It’s fashionable these days to sound moderate in all things, including being able to sit down with your political opponents and find consensus. I’m all in favor of that—up to a point. But when it comes to supporting or opposing our cops, I’m in no mood to compromise. If you try to cut OPD’s budget, or hamper their efforts in any way, then you’re a cop hater—and in my book, that means you support criminals and the crimes they commit.
Politicians can’t have it both ways. They can’t say to people, “Oh, I’m against crime and for safe neighborhoods,” and then turn around and vote to cut OPD’s budget. They can’t support the Oakland Police Commission, an incompetent and ignorant cabal of cop haters, if they’re telling their constituents they favor public safety. The fact of the matter is, if they’re not supporting the police with their budget votes, then they’re just more Defund the Police creeps—and as we now know, all police defunders are bastards.
These defunders have played a very skillful game: they deliberately and consciously drove Oakland’s budget deficit up to bankruptcy levels. Then, when panic struck the public, the defunders announce that Oakand’s police budget is no longer sustainable and must be cut. Clever politics, to be sure…but we now understand their little game, which they’ve played at the cost of how many [mostly Black] lives.
The game ends now.
There are very few public polls on police support in Oakland, but the last major one—dating to 2021, admittedly now four years old—found that “78% of Oakland residents want more police officers.” I can surmise no reasons why that number should be appreciably different if the same poll were taken today. If anything, the number of those who favor more police could be even higher, given the fact that the public has been saturated with news reports of how understaffed OPD is. The latest such was from April 25, when the consulting firm PFM, which was hired by the City of Oakland “to assess OPD’s staffing levels relative to its baseline workload,” issued their draft report. It determined OPD “needs 277 more police officers than are currently budgeted to effectively patrol the city.” At the time of the report, Oakland employed just 675 people as police officers. Reports like PFM’s are widely covered by the media, so there can be little doubt that most people would agree with the statement “OPD needs more cops on the streets.”
Of course there are those who feel differently. They are outliers who do not want the police “to effectively patrol the city.” One person you’ll always find quoted in these news reports is the notorious Cat Brooks, easily the most virulent cop hater in Oakland. Her limited following is shrinking and deranged, but lazy so-called “journalists” love quoting her, and Brooks never disappoints with her curious blend of vitriol and madness.
So we, as Oakland citizens who actually care about our city (as opposed to those who merely profess to), need to hold our City Council members to account. Few of us will ever get to actually interact with our district member, but if you have the chance, remember to tell them what the headline of this post says: “You’re either for cops, or for crime. Ain’t no middle ground.” And then ask them, “Which side are you on?” Don’t let them snooker you, which they’ll try to do because, after all, all police defunders are bastards.
Steve Heimoff