By Ali Winston/WEST OAKLAND

The Oakland Police Department will have to look for new sources of funding after Measure NN fell short of the required two-thirds margin.

With 100% of votes tallied, 59,933 votes were in favor of NN, and 49,415 against – or 54.95% for and 45.05% against.

Ballot Measure NN would have allowed the Oakland Police Department to add more officers and buy needed equipment such as police cars and new crime-fighting technology.

“The extra officers on the street will help us be more effective as a police department and in turn will help the citizens of Oakland,” said Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan in a statement last week.

The funding would come from a new parcel tax on citizens, which would rise gradually before leveling off after three years. The first year, homeowners would pay an additional $113 in taxes. By 2011, single-family homeowners would pay $276.

The new tax would generate an estimated $41 million over four years.

105 officers and 75 police services technicians would be added over three years. Measure NN funds would also require the department to use Compstat, a lauded crime-data management system pioneered by the New York Police Department.

The Oakland Police Department loses roughly five officers per month to retirement or transfers. Department officials say they are in dire need of investigators, technicians, and equipment to solve more crimes and better process evidence.

Oakland’s budget crisis has hit the police hard. A travel moratorium prevents officers from traveling on official business without departmental approval. More alarmingly, the department has no money to train a new class of recruits after the current class finishes field training in April. The department is banking on Measure NN funds to pay for additional recruits.

The budget crisis could be even worse next year. Some preliminary estimates have put the upcoming deficit at approximately $50 million.

“I believe we need Measure NN to sustain the 803 [officers – the current number of officers] and meet our ongoing needs. It would be extremely difficult to maintain the integrity of that without Measure NN,” said Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums last Wednesday.

However, there is staunch opposition to Measure NN. A combination of the budget crisis, misspent funds from previous crime-fighting ballot measures and a rash of embarrassing news for the police department – including a class-action lawsuit over flawed search warrants – have left many Oaklanders wary about giving additional money to the police.

“To tax people more, especially at this time when thousands are losing their homes, is totally unfair,” said City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente (Fruitvale). De La Fuente, who claims he has opposed Measure NN from the start, is not convinced by the department’s performance despite record staffing levels. “Sometimes more means better, but they haven’t been able to show that,” he said.

Furthermore, the Department’s use of funds from 2004’s crime fighting ballot initiative, Measure Y, is another cause for concern. Measure Y is funded by a separate parcel tax which generates about $19 million annually over 10 years.

“In three years, we saw no increase in Measure Y officers or duties,” said Jim Dexter, a member of the Community Policing Advisory Board. Dexter, who is voting no on all funding measures on the ballot this year, said OPD took money earmarked by Measure Y for crime prevention services and spent it on officer recruitment. “It’s a true shell game.”

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Read the full text of Measure NN here: http://smartvoter.org/2008/11/04/ca/alm/pdf/OKNN-6.pdf

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