Oakland Mayor Schaaf Asks Governor for License Plate Readers and Surveillance Cameras to Curb Spike in Violent Crime

License plate readers and vehicle recognition cameras may soon be installed at on- and off-ramps and on state highways in and around Oakland, after Mayor Libby Schaaf sent a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday requesting the devices as a way to stem her city’s spike in violent crime.

Schaaf’s ask came after Oakland on Monday reported its 131st homicide of the year, the greatest number in a decade. Armed robberies also are up 46% this year, and carjacking robberies are up 77%, Schaaf said.

“The primary mode of transportation for those committing the violent crimes are vehicles that are often stolen or have switched license plates, many of whom travel into and throughout the Oakland [sic] on the highways and main thoroughfares,” Schaaf wrote in the letter.

“The need for a system that can capture vehicle descriptions and alert law enforcement to vehicles associated with violent crime, in real time, has never been more apparent,” she added. “Such technology can multiply law enforcement efforts in a focused, intelligence-based manner, while still balancing the important privacy interests of the community.”

Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said he made a similar request to the city several weeks ago, and was encouraged to see the mayor acting on it.

“I am in full support of the mayor’s request and look forward to new technology that will help make the city of Oakland safer,” he said in a statement.

But the prospect of more cameras tracing the movement of drivers in the city is sparking serious concerns among some privacy advocates.

“People in Oakland are worried when their government wants to track what time they are getting on and off the highway,” said Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This kind of surveillance approach invades residents’ privacy, “discourages people from going to protests and can lead to mistaken identity and police aiming guns at them,” he said.

Schwartz also said surveillance cameras are more often used in lower-income, largely Black and Latino communities than in more affluent, predominantly white neighborhoods.

“We think license plate readers are not worth these downsides,” Schwartz said. Rather, he added, money should be spent on improving the trust between the police and the community instead of “ever more frightening surveillance technology.”

Earlier this month, Schaaf, citing the city’s seemingly intractable jump in violent crime, asked the city council to approve funding to create two new police academies and add 60 officers to the force, a proposal the council nearly unanimously approved. Critics of the move accused the mayor and councilmembers of reversing course and betraying pledges they had made in the wake of George Floyd’s murder last year, to cut the city’s policing budget and reallocate some of those funds to violence prevention and social service programs.

“For decades in Oakland we’ve over-invested in policing, and the number of homicides and robberies this year are clear proof that this approach to public safety simply does not work,” Cat Brooks, executive director of the Justice Teams Network and a co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said earlier this month. “We can’t make the same mistakes we made in the past. We cannot throw more good money after failed policy solutions.”

Brooks said tens of thousands of Oakland residents filled the streets last year to demand the city “reinvest our tax dollars into programs that will actually keep us safe, not over-police Black and Brown communities.” By approving Schaaf’s police funding increase, the council was walking away from that mandate, she said.

On the same day Schaaf sent her letter, San Francisco Mayor London Breed — who last year championed an even more dramatic police divestment plan — responded to the uptick in crime in areas of her city by calling for new, more aggressive policing tactics, particularly targeted at the beleaguered Tenderloin neighborhood, including a push to give officers more real-time access to surveillance footage.

In Schaaf’s letter to Newsom this week, she also reiterated a request for as much California Highway Patrol presence and enforcement in the city as possible. A recent grant-funded effort between Oakland and the CHP “was extremely helpful,” she added, without providing specific details.

Schaaf additionally asked for help from the CHP’s Organized Retail Crime Task Force regarding “recent caravan robberies of pharmacies, stores and cannabis businesses in Oakland.”

The governor’s office did not immediately respond when asked to comment on Schaaf’s requests.

This post includes reporting by KQED’s Matthew Green and by Keith Burbank of Bay City News.