Critics of the Oakland Police Department often ask a rhetorical question. It goes something like this: If cops are the answer to crime, then how come there’s so much crime in Oakland, since we already have a big police department?
The flaws in this argument are big enough to drive an armored car through. Any five-year old can see the contradiction. We have a lot of crime in Oakland despite having a force of about 700 sworn officers, because OPD has been woefully underfunded by the City Council. If OPD were given enough money for 1,000 officers (which is really what we need for our population and level of criminal activity), there would be less crime, since more perps, who are usually repeat offenders, would be arrested and thrown in jail.
But something else needs to be said, and before I say it, I should explain that I speak only for myself, and not for the entire Coalition for a Better Oakland—although I suspect just about all our 175 members would agree.
Cops alone are not the solution to crime. Police critics like Carroll Fife are right about that. We could have a million cops and criminals would still be out there, looting, pillaging, robbing, mugging, breaking in, shooting people and occasionally murdering them. It takes more than cops to put a dent in crime. It takes raising children right.
Criminals aren’t born, they’re made. Made by broken homes, by parents—often single parents—often “babies having babies”--who don’t have the understanding, ability or even the desire to raise their kids right. Kids who grow up in such households are unable to develop the morality necessary to keep them from lives of crime. This is no-brainer reasoning. Everybody knows it. But you almost never hear police critics talk about it.
Instead, they blame criminality on systemic racism. They fixate on racial inequity, and since they’re looking for it everywhere, they find it everywhere. They’re aware of the high rate of crime in places like East and West Oakland—how could they not be? But they can’t bring themselves to blame it on a pathological culture in which violence, misogyny and disrespect for others are routinely celebrated. Instead, they look elsewhere—anyplace else. They find the causes of crime in redlining, or restrictive convenants, or unconscious bias among teachers, or an unwillingness by employers to hire people of color, or a lack of libraries and parks, or—lately—not enough “violence interrupters.” They find excuses for criminal behavior in Jim Crow laws that haven’t existed for decades. According to their theory, the more crime there is, the more racism there must be.
This is not to deny that these things—convenants, redlining, unconscious bias, etc.—exist, or have existed at some point. But I am saying that to blame everything on racism is factually untrue, irresponsible, intellectually vapid, and dangerous. There have been many populations that experienced severe bias against them over the course of our history: Catholics, the Irish, Jews, Asian immigrants and, lately, Muslims, among others. And yet, these people for the most part raised their children right. They made sure they stayed in school and did well. They made sure they behaved properly and respected their neighbors. They imbued them with religious and spiritual values. They taught their children that respect for the law, including for the police, is fundamental to being a good citizen.
This, then, is my answer to the police critics who ask why there’s so much crime even though we have a big police department. Dear police critics, admit for once that people bear responsibility for their actions. Nobody “makes” someone draw a gun and rob a liquor store. Nobody “makes” someone break into a car, or steal a UPS box from a door stoop, or pistol whip an old Asian and steal her purse. “Systemic racism” is not responsible. What is responsible is the individual who commits the crime—and the culture that tells that person it’s okay.
Steve Heimoff