So much for Mayor Jean Quan’s much-ballyhooed—and derided—100-blocks crime fighting strategy. The mayor, through her top aide has now disavowed it, a week after a non-profit group’s statistical study of Oakland crime patterns obliterated what was left of the plan’s credibility. The peel-back was left to Quan chief of staff Anne Campbell Washington. The mayor is, conveniently or not, attending a conference in Brazil.
Add: Thus ends the pretense of one of the more opaque big city crime initiatives in memory: a much-heralded focus of police resources on an alleged 100 blocks where crime rates were supposedly highest—blocks, by the way, that neither the mayor nor the police brass were ever willing to identify. Spin from the mayor’s office is after the jump:
From the Oakland Tribune’s Matthew Artz:
The correct data, Quan's Chief of Staff Anne Campbell Washington said, is during the past two years, 58 percent of Oakland's homicides and 42 percent of shootings occurred in nine of Oakland's 35 police beats. Those nine beats, which span well over 100 blocks, contain 10 high-crime neighborhoods that Campbell Washington said are the true focus of the mayor's plan.
"I don't know where the 90 percent number came from," said Campbell Washington, who joined Quan's staff after the release of the 100 Blocks plan. She said the mayor only learned the figure was incorrect last week after her staff dealt with media inquiries following a critical report of the plan by Urban Strategies Group.
