It was rather hastily called yesterday, after yet another brutal weekend of violence. The Chief began by sharing his emotions at the shattered state of public safety in Oakland, which has so far claimed 106 murder victims.
With the families of some of those victims beside him, the Chief grieved for “the people who care, who hurt, the pain that is in our community every single day.” He singled out Dirk Tillotson, who was killed in a home invasion last week. “This weekend was very bad in the city of Oakland.”
City Council member Loren Taylor, in whose district Tillotson was slaughtered, also spoke. Taylor, who announced his candidacy for mayor last week, mourned Tillotson as “a well-regarded, respected and revered champion for equity.” He pledged to “further our work of reimagining public safety, of implementing real violence prevention programs, and partnering with law enforcement” (italics mine).
The Chief also outlined substantive issues he’s working on: a rapidly-depleted OPD, which is projected to lose as many as ten sworn officers per month, a hemorrhage that not even upcoming Police Academies can stanch for a long time, and ghost guns, which neither Sacramento nor Washington, D.C. is doing much to counter. He begged “the community” to get more involved in crime fighting, through sharing any videos people may have caught of lawbreaking, and, in a direct appeal to parents, to intervene however they can if they see their kids going down wrong paths. “There are places to get help,” he told the T.V. cameras.
So this was a very sad press conference. You could feel the weight under which Chief Armstrong labors every day, and not just the Chief but the men and women of OPD. Chief Armstrong seems to take every murder personally. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I hope he can occasionally leave the job behind and go home, have a beer, watch a ballgame with his friends and have a few laughs.
One other thing Armstrong said: starting next week he’ll make homicide detectives available to the public, through the media, in some undefined way, to help people understand what it is they do. How do they investigate these murders? How do they apprehend suspects? I was glad to hear that because as you know for months I’ve been trying to persuade the Chief to make individual cops more available to the public, to make their jobs more transparent, because people really have no idea who these cops are or what they do. The Negotiated Settlement Agreement has to a great extent prevented the Chief from taking such moves; the fact that he’s now willing to do so is a sign that OPD finally may once again become the captain of its own ship.
Dirk Tillotson
Murdered in a home invasion on Oct. 1, 2021
Oakland
SAY HIS NAME