Use this space to document Mayor Jean Quan's use of fuzzy math:

  • On September 17, 2013, Quan claimed that the Oakland Police Department was at less than 600 officers when she took office in 2011. The Department actually had 656 officers when she started and is currently at 611.1 These numbers became an issue again during the 2014 Mayoral election when challenger Libby Schaaf wrote a letter to the mayor that called her out on the stats. Articles about it appeared in the Oakland Tribune and SFGate.
  • Shortly after being elected, Quan claimed to be the first Asian American Mayor of a major city. Then someone pointed out that Norman Mineta had been Mayor of San Jose. At the time, Quan was in college and claimed to have been an Asian American activist, so one would have thought she's have noticed Mineta's election. After being corrected about Mineta, for years, Quan called herself the "first Asian American Woman mayor" in the United States. Maybe she forgot that Margaret Abe-Koga was elected Mayor of Mountain View in 2009?2 She then began calling herself the " First Asian American Woman Mayor of a Major City." Perhaps she also forgot that  Eunice Sato served as Mayor of Long Beach (a city with a bigger population and port than Oakland) in 1980.7
  • One of Quan's major crime fighting plans was called the "100 blocks plan." Quan claimed that 90% of violent crime in Oakland occurred in 100 blocks and for 8 months based a crime fighting strategy on these numbers. She wouldn't reveal the source of these numbers or the actual 100 blocks. The Urban Strategies Council studied Oakland, located 100 blocks and figured out that actually, the blocks were only responsible for 17% of violent crime. Quan stuck by her numbers and said that her senior public safety adviser, Reygan Harmon was responsible for the numbers. Or maybe the numbers were different because they were from 2 years of data and the USC data was from 5 years of data.3
  • In April, 2013, Quan said there had been a 6 week period with no homicides East of High Street. Only, there was no such 6 week period: Susie Cagle of Shine in Peace proved this with stats. Quan's spokesman tried to deflect the bad info: the numbers were out of context- Quan was talking about "gang related" deaths and touting Ceasefire's success, or she was only talking about 5 weeks. Only, that's not what she said, the interviewer replied.4
  • On a recent trip, Quan may have spent hours and hours with President Obama. Or maybe she was in a room with him and 17 other mayors for a little while.5
  • Quan was involved in a mix-up in August, 2013, when OPD made a big raid that was announced to have resulted in eight arrests. It turned out the eight people were arrested later, and when names were finally released, they were of 14 people arrested in a separate operation. Quan had touted the whole thing as a major success in the Ceasefire program.6
  • On December 12, 2011, Mayor Quan decried the "economic violence" caused by the Port Shutdown. In fact, there was no violence that day, economic or otherwise. The economic violence to Oakland came years later in the form of some $7,000,000 in lawsuit settlements to Occupy Oakland plaintiffs, including $4.5 million to Scott Olsen. Quan has made no mention of this economic disaster caused by her policies.
  • Lists SEIU 1021 as an endorsement in 2014. SEIU endorsed Quan 3rd (as in 3rd in a RCV ballot) after Dan Siegel and Rebecca Kaplan. No mention is made of this. It appears that Quan cannot count to 3.
  • In an interview with Tammerlin Drummond posted 10/1/14 Quan says that the Occupy Oakland encampment was evicted quietly with no teargas. (Hear it here.)8 This isn't true, and then-City Admin Deanna Santana confirmed tear gas was used on KQED's Forum. (Hear it here.) 9
  • During her interview with the SFGate.com editorial board, Quan made at least two serious misstatements. They were so serious that they wrote a whole article about it. First, she said that OPD would have 800 officers by the end of the year. There have been repeated press releases that state OPD will be at 700 by the end of the year. Her spokesman, Sean Maher, tried to deflect, saying that she meant by the end of 2015. However, the interview was recorded. She also said that no police officer had drawn a gun on anyone in the last 16 months. She has said this before, recently, and it is inaccurate. Maher again tried to clarify, saying she meant officer involved shootings.10
  • Quan corrected herself in her newsletter: "The newsletter sent last night mistakenly reported in one article that the police force had not exceeded 700 in 10 years, it was in 4 years as reported in the other articles."11
  • Jean Quan sent out a campaign email saying "Yesterday, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson gave his support to Mayor Jean Quan saying, "Mayor Quan's past two years in office have been head and shoulders above her first two."" Only, this was a serious misconstrual of what he had actually said. Johnson endorsed Quan's opponent Schaaf, gave his second vote to Tuman, and said even he was surprised that he endorsed Quan as his 3rd vote. A better quote from his article would probably have been "My support for Quan is based on an old adage: “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”"12

References

  1. Artz, Matthew. "Feds to pay for 10 Oakland cop jobs." Oakland Tribune: Sep 17, 2013.
  2. "Mountain View, CA Elects First Asian American Woman Mayor." 8Asians.com: Jan 4, 2009.

  3. Kuruvila, Matthai. "Jean Quan 'given incorrect data' on 100 blocks." SFGate.com: Jun 27, 2012.

  4. Kuruvila, Matthai. "Quan flubs crime stat, again." San Francisco Chronicle: Apr 10, 2013.

  5. Marinucci, Carla and Joe Garofoli. "Quan got bragging rights, photos - but little else." San Francisco Chronicle: Aug 30, 2013.

  6. Kane, Will. "Oakland admits it erred in suspect identification." SFGate.com: Aug 29, 2013.

  7. City of Long Beach: Office of the Mayor: History of the Office

  8. Tammerlin Drummond's soundcloud: Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on Occupy. Posted 10/1/14

  9. Krasny, Michael.Police Break Down Occupy Oakland. Forum with Michael Krasny: October 25, 2011.

  10. Kane, Will. "Jean Quan misspeaks — again." SFGate.com: Oct 9, 2014.

  11. Jean Quan's Newsletter, November 1st, 2014.

  12. Johnson, Chip. "My top 3 candidates for Oakland mayor’s race." SFGate.com: Oct 31, 2014.

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