Crime is falling, but do Oaklanders feel safer?

Catch up: Oakland is having its best stretch on crime in years.

• Violent crime is down more than 20%, and homicides are at the lowest levels in nearly 60 years.

• Through the first half of 2026, OPD’s preliminary numbers show burglaries and robberies down around 30% and total reported crime down 18% from the same period last year.

• Mayor Barbara Lee recently highlighted the improvements as part of her bid for re-election later this year.

And yet: Falling crime numbers don’t automatically translate into Oaklanders feeling safer. Public safety is still what residents rank as the single most important problem facing the city.

• Crime rates measure how much is being reported, but they don’t measure whether anything actually gets done about it.

• “Clearance rate” is the term police use when a case is closed by an arrest, or when a suspect is identified but can’t be charged. It’s the best available measure of whether a department solves what gets reported.

• In Oakland’s case, crime rates are improving, but clearance rates remain a problem.

What it feels like: While homicides represent the worst of crimes, they thankfully also occur much less frequently than other types of crime.

• Oakland recorded 55 homicides last year, compared to more than 30,000 property crimes.

• Fortunately, most Oaklanders will never experience a homicide. But most have had a car or garage broken into, a bike or package stolen, or at the very least know someone who has.

• Solving homicides is the right priority, but it doesn’t move the needle on the other types of crime that impact Oakland’s quality of life on a daily basis.

• That’s why the top-line crime numbers can improve and the city can still feel unsafe.

The pattern: DOJ data shows that OPD is able to solve the most serious cases (homicides) but everything else has generally fallen by the wayside.

• Homicides: OPD’s 62% clearance rate is on par with the national average of 61%.

• Violent crime overall: OPD’s 10% clearance rate is far behind the statewide average of 46%.

• Property crime: OPD clears just 0.05% of property crimes compared to the 10% cleared statewide.

• Across all serious crime, Oakland’s combined clearance rate over the past two years was about 2%, while the national average was around 20%.

Staffing explains a lot: Last year, a staffing study commissioned by city council found OPD needs 877 sworn officers and had 678 budgeted.

• The same study counted 58 criminal investigators against 105 needed. This included 15 homicide investigators against 18 recommended, while robbery had just 6 against 25 recommended.

• Unsurprisingly, the unit most effective at clearing cases is nearly fully staffed, and the units that don’t are far below the recommended levels.

• Oakland also had 11 violent crimes per sworn officer, the highest of the seven comparable cities studied.

• OPD has been candid that it’s triaging. Police Chief James Beere said staffing shortages led the department to prioritize violent crime. It’s a defensible call, but it also means property crime clearance won’t improve much until staffing does.

But staffing isn’t all of it: OPD reported clearing 17 property crimes out of more than 30,000 filed, a number so low that it points to challenges beyond headcount.

• The city’s own staffing consultant couldn’t complete parts of its analysis because OPD lacked a central database of which cases were assigned and which were cleared.

• The same report said the Investigations Bureau operates without a case management system, with some investigators assigning cases to themselves.

• OPD is in the process of upgrading its records and case management systems, and Internal Affairs already runs its own case tracking.

Math problem: Even fully staffed, property crime is a different kind of problem.

• The OPD homicide unit has the resources to reasonably work through 55 homicides in a year. Each case gets a named investigator, with multiple cases running in parallel.

• OPD told the Police Commission this year that its domestic violence unit clears nearly 100% of its 1,873 cases, largely because those involve a named suspect so police know who to look for when the report comes in.

• But with more than 30,000 property crimes, it’s simply unrealistic to manually work through all of them. Just to reach the state average would meaning going from 17 cases cleared to 3,000.

• This means hiring alone won’t get us there, so the methods have to evolve too.

What that could look like: Last year, the Bay Area Council recommended building a coordinated property crime strategy modeled after Ceasefire.

• Finish the case management upgrade. The systems overhaul is underway. What ultimately matters is whether it can flag the same suspect across six burglaries in two districts, route cases to the right people, and give victims status updates.

• Link cases instead of working them individually. A handful of repeat offenders drive much of a neighborhood’s property crime. Departments that pattern-match across reports can close dozens of cases with one arrest.

• Add civilian investigators alongside sworn hiring. Property crime investigation is largely records work. OPD is currently studying all staffing levels, not just patrol, and it’s worth asking whether it covers investigative capacity.

• Publish the target. OPD's spending plan currently lists key metrics, including academy graduations, attrition, staffing counts, and a 10% annual crime reduction. Notably, clearance rates aren't among them, but they should be part of the new outcomes dashboard being built by the Measure NN Commission.

Why it really matters: A law is only as effective as the odds of being caught.

• Criminologists have long found that the likelihood of getting caught deters crime far more effectively than the severity of punishment. At a 0.05% clearance rate for property crimes, there isn’t much deterrent.

• The same person can break into cars for months without meaningful risk of getting caught. This pattern extends to everything else under-enforced, from sideshows to illegal dumping to basic traffic laws.

Bottom line: Crime fell almost everywhere in 2025, including in cities running opposite policies. If the national trends turn, our ability to solve cases is what will determine whether residents feel safe.

• With the mayor and council seats on the ballot this November, every candidate will have something to say about the importance of public safety.

• What’s less certain is whether any of them have a plan for the more than 30,000 property crimes a year that go unsolved.

Update: An earlier version said OPD operates without a case management system, a finding from the 2025 staffing study. OPD is in the process of implementing that system. This version also references OPD’s staffing study that’s currently underway, the Measure NN outcomes dashboard, and Chief Beere's stated prioritization of violent crime.