Did you ever hear of those Japanese soldiers who refused to admit that they had lost the Second World War? They were so delusional, they hid out on Pacific islands for decades after their country formally surrendered to the U.S. and its Allies, and they died in their caves, old, broken, alone and crazy.
That’s what cop-haters like Cat Brooks, Pamela Price and their fellow desperados remind me of. They decisively lost their war against the police. They tried to defund OPD, were roundly rejected and despised by the vast majority of Oaklanders, and should have gone away and left the rest of us alone. But no! Instead, they’re doubling down, trying to refuel a sad little movement that has had its 15 minutes of tedious fame.
They wait hungrily for something, anything they can blow up into an anti-cop scandal. Like buzzards, they scan the horizon, seeking some living thing to stumble, so they can swoop in and devour it. The living thing they seek to kill is, of course, the Oakland Police Department. How sad, pathetic and horrible is such a life! We would almost feel sorry for them, except for the damage they cause.
Here’s Pamela Price with her latest barrage of steaming offal. Running for Alameda County D.A., she just sent out an email blast claiming that “SEIU 1021 recognizes that I am the only candidate in the race who has a winning history of holding corporations, law enforcement and institutions accountable for their misconduct and illegal activities.”
For an old union guy like me, who’s always supported the right of workers to organize, this is disappointing, to say the least. It used to be that unions strove to get their members higher wages and better benefits. But somewhere along the way, they discovered “social justice”—and they made the historically bad decision to associate with the likes of Pamela Price, who has no interest whatever in the true interests of workers, only a pathological hatred of the police, whom most rank-and-file union members like and trust. Don’t you wish Price would denounce the “misconduct and illegal activities” of criminals instead of picking on cops and job-providing corporations?
“Holding them accountable.” Hah. In her eyes, Pamela Price is the Sheriff of Woke Land. Packing pistols strapped to her hips, she strides the landscape like a Super-Hero, protecting the little people against OPD and those big bad predatory corporations like Kaiser Permanente. Look: Pamela Price is just another cynical, angry left-wing pol, in the mold of Cat Brooks and Carroll Fife. That all three are Black women is beside the point: this isn’t a question of race or gender, but of sanity versus delusion. I don’t want these women in power any more than I want Trump and his stooges in power.
Then there’s Brooks. Here’s the inside of her head when she heard the details of Sunday’s incident involving a sideshow and a pedestrian who was killed by one of the fleeing perps: “Praise the Lord and activate the Rapid Response team! OPD killed someone again!”
What kind of mind is this that exults when people die?
Until the investigation of this case is complete—and despite the fog of war, the rumors and the allegations, it’s far from that--what we know is this: The person responsible for this death was the driver of the car that crashed. He was attempting to escape from the police following his participation in an illegal sideshow. He alone is the criminal, the schmuck, the lawbreaker, and I hope he’s charged with murder. But do we hear Cat Brooks or Pamela Price or any of their cult criticizing him or people like him? No. You could go a lifetime without hearing them say a bad word against a Black man, no matter how hideous his crime. The only people they get upset with are police officers, especially if they’re White.
If the two officers are indeed guilty of something, let the system deal with them. They’re already on suspension. OPD and District Attorney Nancy O’Malley will conduct thorough investigations, and if the cops are found to have violated regulations or broken laws, let the authorities apply the full force of punishment.
But far be it from Cat Brooks to await the results of any investigation, if she can hurl allegations before she even knows what happened. Her mantra of “Defund the Police” has been discredited all over the country. It’s not just Republicans who are offended by it, but Joe Biden, Barack Obama and most mainstream Democrats. The American People themselves loathe the “defund” movement. A respected national poll “found that ‘defund the police’ policies remain highly unpopular.” The poll’s director observed, “This decline [in support] is seen across the board, with ardent supporters of police reforms such as progressives, Democrats, African Americans and young Americans also exhibiting a decrease in their support for these changes.”
Wouldn’t you think Brooks, Price et al. would at least rethink their insistence on defunding, in the face of such widespread opposition? But no. Brooks’s so-called Anti Police-Terror Project is still pushing her racist propaganda. “We must defund OPD!” she screams, just like those loser Japanese soldiers screamed “We must defend Holy Japan from the invader.” Only instead of bunkers on isolated atolls in the Pacific Ocean, today’s defunders are holed up in the mental bunkers of their own corralled minds. Unwilling to call a spade a spade—by which I mean the epidemic of crime that infects Oakland and, in particular, communities of color—these apologists for murder and sideshows wake up every morning determined to find something to blame the police for. Their lives are sad, pathetic and futile; we should laugh at them, if not for the danger they pose—a danger amplified by the presence on the City Council of their co-haters Fife, Bas, Kaplan and, in particular, Sheng Thao, who must never, under any circumstances be elected Mayor, lest we lose what little civilization Oakland still retains.
I mention these truths only to warn that we’re not out of danger yet. We’ve had a good run these past six months, with the defunders being embarrassingly defeated in the court of public opinion and recognized as the fanatics they are. But these people are stubborn. They hate the police, they want the police disappeared so that the criminals they love so much can run rampant and commit any crimes they want; and they will never stop until their agenda is fulfilled. Next time you hear the words “social justice,” know that it means uncontrolled crime and a horrible downward spiral, like we’re seeing in Oakland.
Steve Heimoff