Sometimes people criticize me and the Coalition for a Better Oakland because they say we’re against stuff, but what are we for? It’s a fair question. I guess it would be accurate to say that we’re against homeless encampments, and against the efforts to defund OPD. But let me explain what we’re for.
Encampments: We believe that encampments have taken over the city, and Mayor Schaaf’s administration and the current City Council have been historically incompetent in dealing with them. Oakland has had a few tent dwellers since I moved here in 1987, but when the encampments really started to get out of hand, about six years ago, the city didn’t do a damn thing. Instead, Libby Schaaf ran around making speeches declaring how much Oakland loves our unhoused sisters and brothers, and telling them how welcome they would be here—she even suggested that homeless people could live in sheltered-peoples’ houses! Of course, homeless people flocked here, only to discover that Mayor Schaaf lied.
But let’s not dwell on the past. What we should have done with encampments 5,6,7 years ago, we still can do today, and that is to manage them. By that, I mean to identify low-impact areas of the city and mandate that encampments be located only in those areas and nowhere else, especially our parks. And guess what? That’s exactly what the city did a year ago, when they enacted their official Encampment Management Policy—which, unbelievably, they strangled in its cradle as soon as it was born, after they got slammed by pro-homeless extremists. So our solution is: Implement the Encampment Management Policy! In this, we stand shoulder to shoulder with our sister organization, Neighbors Together Oakland, which is suing Oakland over its failure to enforce its own laws.
Cops: Our fundamental position regarding the police is to resist efforts to defund the department. Indeed, that’s what motivated us founders from day one. We started CBO, last winter, at a time when the anti-cop brigade was on the upswing. People like Rebecca Kaplan, Nikki Fortunato Bas, Carroll Fife and Cat Brooks, the head of the radically hateful Anti Police-Terror Project, were demanding cuts of up to 50% in OPD’s budget. We knew that that was insane. We knew it would result in chaos and violence overrunning the city we love. We knew that the people of Oakland didn’t want that. And we were right. After this brutal summer of death in Oakland, the people of our great city have come around to our point of view.
So what are we for with respect to policing? Fund OPD fully. That means money for as many Police Academies as necessary to bring OPD back up to full staffing, even as the department is losing as many as ten officers each month. What is “full staffing”? It’s a lot more than the 790 or so that’s commonly bandied about. Oakland needs a force of at least 1,000 sworn officers to combat crime in a city of our population and geographic sprawl.
Now, this doesn’t mean we’re against all forms of “police reform.” I’ve written extensively (for instance, here) of our support for measures such as Senate Bill 2. Not all of its components are supported by cops or their unions. But we think that a lot of SB2’s provisions make sense. Anyway, they’re now the law.
Do we have ironclad solutions for homelessness? No, of course not. Nobody does. When I say that, I mean no one who’s rational and living in reality. Some people in Cloud Cuckoo Land believe they have the solution: “Make Oakland build low-cost or free housing for all the homeless people, and then give them all the healthcare, job training, etc. they need.” It’s a waste of time pointing out to such people that their “solutions” are total fantasies. If these people were rational, they wouldn’t subscribe to such fantasies, but they’re not; so it’s impossible to reason with them. They’re like anti-vaxxers: welded to irrational, dangerous ideologies.
I believe in political approaches to society’s problems. Things get resolved at the legislative level—City Councils, County Boards of Supervisors, State Legislatures. The process may be messy, and it requires compromise on everyone’s part. But it’s the only process we have, and I respect it. And that’s why we involve ourselves in politics.
So that’s what we’re for: Implement the Encampment Management Policy immediately, and greatly increase the number of cops at OPD by funding Police Academies. If politicians are for those things, we’ll support them. If politicians are against those things, we’ll oppose them.
Steve Heimoff