As soon as I read these words from the Oakland Office of Inspector General (OIG), my blood boiled. “I want to take a moment to reflect on the progress our office has made and share our continued commitment to ensure accountability, transparency, and community trust in the Oakland Police Department.”
You may not be familiar with the OIG, so here’s a primer. Its head is named Zurvohn A. Maloof. He’s a lawyer. He made his career in investigating so-called police misconduct, including at BART, where he served a similar role before being hired to his current position, one year ago. The OIG in Oakland was created to add yet another layer of intrusive bureaucracy to the oversight of the police department, which already is scrutinized by the Police Commission, the City Council, the Federal Monitor Warshaw, the Oakland Community Police Review Agency, and God only knows how many other lesser fry, all run by people who are marked by an irrational, usually race-based resentment of cops. But even this wasn’t enough for Oakland’s government, which five years ago added OIG to this curious alphabet soup of regulatory agencies that Maloof now runs.
His entire career, in other words, has been to uncover alleged “wrongdoing” by cops, expose it, and then create new laws, rules and regulations that make it harder for them to do their jobs. This is done in order “to strengthen the City of Oakland's police reform efforts,” according to OIG’s website, but it’s increasingly apparent that, for some cop haters, no amount of “police reform” will ever satisfy them. They want OPD disbanded, its entire budget handed over to agencies they control (primarily Black-run), and for Oakland to effectively have no program of public safety at all.
Yesterday, Maloof sent out a “Dear Oakland Community” email to report “on the progress our office has made and share our continued commitment to ensure accountability, transparency, and community trust in the Oakland Police Department.” It is this email that makes my blood boil. He begins by assuring us that OIG exists “to ensure that police department policies align with the values and expectations of Oakland residents.” I don’t know which “residents” he’s referring to—presumably the unemployed busybodies who show up at every City Council and Police Commission hearing to rant and curse at OPD—but he certainly doesn’t speak for me or for anyone I know. This is what cop haters always do: claim they represent the people of Oakland when what they really represent are ambulance-chasing lawyers, career criminals, and far-left radicals who want to tear down the government and replace it with anarchy.
Another thing cop haters always do is use red herrings and smokescreens to distract readers and manipulate their emotions against the police. In this case, Maloof, early in his email, turns his attention to the case of Doug Martin, a former Oakland Raider who died in police custody, after resisting arrest for breaking and entering a neighbor’s home. Shortly after Martin’s death, local news outlets reported that Martin tested positive for cocaine and methamphetamine, and had possessed fentanyl at the time of his crime, as well as a hunting knife.
Mr. Martin, whatever you may have thought of him, does not sound like a peaceful, law-abiding citizen. We hear a version of this story all the time: drugged-up Black guy breaks the law, gets in a confrontation with cops, resists arrests, then dies of some kind of cardiac event. Yet here’s Maloof, in his message to the “Community”: Martin’s death “has deeply impacted our community. Our office is actively tracking the investigations surrounding this incident and will continue to advocate for transparency and accountability throughout the process.” There can be little doubt that Maloof and his OIG will find something nefarious about Martin’s death, something that will imply that OPD did something horrendously wrong, something that will further inflame anti-cop attitudes in Oakland.
Maloof concludes, “Moments like these underscore the importance of independent oversight in Oakland. The Office of the Inspector General exists to ensure that OPD operates with integrity and that the rights of all residents are protected.” Not exactly. What moments like this underscore is that there remains a permanent class of parasites who are biased against cops, who have dedicated their lives to harming cops, who suck money and privilege out of jobs they got in the first place because cop-hating city governments such as Oakland’s are eager to stick it to cops, and because the voters in Oakland are too blinded by their own prejudices to vote rationally. We must END the OIG immediately, and all other hateful taxpayer-funded groups that seek to hurt public safety by hurting cops.
Steve Heimoff