Assessment of Oakland Police Department Calls for Service

The Anti Police-Terror Project commissioned a study by AH Datalytics to analyze how the Oakland Police Department spends its time. This assessment is not a staffing study and does not purport to evaluate law enforcement staffing needs for specific tasks. Rather this analysis is designed to help identify event types that entities other than law enforcement may be best suited to handle for most events.

Below is a list of key findings:

• Violence: The violent crime category made up 4.2% of all calls using the National Incident Based Response System Definition.
• Medical: Medical calls for Service added up to 10% of total calls (44,231) at a median of just under 42 minutes of time spent per call. This category includes: Medical (5.7%), Mental Health (2.8%), Suicide (0.4%), & Welfare Check (1.4%).
• Traffic: 12.6% of all calls for service are related to traffic.
  • 3.8% of those calls are related to accidents with a median call time of over an hour.
  • 3.5% are related to enforcement with a median call time of just under 24 minutes
• Unfounded/Hangups: 11.4% of all calls are hang-ups or are determined to be unfounded at a median call time of 0:17:31.
• Disturbances: 10.8% of all calls (47,734) are for various types of “disturbances” that include, among other subcategories, a variety of noise complaints.
• Alarms: 4.3% of all calls for service (19,150) are generated from alarms. Of those calls, at least 65% are coded as false or cancelled.

Explore the full analysis here.