I’m not 100% sure what to make of the recent sparks between the Police Commission and the City Council. Nobody really knows what’s up, because it’s a work in progress, and because both of those secretive bodies do their dirty work behind closed doors. But what seems to be happening is a sort of mini-revolt: The City Council appears to finally have the huevos, after all these years of kneepadding to radical anti-cop elements, to stand up to the racist, crime-enabling Police Commission. In a town where the courage to resist wokeism has been in short supply, this may represent a turning point.
My take is that the Police Commission sees its corrosive and coercive power eroding under a City Council that, with several newish members, is no longer content to allow a far left cult of wokes to endanger public safety in Oakland. This reformed City Council is taking tentative steps to assert its independence, and has issued a warning to the old guard cop haters: Your day is coming to an end. The Police Commission, predictably, doesn’t like it, and is putting all its chips on the table to maintain its dwindling power. Only problem, for them, is that the Commission doesn’t hold as many chips as it used to.
The public face of the tussle between the two groups are two former Police Commissioners whom the City Council already has rejected from being re-appointed, but whom the Police Commission itself, allied with the even-farther left Community Policing Advisory Board, continues to support. We thus have a standoff between these two powerful political groups, which has never before happened. Theoretically the City Council has more power, but in our litigious society, nothing is ever over until it’s really, truly over, and it’s never truly over until the last lawyer is dead.
The Council’s majority has firmly rejected these two reprobate candidates, as is their right. Why won’t the Police Commission accept their decision? Because the Commission has the backing of powerful constituencies, including the employee unions and certain Black activist groups, especially the insane Anti Police-Terror Project. These two cults do not constitute the majority in Oakland. But they are loud, well-funded, organized, and command the attention of the media.
The leader of the anti-police gang in the City Council is—who else? Carroll Fife. She’s up to her usual vicious fearmongering about cops out of control who need to be regulated even more than they already are. Her partner in this particular case is Noel Gallo, who’s been on the City Council since, I don’t know, the Truman administration? Poor Gallo. So out of touch. What weird bedfellows he and Fife make, the strangest since Caligula married his horse.
Anyhow, if I’m right, this impending split in the City Council bears watching. If we can finally isolate Fife, maybe she’ll resign (she’s threatened to do so before). Then she can partner up with Pamela Price—talk about weird bedfellows!--and launch an Alameda County chapter of the New Black Panthers.
Steve Heimoff