Private Security Forces Patrol Oakland

By BOBBY WHITE

OAKLAND—Last month, Michael McCurty was arrested for allegedly shooting a man to death in this city's downtown. The arrest was spurred by a tip from a member of a private security patrol called the Ambassadors.

"I'd seen [McCurty] around town a few times and I recognized him" after the police passed a mugshot to the Ambassadors, says Amnat Ngin, a member of the group. Mr. Ngin contacted police after spotting Mr. McCurty downtown a day after the shooting. Mr. McCurty, who is being held without bail, is scheduled to enter a plea on Oct. 10, according to the Alameda County District Attorney's Office.

The incident is one of several in downtown Oakland in which the Ambassadors have been involved in recent months. The group of 18 security guards has been hired to patrol the streets in the Downtown, Uptown and Lake Merritt neighborhoods. The guards, who are unarmed, are employed by the Lake Merritt/Uptown Association and the Downtown Oakland Association, two new associations known as community benefit districts that have emerged from a drive by local businesses to take city matters such as security into their own hands.

Faced with Oakland's $30 million budget deficit and reduced city services and layoffs in law enforcement, more than a dozen businesses—including Clorox Co. and property firm Metrovation LLC—banded together last year to form the special districts, which are private, nonprofit organizations that use their own funds to improve or maintain a location. So far, the districts have taxed themselves more than $2 million and taken up the slack in city services such as graffiti cleanup, trash removal and security.

"We decided as a community to set standards for our neighborhoods that currently the city doesn't have the resources to maintain," says Debra Boyer, senior vice president at the Swig Company LLC, a real-estate investment firm based in San Francisco, who is president of the Lake Merritt/Uptown Association. Swig owns the 28-story Kaiser Tower by Lake Merritt.

In forming the community benefit districts, Oakland businesses are following a nationwide trend of enterprises supplementing hard-hit public services with private initiatives. In the late 1990s, cities such as Los Angeles and New Orleans began establishing partnerships among downtown businesses to pay for maintenance of their neighborhoods. In 2004, San Francisco enacted an ordinance to allow neighborhoods to establish community benefit districts.

But the community benefit districts don't always attract the biggest support from city agencies. In Oakland, the Ambassadors say the police have come to depend on their efforts to help solve some petty crime downtown, often visiting their offices with mug shots or surveillance videos.

Oakland police say while the Ambassadors have helped spot certain suspects, their overall impact is limited. Sgt. Andrew McNeil, who oversees downtown foot patrol for the Oakland Police Department, says the Ambassadors only react to crimes, while a police presence discourages criminals from committing offenses. "They're not a deterrent," says Mr. McNeil.

Still, some city leaders say the benefit districts have become key players in keeping downtown Oakland safe and clean. "The city isn't in a position to take care of downtown the way it should be taken care of, and so the Ambassadors and benefit districts are really important," says Patricia Kernighan, an Oakland city council member representing District 2, which includes Chinatown and the benefit districts.

Community benefit districts aren't new in Oakland. Some formed earlier this decade, but they were typically small and served just a few residents. In contrast, the Lake Merritt and Downtown community benefit districts cover a 56-block radius and include some of the city's largest businesses.

Many of these businesses moved into Oakland after former Mayor Jerry Brown announced an initiative to attract 10,000 new residents to the city's downtown in 2000. In 2005, Swig acquiring the Kaiser Center. Another property firm, SKS Investments LLC, purchased the Key Systems building in downtown Oakland in 2007.

By 2008, J.C. Wallace, a vice president at SKS and president of the Downtown Oakland Association, says SKS and Swig began discussing redevelopment strategies and hatched plans to create a district. "The city's finances got really rocky and we were concerned that it wouldn't be able to support some of the new businesses coming to downtown," he says.

The community benefit districts were formally launched in February 2009. The Downtown and Uptown associations both currently have about 100 members each.

Each member is taxed based on the assessed value of their property in the districts, with total property in the Downtown association assessed at about $900,000 and Lake Merritt/Uptown at $1.2 million.

In addition to hiring the Ambassadors, the districts have helped sponsor downtown art events and helped found Innovate Oakland, a coalition of start-ups focused on growing the city's technology sector. In July, the districts also helped launch a shuttle service that runs weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. from downtown to Jack London Square.

"We couldn't wait for the city to play an active role," says Mr. Wallace. "We had to take matters into our own hands."

Write to Bobby White at bobby.white@wsj.com