I heard a lady comment at a Police Commission hearing that OPD “needs to be overseen because they can’t oversee themselves. It’s not because of something that happened twenty years ago. It’s because of things that are still happening today.”
Clearly this lady is stuck in a perverse ideology and has no idea what is actually “happening today.” The Negotiated Settlement Agreement is “because of something that happened twenty years ago” (actually, 25 years ago), The Riders. That event is now ancient history. People who are obsessed with it need to get on with their lives and let OPD get on with their jobs.
And, yes, that includes the ignoble Robert Warshaw.
No one is arguing, as the lady insinuates, for a complete absence of police oversight. Some is good, and even OPD would agree with that statement. The question is, how much oversight is too much? OPD has something like a half-dozen agencies, all of them stuffed with police critics, breathing down their necks; it’s easily the most regulated police department in the country. And still, these defunders want more.
It’s clear to me that the “progressive” voters of Oakland have been conditioned, Pavlov-style, to have a negative perception of the police. For them, mere oversight isn’t enough; they want more, and more, and more, until the logical result is a Police Department that is paralyzed from doing anything. And that’s just fine with these oversight freaks. We still see their “abolish the police” graffiti in Oakland, and it wouldn’t take me more than five minutes to find someone at Equator Coffee who wants to entirely defund OPD because “they’re all bastards.”
Well, you’ll understand when I say I hope these defunders are victims of crime, especially the lady at the Police Commission meeting. When they’re mugged or robbed or their cars are bipped, they’ll call 9-1-1 and hope that the cops they wish to defund can solve the crime. I’d love to be there so I can say, “Hey, hypocrite, I thought you thought all cops are bastards.” And when they complain they had to wait 1-1/2 hours for the cops to arrive, I’d ask how long they think they’d have to wait if they actually defunded OPD. The answer is, of course, forever, because there would be no cops to respond. But these idiots don’t have the wits to put two and two together.
I often wonder about these cop haters. The lady at the Police Commission hearing looked well-off, with coiffed hair and nice clothes. White, probably in her sixties, she looked like she lives in the hills, in a nice, big house with a sign in the front yard that says, in colorful rainbow letters, “In This House We Believe: Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights Are Human Rights, No Human Is Illegal, Science Is Real, Love is Love and Kindness Is Everything.” Noble sentiments, indeed. But if you’re a person of color and the lady sees you through her big living room picture window at night getting too close, guess what number she’s going to call. Yup: 9-1-1. So much for Black Lives Matter.
Do I mean to suggest hypocrisy in such people? Yes. They think they’re good citizens. They tell themselves they’re doing God’s work because they respect all people and would never knowingly harm another person. They’re for the minorities, which puts them on the side of the angels! The signs in their windows and front yards are evidence of their rectitude. We call such symbols “virtue signaling.” They’re anxious for everyone to recognize them as superior human beings in terms of their lofty morals and spiritual scruples. They routinely show up at Police Commission and City Council meetings to push officials further to the left, and to badmouth anything that would make law enforcement more effective. They talk about the “root causes” of crime, yet would never dare set foot on Fruitvale Avenue. They’re the ones who voted to keep Pamela Price during the Recall, and who elected and then re-elected Carroll Fife. It’s so ironic, because if Fife and Price ever had real, absolute power, the first Oaklanders to suffer would be these wealthy homeowners, whose property taxes would soar, whose neighborhoods would be unpoliced, and whose lovely homes—who knows?—would be requisitioned for the homeless.
I often engage with liberal people, usually young ones who are gathering signatures outside Whole Foods for their petitions: demanding healthcare for everyone, or housing for all the homeless, or a higher minimum wage. I ask them, respectfully, if we can have a little chat and, if they say yes, we explore what would assuredly ensue in Oakland were their visions realized. Inevitably, they soon understand that the price of everything would soar, not only for them but for their families, their neighbors, and for the very people they’re trying to help: the poor. Ultimately, somebody has to pay for all that healthcare and housing and all those minimum wages, and that “someone” includes every Black and Brown person in Oakland, every old person living on Social Security, every single mom trying to feed three kids on SNAP benefits, every struggling college student living on ramen, every immigrant. This realization doesn’t sit well with liberals, to say the least, but it’s one I think they need to have, because they’re unaware of the cause-and-effect nature of reality. They don’t consider the results of their wish lists because, after all, housing for everyone sounds so wonderful, and wraparound healthcare for everybody, ecstasy! Well, those are the kinds of people who vote for Carroll Fife: naïve, idealistic and—frankly—stupid. And Fife, bless her crafty little soul, knows that all she has to do to get re-elected is to continue to lie to naïve, idealistic, stupid voters.
Steve Heimoff