PALO ALTO, Calif. (KRON) — Governor Gavin Newsom is awarding $267 million in new state grant funding to both state and local law enforcement in an effort to combat organized retail crimes.
On Friday at 10 a.m., Newsom is meeting with San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins, Police Chief Bill Scott and Los Angeles County’s assistant sheriff to discuss the plans behind these funds.
In total the grant is being awarded to 34 police departments, seven sheriff’s offices, one probation department and 13 district attorney’s offices across the state. This money will help crack down on organized retail theft, property crime and car theft among others.
Here are the list of several Bay Area cities who are some of the recipients of the new grant.
- Campbell
- Daly City
- Fremont
- Newark
- Palo Alto
- San Bruno
- San Francisco
- San Jose
- San Ramon
- Santa Rosa
- Vacaville
Palo Alto police says it plans to use its $5.1 million dollars for more staff and patrolling along with new electronics, like GPS, to help with criminals who flee the scene.
The application was open to all statewide law enforcement agencies earlier this summer. The City of Oakland, however, is not on the list. According to the NAACP, Oakland city leaders failed to submit a completed application by the deadline.
Leaders of the NAACP issued the following statement that read in part:
“This is a devastating blow to citizens and small businesses who have been clamoring for crime prevention measures which could have been funded by the millions of dollars in grants offered by the state. This money could have been used for extra police patrols, squad cars, and automated license plate readers to track down suspected perpetrators of crimes.”
The City of Oakland released the following statement to KRON4:
“In early June the City’s Economic & Workforce Development Department (EWDD) staff identified the Governor’s Real Public Safety Plan grant opportunity and collaborated with OPD and community partners to put together an application. OPD and the community partners timely provided their material. Unfortunately EWDD did not timely complete the submission.
Obviously this outcome is unacceptable. The City and department are reviewing everything that happened to ensure it does not happen again, and will take appropriate action. EWDD leadership is already implementing internal protocol changes to prevent future issues like this one.
For many years the City has had a decentralized approach to the grants process that sometimes produces challenges like this one. Mayor Thao and the City Council recognized this as a systemic problem and in the two-year budget the Council adopted in June, they invested in a new grants position that will help centralize and streamline the City’s grants process, with an eye on specifically preventing future issues like this one. The City Administrator is working with the City’s hiring team to expedite the hire of that position now.
Community safety remains the City’s highest priority, and we are grateful for the many resources our regional and state partners continue to provide.”
These funds will be disbursed over the next three years and will begin starting Oct. 1.
