I’ve referred to Rajni Mandal here several times and I gladly do so again today because he’s become an invaluable source of information for me and, thus, for you. Citizen Rajni, let me remind you, independently and indefatigably covers the meetings of the Oakland Police Commission, and reports on his findings. I find myself utterly relying on his reporting and I trust him 100%. His analyses are spot on.
Like you and me, Rajni is bothered by the anti-police bias that infects Oakland and its government. Here are some of his observations concerning the Police Commission, which recently met to review OPD’s policies on pursuit of criminals who flee from investigation.
“[OPD Chief Floyd] Chief Mitchell originally asked for pursuits for commercial burglaries, but it was taken off the table by the Police Commission, Warshaw, Chanin and Burris.” The latter three would be Robert Warshaw, the Federal Monitor; Jim Chanin, a police-suing lawyer, and John Burris, perhaps the best known of Oakland’s local crop of lawyers who make a good living suing cops.
Make no mistake: this meddling group of Warshaw, Chanin and Burris are the most dangerous individuals in Oakland. They have dedicated their lives and careers to wrecking the Oakland Police Department, and damn the consequences. They are truly satanic—not that I believe in that nonsense, but they seem possessed by some evil spirit. So far, no one and nothing on earth or in heaven has been able to stop them. Like the plague, they just go on and on, spreading their contagion, harming OPD in every vengeful way they can. They do this, as far as I’m concerned, for greedy reasons: they make good money at it.
If the powers in Oakland—mayor, City Attorney, City Council on down—had a shred of integrity they would have gone to war years ago with these jerks. But our “leaders” are moral cowards and intellectual pinheads. They don’t dare challenge the terrible trio because the unions that own our political leaders have ordered them not to. For these mad men to have such power over public safety in Oakland—to have any power—is unacceptable.
As Rajni points out, our cops have to navigate a network of enemies that is extensive, ideologically insane, well-funded (with our tax dollars), protected by the Courts, courted by the media, and operates almost exclusively behind closed doors. You’re familiar with the Police Commission, a cult composed of individuals who hate cops and wish to defund the entire department and redirect the money to racialized, politicized ends of their ideological choosing. This not only includes Oakland groups that are legally charged with overseeing OPD, such as the little-known and secretive Oakland Public Safety Planning and Oversight Commission and the Community Police Review Agency (both of which are communist-inspired Star Chambers dedicated to crushing OPD, and run by stupid people who hate cops), but also various homelessness and anti-violence organizations in Oakland, also funded by our tax dollars, whose aims differ little from those of the anti-police groups: namely, to hurt OPD, drive down its morale, erode public trust in cops, and eventually cause it to wither away.
The Oakland Commission on Homelessness is a nefarious example. Its name sounds simple enough: a city commission to study ways of ending encampments. But their agenda is right out of the East German Democratic Republic’s communist legacy, composed and directed by Moscow. One of their latest demands is—get this—not just “affordable” housing, but “deeply affordable housing”—in other words, free housing, on demand. How to pay for this? Defund OPD, of course. One of their members just demanded the city hire an untold number of “clinicians” to deal with the psychological impacts on homeless people. You heard that right: We’re going to massively bloat Oakland’s budget deficit to hire scores of “therapists” to make sure that homeless people should not be caused any discomfort on those rare occasions when the city deigns to clear their camps. Just to put this in context, the average salary for a social worker in Oakland is $84,160, which is already 20% above the national average.
So, in order to make homeless people less unhappy if, God forbid, they’re asked to leave an illegal encampment, we’ll hire, say, twenty social workers, and then provide the evicted homeless people with childcare, moving expenses, medical care and the cost of anti-anxiety pills. All courtesy of you and me, the taxpayers. And now, of course, the City Council is looking to impose brand-new taxes on us, to pay for this boondoggle and others.
Here’s Rajni, conjecturing an all-too-plausible scenario: “Let's say OPD wants new drones, and wants to use Measure NN funds for it. First it has to ask the Police Commission for approval, since it's ‘militarized equipment.’ The Commission can veto it and kill it right there. It then has to apply for approval from the Oakland Public Safety Planning and Oversight Commission to use Measure NN funds, then it goes to [City] Council. After that, they have to go to the Privacy Advisory Commission, who sends their review to Council. Only THEN do we get drones - and that's only if the anti-police activists in each commission allow it - they hold the control over OPD's effectiveness and public safety in Oakland.”
Is this 1984? Brave New World? Stalin’s Soviet Union? All of the above. It’s Oakland, 2025, where horrible, corrupt people have power we wouldn’t entrust to a dead dog. Won’t you join me in rising up and crushing this insanity. It’s not too late, I swear it.
Steve Heimoff