Here’s an idea from an Oakland resident:

This idea would be in-cooperation of an ongoing effort in North Oakland and could be useful to all of Oakland as well as other cities facing the same issues.  I am part of a community group in north Oakland called the Longfellow Community Association and Friends.  We are constantly trying to make our neighborhood a better, cleaner, safer place to live.  This would be the main purpose for the app I want to propose.

The user of this app would assist the city of Oakland in cleaning up unwanted garbage dumped on the streets or in vacant lots, as well at clean up unwanted graffiti. When the user sees blight or unwanted graffiti, the user takes a picture and presses the correct associated button which would send that picture, and a mapped location of the undesired community  blight to the appropriate city email (Garbage Dumping, Graffiti, Etc..), Allowing them to access the infected area and send the appropriate  public works crew out to clean the infected area. The user would get a tracking number so that they can have a log of the problems in their neighborhood, which would allow the community to see how effective the city is maintaining its streets.  A data base of all events would be created allowing the city and the citizen to have an accurate table of hot spots, which is a useful tool for everyone involved. With this, the police could patrol these spots more frequently, cutting down the amount of unwanted activities and in turn saving the city money in the long run.

a.) The city of Oakland has a non emergency police number, which you can call when you are witness to undesirable activity (drug dealing, vandalism, loitering, squatting,  animal control,  etc..) If you call this number, the police come out on routine call to break up the un-desirable groups, stop drug dealers, evacuate squatters, etc.. With this app you could send a text stating the issue you are having, and a description of the people involved  with a picture (if possible), and location.  You could also have the phone log you and your location at the time of the report.  This would be sent to the non emergency operator and they could in turn send the police as necessary to the most critical calls. This would allow the creation of a log of the calls for the user, they would follow up with data stating weather the situation has been resolved or not. Then the police and the user could track the progress of events.  This would create a useful data set for the city, community, and police with on-going issues. Helping solve the issues that are logged with the correct resources and actions

b.) The city of Oakland has an emergency police number.  This app could be used to alert the police of a true emergency, while calling 911 the phone would simultaneously log your location and record your conversation for the emergency police to use, to help the victim.  This data could be automatically added to a data base providing important information to the community and police for the use of stopping crime in our communities.

Please let me know if this is an acceptable app for your project…

Thanks, Shayne Martinsen