-response reality.
Oakland does have some of the slowest 9-1-1 answer and response times in California for ordinary civilians. What is missing from the analysis is a critical operational distinction: not all callers use the same dispatch pathway, and not all callers experience those delays.
In practice, Oakland operates two functional emergency-response tracks. One is the standard civilian pathway, where callers often wait extended periods for calls to be answered or dispatched, or receive no response at all. The other is a privileged pathway used by criminal informants or protected reporting parties, whose calls are routed through carrier-level Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) lines that bypass standard civilian queues and result in rapid police deployment.
This is not speculation. It is documented in Oakland Police Department records.
In my case, repeated false emergency calls were made against me in 2019 by the informant (Moses Jacko, Jr.) who lived next door to me, the cousin of Oakland Police John Jacko Romero. Those calls did not originate through the standard civilian 9-1-1 system.
An Incident Recall report created and released by the Oakland Police Department lists the “Original Location” of one such call as “T-MOBILE (877) 653-7911.” That number is a carrier-routed PSAP access line, not a residential phone or a standard cellular callback. The record was generated by OPD and disclosed by OPD in response to a public records request.
Calls routed through this channel produced near-immediate police response, despite the absence of any actual crime. By contrast, my own attempts to report harassment, threats, false reporting, and ongoing targeting through standard civilian channels were delayed, deprioritized, or ignored.
This routing was not incidental. The individual next door was acting as a criminal informant and was allowed, and effectively incentivized, to place multiple 9-1-1 calls against me. Incentivization is a known feature of informant programs, where cooperation may be rewarded with leniency, protection, or other benefits. In practice, this can encourage repeated calls and escalating narratives, particularly when the target is already flagged or illegally watch-listed.
The result is a predictable feedback loop. Informant-initiated calls are treated as credible by default, routed through privileged PSAP access, dispatched rapidly, and then used to justify further police action. Meanwhile, the civilian who is the target of those calls, especially when watch-listed, experiences the opposite outcome: delayed responses, dismissed complaints, and an inability to obtain protection or relief.
This distinction matters to the broader policy debate raised in the article. Oakland’s response-time crisis cannot be fully explained by staffing shortages or delayed deployment of GPS-enabled dispatch technology alone. Rapid response already exists in Oakland. It is simply selectively applied.
Any honest discussion of emergency-response inequity must examine who is granted PSAP-level routing access, how often informant-initiated calls are used to trigger police action against civilians, and how illegal watchlisting interacts with dispatch prioritization.
Without transparency on those questions, response-time statistics, while accurate, present an incomplete picture of how emergency dispatch actually operates in Oakland.
For that reason, I am providing a link to the actual public records request and OPD disclosure from which the PSAP routing information is taken, so readers can review the department’s own documentation directly. This is not an allegation. It is a matter of record.
https://oaklandca.nextrequest.com/documents/6062928
LaJuana A. Reid
OPD Illegal Watchlist Subject #9596690-00
Reid v. City of Oakland 25-cv-00383