A new strategy to police the streets of Oakland was met with vocal opposition Tuesday night, despite the bullets and bloodshed that have claimed six lives in just the past week.

The public safety committee meeting stretched late into the evening inside Oakland City Hall. Initially, the tone was raucous, but would calm down as the meeting progressed.

At the center of the controversy were the crime-fighting strategy known as "stop and frisk" and the push to use controversial police consultant William Bratton who formerly served as police chief in Los Angeles and police commissioner in New York City and Boston.

Bratton would be brought in by Massachusetts-based Strategic Policy Partnership. The partnership is headed by Robert Wasserman, the former chief of staff of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Clinton.

City Administrator Deanna Santana entered into a $99,000 contract with the partnership last fall to provide advice but because she wants to increase the contract to $250,000 so that Bratton can be hired, she needs the City Council to approve it.

Police Chief Howard Jordan was heckled by protestors when he tried to speak about hiring an outside police consulting team to help fight crime in Oakland.

Protesters disrupted the meeting every time someone spoke in support of hiring Bratton, the man credited with turning around the Los Angeles and New York City police departments.

One man shouted back at the hecklers.

"Give some respect to the city of Oakland," the man yelled.

Oakland resident Cat Brooks said she lived in LA when Bratton was chief there.

"He told his officers South Central LA was Beirut and they should patrol as such," said Brooks. "What do you think it did to the mentality of the patrol officers that were on the ground at that time?"

The father of 18-year-old Alan Blueford, the young man who was shot and killed by an Oakland police officer last year, said it was stop and frisk that led to his son's death.

"We can't get Alan back, so we're here today to fight for justice," said Adam Blueford. "We can't accept anyone having to go thru what we're going through."

Police Chief Howard Jordan said stop and frisk has been mischaracterized and that it does not mean racial profiling.

"I'm the guy that gets to decide what practice we're going to do and how we're going to do it," explained Jordan. "I'm the person that's going to be held accountable. Bill Brattan will be giving me advice and it's up to me to implement it."

Shortly after 10:30 p.m., panel members approved a new crime fighting proposal and moved it on to the full council next week.

The vote was unanimous, but the committee did reserve the right to make changes to the composition of the consulting team, meaning that Bratton could be excluded.

KTVU caught up with former Oakland mayor and current Governor Jerry Brown and asked him what the city should do about crime.

"It's a matter of responding with intelligence with cooperation with the sheriff and the police and the bar people," said Brown. "Everybody working together we can drive that crime in Oakland down. I'm confident of that."

Brown is a resident of Oakland. In his role as governor, he said he will look at any reasonable request for resources.

Earlier Tuesday, the Oakland City Council's finance committee voted unanimously to approve three measures aimed at beefing up the city's understaffed Police Department.

The measures, which were proposed by council members Libby Schaaf and Larry Reid before a wave of six homicides in the past eight days, including four on Friday, will also move to the full council for final approval next Tuesday.

After the meeting, Jordan was happy with the results.

"This is a step in the right direction toward hiring more officers but we need a lot more," said Jordan.

But Jordan said he's pleased with Tuesday's action nonetheless.

He said, "I'm very honored to have so much support from the City Council" and "I feel like today is Christmas for me, especially with what happened last weekend," referring to the four homicides on Friday and several additional non-fatal shootings on Saturday and Sunday.

The measure that will have the most immediate impact is hiring 11 Alameda County sheriff's deputies for up to 180 days at a cost of up to $265,000 to work ten-hour shifts twice a week on violence suppression efforts in East and West Oakland.

Jordan said that if the full council approves the measure next Tuesday the deputies could begin working in Oakland as early as next week or at least sometime shortly after that.

He said the deputies would supplement a small group of California Highway Patrol officers who have been working on violence suppression duties in those areas twice a week for the past month.

Schaaf said Oakland's agreement with the CHP is scheduled to expire at the end of January but she's hopeful it will be extend for another 90 days.

Jordan said the combination of CHP officers and sheriff's deputies would give Oakland extra officers four days a week.

The other measures approved Tuesday call for funding an additional police academy to train new officers that will begin in September and hiring 20 police service technicians at a cost of $1.5 million to be assigned to field duty as well as one crime lab position.

The additional academy will supplement a police academy that began last fall and a second academy will begin in March.

Oakland had as many as 837 police officers four years ago but Jordan said it currently has only 613 and ideally he'd like to have 1,000 officers.

Jordan said he's grateful for the measures approved by the Finance Committee, but they will only increase his staffing level by a small amount because it takes about 18 months for recruits to complete their classes and field training and be ready for the streets. By that time, Jordan noted, the department will have lost many officers to attrition. The department typically loses about five officers a month.

Jordan said Oakland needs to have four police academies a year to beef up his department's staffing to the level he desires.