I’m tempted to use intemperate language against Carroll Fife and Rowena Brown in today’s post, but since I’m informed that this blog is read by many small children, I will moderate my words. So let me just say I have two words for Fife and Brown, and they ain’t “Merry Christmas.”
But first, a thought experiment: imagine that an suspected felon, fleeing from police in Oakland, crashes into a parked car, runs away and breaks into a nearby house. Police arrive: some locals try to “protect” the fleeing man from getting arrested. But eventually the locals disperse and the cops are able to make the collar. A little later, Carroll Fife arrives. She thanks the people who tried to protect the man, and then quotes one of them as telling her, “There were too many White people around to detain” the fleeing man. The people who tried to protect the fleeing man were Black or Latino (it’s not clear which), but the crowd that had gathered to witness the melée was largely White, so the protectors felt threatened, and ceased offering the fleeing man protection.
Now, imagine that the fleeing man was White, the people who tried to protect him were White, the crowd that gathered to watch was Black, and the City Council member who later arrived was Ken Houston, a White man. Imagine if Houston had told the media, “There were too many Black people around to detain” the fleeing suspect. That would have led to allegations of racial prejudice on Houston’s part, and the situation would have exploded into a media frenzy. But when Carroll Fife, a Black elected, makes this allegation, everybody just shrugs because, well, that’s what Fife always does: make it about race.
Back to the headline: Fife and her colleague on the City Council, Rowena Brown, just blocked the City from purchasing new Flock surveillance cameras to fight crime.
Let me make this clear: the only reason Fife and Brown don’t want Flock cameras is because most crime in Oakland is committed by Black men. Flock cameras are awesomely effective in helping to catch criminals, and so a lot of Black men would be arrested if Oakland were allowed to use the devices. But the arrest of Black lawbreakers is something that Black activists, such as Fife and Brown, have dedicated their careers to resisting. (Pamela Price also did.) They don’t care about the safety of the vast majority of us Oaklanders; they care about their racist obsession with skin color. When they say their concern with Flocks is really about privacy, they lie. The ultimate loss of privacy is getting mugged, assaulted or killed by a criminal. But Fife and Brown are never on the side of public safety, because it conflicts with their real priority. If you’re White and law-abiding in Oakland, you effectively have no political representation. If you’re Black and committing crimes, Fife and Brown will do whatever they can to make sure you’re never caught.
The same sort of nefarious race-baiters have seized control of the Police Commission, the Privacy Advisory Commission, the Department of Violence Prevention, and every other official Oakland group that claims to “oversee” the police. Our city, in effect, has experienced a coup. These unregenerate Black activists have taken over the reins of governance. They’ve not only made Oakland much more dangerous than it was thirty years ago, they’ve managed to kneecap it economically as well. But you already know that.
With this latest example of Fife once again playing the race card, we must recognize reality for what it is: We have a person of great power in Oakland, Carroll Fife, who is addicted to a policy that is every bit as racial and bigoted as that of the White Citizens Councils that erupted throughout the South in the 1950s to oppose the new Civil Rights movement. Where the White bigots sought to limit freedom from Black people, the Black bigots of today seek to limit freedom from White people, including the freedom to be free from the fear of being a crime victim. We, as a society, must reject these Black bigots as thoroughly as we rejected Bull Connor, George Wallace and Strom Thurmond back in the day.
Steve Heimoff