Mr. Hernandez,

Thank you for your email. I apologize for not replying sooner.

The selection process for the SRO position, as well as all specialized assignments, is an internal one. The process is competitive, and involves a memorandum of interest, an oral board, and an evaluation of the employees overall work product. At the conclusion of that process, I am given a list of the top three candidates. From there, I select the person I think is most qualified and the best “fit” for the position.

I am very pleased with the current SRO’s and I will pick a qualified candidate again the next time there is a vacancy. I understand your point about vandalisms, but I do not feel the selection of the SRO has a direct impact on the number of reported vandalisms or the arrest clearance rate.

Sincerely,

Paul Rolleri
Chief of Police

Mr. Rolleri, thank you for your explanation of the selection process. Although you do not feel that a School Resource Officer (SRO) can have a direct impact on graffiti throughout the city, would you be open and amenable to considering how the SRO's can be pivotal in helping to identify and neutralize graffiti taggers?

School Resource Officers can be challenged to work very closely with the Assistant Principals and Campus Supervisors to identify each and every student that engages in tagging within the schools, and to warn them and their parents of the potential criminal and civil liabilities associated with tagging. This would also allow your staff to become familiar with which students associate with which tags that are around the city, and to have them catalogued.

Approximately 90% of all graffiti taggers end-up in the Assistant Principal’s office at one point or another, or they are readily known by the Campus Supervisors.

Nearly 100% of all graffiti taggers advertise or practice their graffiti on either their backpacks, textbooks, classroom desk, notebooks, on the walls of the school, and without a doubt, post it on their Instagram and Facebook pages. In fact, Bely and Bloat, two of Alameda’s formerly most prolific taggers, even hosted their own website, until Bloat was killed one night. Bely and Bloat would go out on tagging runs late at night, and tag every surface in the City of Alameda that they could touch.

Furthermore, if School Resource Officers, Assistant Principals, and Campus Supervisors make it a point to constantly walk in and out of the student restrooms, and to thoroughly look for graffiti on each and every surface, they can identify particular time periods when certain tags are appearing. Through the processes of deduction and elimination, they will quickly figure out which students used a Hall Pass to go to the restroom, and they will figure out who the tags belong to.
If the School Resource Officers could work very closely with the Assistant Principals and Campus Supervisors to identify each and every tagger, we would be approximately 90% of the way toward stopping all graffiti within the City of Alameda. To make matters easier (the path of least resistance), the California Education Code authorizes the use of rewards to identify graffiti taggers, and the rewards are encumbered against, and payable by the taggers and their parents. In other words, neither the police department nor the school district has to pay one single penny towards a reward. I have not yet seen these type of reward posters around our schools or city; but hopefully it becomes a tool that the School Resource Officers consider using. Just like in the Old West when they would post WANTED POSTERS, the School Resource Officers should consider posting them around the schools, with a picture of the tag that they are seeking to identify.

If the Assistant Principals, Campus Supervisors, and School Resource Officers can then work with known taggers, they can get the known taggers to tell them who the other taggers are. Finding out who the other unknown taggers are will take care of approximately 8% of the remaining taggers in the City of Alameda.

The remaining 2% of the taggers can then be identified by having the School Resource Officers work with other local police agencies and public works departments (to collect photos and locations). At a minimum, the School Resource Officers should work closely with the two BART Police Officers that are solely dedicated to identifying graffiti taggers, along with the gang enforcement officers of neighboring police departments, from Union City through Berkeley, and everywhere in between.

You are the department’s leader. You are the only person that we can count on to employ innovative solutions throughout the entire department. If you believe that you can lead your officers to do something, they too will believe that they can do it; and they will!

This case will be closed. Please contact the Alameda Police Department at 510-337-8340 if you have further questions and/or comments.

Thank you.