What I found when we looked closer
Alameda County Sheriff's Office is not a single patrol operation. Under contract it provides patrol and investigative services to the city of Dublin, the Peralta Community College District, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum complex, Oakland International Airport, Highland Hospital, county social services, and the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District. It also runs Santa Rita Jail, a full-service crime laboratory, and a POST basic academy that trains recruits for other Bay Area agencies.
That range is the documentation problem. An airport incident, a transit call, and a campus report each have different readers and expectations, but every one starts with a deputy writing a narrative.
Following one report through the building
The first thing we do with a new department is trace where a report goes after the officer hits submit. Here, it passes through 4 hands:
- 1Deputy
- 2Sergeant
- 3Investigations or crime lab
- 4District attorney
Every one of those readers needs the same facts from the first draft. That is what shaped what we built.
What we built for them
Deputies assigned to Oakland International Airport, AC Transit, or Peralta colleges start from the same source-linked draft, so reports read consistently across contract areas.
Investigators can search footage and transcripts across contract areas instead of re-watching video to find one statement.
A county of 1,682,353 generates steady release requests. Redact makes footage review repeatable before release.
What we're watching
These are the signals that will tell us whether it's working here:
- Consistency of drafts across contract areas
- Investigator time to locate key statements
- Supervisor returns per report
Figures on this page come from the department's own published materials. We only publish Code Four results after the department reviews them.
