The two big stories today are related, but not in an obvious way. Story #1 is that the Oakland Police Department is now officially one year away from being released from the odious Negotiated Settlement Agreement. Halleleujah!
Story #2 is that San Francisco Mayor London Breed proposed, in her new budget, to greatly increase her police department’s budget, to increase retention and hire more cops. Again, for the people of San Francisco, halleleujah!
How are the two stories related, beyond the fact that they both involve cops?
Well, let me put it to you this way. If you believe Warshaw decided to end the N.S.A. out of the kindness of his heart, then I have a bridge to sell you. That’s not it at all. Nor is it because he has adjudged, in an objective, scientific way, that O.P.D. has made enormous progress (although it has). No. It’s because Warshaw, being a sentient being, has been watching public opinion over the last year, same as you and I, and he has seen the same thing: The American people like their police forces. The American people resent any efforts to stymie or hobble police departments. The American people, after years of being fed misinformation from anti-police elements, finally figured out the truth. Warshaw saw all this, and heard the clock ticking on his job-for-life.
Warshaw also looked locally. He noticed the change in the winds in Oakland itself: how, after the Summer of Death in 2021, when Oakland experienced that shocking explosion of murder and violent crime, the citizens of Oakland told the City Council, in essence, to go to hell. The citizens demanded the council stop persecuting cops and they further demanded a rapid increase in the number of cops. This made the anti-cop elements furious; no one was more infuriated than Robert Warshaw. He heard Anne Kirkpatrick, the former police chief, publicly urge his firing. He even witnessed the godfather of the N.S.A., John Burris himself, call for ending the agreement.
After having been Top Dog at O.P.D. for 12 years, with an annual award from the city of $1 million, Warshaw saw his baby withering away. Mayor Schaaf let it be known she’d had it with the N.S.A. At least one Mayoral candidate, Seneca Scott, announced he’d bring Warshaw to court to compel him to stop persecuting O.P.D. Warshaw watched in horror as one council member after another—Bas and Thao especially—had come-to-Jesus moments: after repeatedly trying to defund O.P.D., beginning late last year they flip-flopped and started making conciliatory sounds about the police. Nor did they act out of the kindness of their hearts, any more than Warshaw had: being politicians, they heard loud and clear from their constituents: Stop the cop bashing! Hire more police! Such is the nature of political hypocrisy; it’s not always a bad thing.
And so, there you have it, the relationship between today’s big stories: Public pressure matters. Mayor Breed, likewise responding to her voters, calls for a bigger, tougher, stronger police department. Robert Warshaw, who probably would have extended the N.S.A. forever based on the flimsiest of pretenses, agrees to end it next May. He could, I fear, change his mind: after all, $1 million a year is a lot of money, and it would be so very easy for him to “discover” some little nuance here or there that once again puts O.P.D. “out of compliance,” thus “requiring” the N.S.A. to be extended into its third decade.
Well, we’ll all be watching him closely. Very closely.
Steve Heimoff