Atlanta has the same problem we have here in Oakland: a relatively small number of criminals keeps committing many of the most serious crimes. These repeat offenders get arrested, but lazy District Attorneys refuse to prosecute, and even if they do, liberal judges keep sending these predators back out onto the streets. The cycle continues, and the city suffers.
There’s no indication that Oakland or Alameda County is doing anything about repeat offenders. But Atlanta is. The Atlanta Police Department is establishing a Repeat Offender Tracking Unit, together with the county Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney. The advantage of this is that, in a gigantic bureaucracy, a perp’s criminal history often is lost in the shuffle of paperwork. But now, all of Atlanta’s various law enforcement agencies will be aware of each defendant’s complete record. “We are literally giving [the defendants] a scarlet letter so that the prosecutors and investigators who touch these files know that this is a case where we need to pay more attention and make sure that justice is actually served,” said the District Attorney. The hope is that the 1,000 people who commit 40% of Atlanta’s crime will finally be dealt with, instead of coddled.
It’s a dynamic development that was long overdue. The revision stemmed from a series of violent crimes that shocked the public, including an incident in July in which a carjacker was apprehended who had been arrested 18 times and released each of those times; the felon even had an outstanding warrant for aggravated assault. At the time of his carjacking arrest, the Atlanta Police Department issued a statement that said, in part, “Our hope is that this time, the courts will find a way to keep this dangerous suspect locked up for long enough to make him sorry he chose a life of crime.”
Don’t you wish we had a similar commitment to public safety here in Oakland and Alameda County? But we don’t. We have a District Attorney who has been—I say this politely—less than aggressive in charging. We have courts who seem to value the rights of defendants more than the rights of ordinary, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens. Oakland’s reckless “zero bail” policy has resulted in more criminals roaming the streets; Chief Armstrong has argued that this “get out of jail free” policy allows the most violent criminals to prey upon us over and over. We have a culture that views young criminals as “children” who must be protected, rather than as the feral threat they are. We have a City Council, or at least a majority on it, that in all honesty appears to believe criminals are our most valued citizens, and that people who complain about crime are racists. We have a weak Mayor [in the legal sense] who is powerless to stand up to this Council, even if she wanted to. Oakland and Alameda County are doing absolutely nothing to address the problem of recidivism, except to babble about “root causes” and throw the taxpayers’ money at dubious programs run by sketchy individuals.
So I’m asking why Oakland doesn’t have a system similar to Atlanta’s. The answer is: Because we, the People, have not stood up and demanded it, in no uncertain terms. Until the voters in Oakland get serious about ending crime, crime will continue unabated. We can begin to correct this injustice at the November elections. The Coalition for a Better Oakland will be issuing a full slate of recommendations, hopefully by the end of this month or early in October.
Steve Heimoff