In the words of former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani from his speech at DMD New York in June 2002 when asked by an audience member how he got crime under control, he replied " ...the city set up the right tracking metrics and benchmarks.....If you can't measure it, you can't manage it; and you can't manage it if you are not measuring it."  Like Rudy, we are firm believers in that old management adage anent public safety. Hence we have been developing public safety management tools for the past several years - the OCSD Blogger is not an example of such management tools, as there is no pattern recognition or slice and dice features.

Consider as a way of illustration, one of the incidents we are following up:

In this case, a DUI related accident and subsequent arrest of a witness for other causes, the CHP closes the investigation.  It is now up to the OCDA to bring up charges.  The CHP spokesperson has no idea when and if the DA will ever bring up any charges "may take years before we even hear about it, if at all", he said.   When we ask for case numbers, we are told that the DA uses its own numbering system, and there may not be any correlation at all between the CHP's numbering system, and that of the OCDA's office.  We get a case number from the CHP for the DUI accident, but only the time of the arrest for the arrested witness, since the CHP is apparently unable to handle two different incidents and the latter was not traffic related.

We then contacted the OCDA, gave them the information we had received from the CHP - over 24 hours later they have been unable to correlate the information frm the CHP to the OCDA intake.

Never mind that the OCDA's office last month, charged Heidi Lynn Housel,  a clerk in the traffic department of the Orange County Superior Court, with one felony count of altering public documents - fixing 18 tickets on behalf of family members and friends.   That is, when OCDA the CHP, the OCSD and other law enforcement agencies do not have a common information language, there is an opportunity for crime - the bigger issue is that the public safety is not well served.

Last  Monday, August 4, 2008 a  bomb squad found and destroyed an explosive substance some 100 yards from the end of Via Taliana, a slope in O'Neill Regional Park. We have not been able to confirm with the OCSD the status of the investigation, and whether or not Homeland Security will get involved.
 
On March  12, 2006 Mr. Morteza Manian was transported to Mission Regional Hospital, and succumbed after being struck by a car driven by a Coto teen, while he was riding his bicycle. Eventually the teen was taken into custody, charged with vehicular manslaughter, felony hit and run and resisting and delaying or obstructing an officer. 

Because the driver was a teen, the OCDA refused to discuss anything related to the case, citing confidentiality laws and regulations.   Mainstream media did not report the tragic incident. That did not prevent the homeowners association board of directors from blaming Mr. Manian "for vehicle code violations".  The teen was able to attend summer school that year and  was driving again shortly after the accident:  Price tag?  200 hours community service.

Mr. Morteza Manian


Blogger and San Bernardino Police Officers' Association consultant Joseph Turner,  recently
made the argument that the city needs additional funding to support additional officers  in response to "Mayor Pat Morris' recent attempt to blame the San Bernardino Police Officers' Association (SBPOA)"

We challenged Mr. Turner's assertion that adding labor, absent any semblance of competition, employees in the public safety monopoly will do just enough to reach retirement.

The typical politically correct response regarding  public safety is to increase the budget and place additional police officer on the street, in order to "improve public safety" - rarely is the argument supported by relevant key public safety indicators, specifically correlated to departmental efficiency.


Mr. Turner response follows:

 "In the Summer of 2006, San Bernardino enjoyed the assistance of additional police officers through partnerships with various other law enforcement agencies. Crime decreased dramatically.

Not coincidentally, when the partnerships expired, crime ticked up once again.

Our city recently hired additional officers through increased revenue from a sales tax increase in  November 2006. Monies from that measure started filtering into the city coffers in the second quarter of 2007. With the hiring and training of officers, they finally started coming on line this year and recent reports are that crime has dropped 10% in the first half of this year"

Not sure if the "partnerships" Mr. Turner refers to are the more traditional law enforcement cooperative efforts, or whether he refers to some sort of outsourcing - or does money change hands, that we do not know about, when different law enforcement agencies talk to each other?


We are convinced that cities such as Los Angeles, San Bernardino or Rancho Santa Margarita, cannot police their way out of gangs, cannot rely on policing to fight crime and vandalism, or even terrorism  - it takes a coordinated effort, including
· Coordination of the various law enforcement agencies in the community
· Public awareness
· Engineering - traffic patters, resident patters, Data mining, etc.
· Law enforcement visibility
· Metrics, metrics, metrics.