I’ll never forget the time I had coffee with a member, whom I will not name, of the Police Commission—he’s no longer on it—and he very candidly admitted to me that he was in favor of the complete abolition of the police department. When my jaw dropped and I expressed astonishment, he said I shouldn’t be surprised—that he was hardly alone on the commission in that regard.
That definitely shaped my view of the Oakland Police Commission, and nothing that has occurred in the interim five years has caused me to change my mind. These people are, for the most part, rabidly leftwing police haters. How or why they became so is irrelevant. The fact that they are is one of the great scandals of a city, Oakland, that is no stranger to scandal.
The Police Commission is not an old, established political entity, as many believe. It was created only in 2016, when voters overwhelmingly voted for Measure LL, which formally established the commission. This was at a time when crime was beginning to seriously rise in Oakland, and many voters—who already had been predisposed to dislike the police—paradoxically decided that what Oakland needed most was, not to rein in criminals, but to rein in cops.
There was nothing in the Police Commission’s founding documents that mandated it had to be anti-cop. Measure LL simply gave the new commission power “to review and propose changes to [Police] Department policies and procedures.” It enabled the commission to appoint any new Chief of Police, and to terminate his tenure “for cause.” Nothing wrong with any of that.
It was when the new commission also established a new “Community Police Review Agency” that things turned ugly. This was meant to “investigate complaints of police misconduct and recommend discipline.” There were warning voices, at the time, that this new agency would be taken over by anti-police activists, who have always been plentiful in Oakland, but these voices were ignored, unfortunately. For that is exactly what happened: the CPRA, which is always described as “a civilian-run volunteer bureau,” is notoriously secretive. It is difficult even to determine how many members it has, who they are, or how they were chosen. It’s also difficult to say where the line is between the Police Commission and the CPRA. The antipathy toward cops slops over from one agency to the other, but what is easy to discern is that both agencies see their job as to hobble the Oakland Police Department—not to help or support it, not to protect public safety in Oakland, but to cater to the worst of the worst anti-police politics, of the sort promulgated by Cat Brooks and her Anti Police-Terror Project. Over the years, City Council members, such as Desley Brooks, Rebecca Kaplan, Nikki Bas and Carroll Fife have become entirely subject to the Police Commission and CPRA, with other Council members toeing the line to one degree or another, depending on the political weather. Overall, the government of Oakland has been one of the most aggressively anti-police of any city in the U.S.
Now, of course, in Oakland we are engaged in a great debate about the future of the Police Commission and CPRA. Today, the City Council’s Rules and Legislation Committee is to hold a hearing on how the Police Commission operates. For the first time since its inception, the Police Commission is finally being held to account, as a more supportive attitude toward cops has mercifully grown in our town. Councilmember Ken Houston has introduced a measure for the November ballot that would address the Commission’s “pattern of governance conflicts, substantial legal costs, and drains on city resources.”
Houston’s plan is not ideal. Its measures are mostly bureaucratic and somewhat vague, and it only partially weakens the power of the Police Commission and CPRA. I’m sure Houston had to negotiate his ass off with some of his less enlightened colleagues in order for the measure to have any chance of passing. However, it’s a start. Its opponents—which is to say, those radicals who wish to abolish the Police Department or so weaken it that it is fundamentally dysfunctional—will fight reform with all their power. But Houston is to be congratulated. He is the first City Council member in many years who has shown the courage and common sense to stand up to the villainous cretins who continue to try to destroy the Oakland Police Department and, with it, our city.
Steve Heimoff