Let me get this straight: An angry mob of 15,000 decides to stage a violent protest in Oakland on June 1, 2020, following the George Floyd incident. Police once again are summoned to protect lives and property, as they had been since the Occupy days of 2011. The mob throws bottles and—reportedly—a Molotov cocktail at the police (a claim that has since been retracted). The police in turn defend themselves by using tear gas on the mob, which dissipates into the night.
Fast forward nearly two years, and what is the outcome? The City of Oakland is forced to pay out $1.5 million as a result of a lawsuit filed by—yes, the Anti Police-Terror Project, the leading cop-hating group in town. In other words, the police tried to do their job—when they were assaulted they took non-lethal steps to protect themselves—but in the end, in a town like Oakland, they’re still made out to be the criminals, not the victims of criminal activity.
What is surprising, to me at least, is that OPD Chief Armstrong seems okay with this settlement (which may be why there are murmurings that the rank-and-file believes he doesn’t really have their back). When the incident occurred, he apologized for the police reaction, and said that some “poor decisions” had been made by cops. I was upset by those words, although I said nothing. But now, I have to express my strong objections to what seems to me to be yet another instance of OPD being thrown under the bus.
Some of the specific things the cops were accused of included:
Use of force
Supervisors did not properly supervise subordinates
Officers did not properly care for property of protestors
Not taking adequate care of people arrested
Not giving proper Miranda rules to people arrested
Various performance duty violations
As for “use of force,” obviously the cops were compelled to use forceful methods after they were attacked; it’s called self-defense and it’s legal. As for improper supervision, if you’ve ever been in the midst of a riot, as I have been, you know that cops are placed into an impossible situation. The fog of war obliterates clear lines of communication and perception. It turns into every-man-for-himself combat; imagine a Captain trying to issue orders to a regular officer under such conditions. As for “the property of protesters,” really? Some idiot goes downtown to riot, loses his backpack in the mayhem, and somehow it’s the fault of the police? As for “taking adequate care of people,” it seems to me that if you go downtown with the intention of rioting and attacking the police, you must realize, somewhere in the dim depths of your brain, that there’s a good chance you’re going to be hurt. You can’t really blame anyone besides yourself. As for the Miranda rules, if any of that occurred, then fine, let that cop be disciplined. But I doubt it occurred very much.
I’ve felt this way about protests ever since the Occupy days, when I was shocked to see the true nature of many of the demonstrators. I had thought they were idealistic patriots who truly cared about the 99%. I discovered how wrong I was when, on the night Scott Olsen was hit, I witnessed assholes—there’s no other word—use crowbars and baseball bats to indiscriminately smash car and store windows; one of them even attacked me. Olsen chose to ignore repeated warnings to clear the area—and when I say “repeated” I mean 6, 7, 8 warnings given over a loudspeaker, over at least ten minutes of duration. Finally, the officers struck; Olsen was hit by a projectile, and, later, was awarded $4.5 million.
That is just wrong. I think every moral person, when he or she thinks about it, has the same reaction. Olsen and his friends intentionally riot. The police beg them to disperse. They refuse, and make menacing moves towards the cops, who have very little choice but to run away themselves—unthinkable!—or to defend their line. They defend their line—someone gets hurt—and the City pays out millions to ambulance-chasing lawyers.
Why the hell does Oakland settle these damned lawsuits? Why doesn’t it fight them? Why does it give into the APTP’s blackmail? At this point, if the cops refuse to defend downtown, or any other area of the city, next time there’s a riot, I for one won’t blame them. But I know they will defend us, because they’ve sworn to do so, and they have integrity.
Steve Heimoff