One of the public relations triumphs of the pro-homeless movement—perhaps its greatest—has been inventing the phrase “criminalizing homelessness” (or, in other instances, “criminalizing poverty”). A Google search for the former results in 152,000 hits; for the latter, 477,000 hits.

Pamela Price has a right to her beliefs. One of her beliefs is that “children,” which is to say anyone below the age of 21, should not be punished with the full force of the law, no matter how evil the criminal act they committed may be. Thus, she said the other day: “Anytime we take a child into custody, we are impacting that child in a very deep way. And my charge is to make sure that the system does not destroy them.”

One insight the public could have a better understanding of is how extensive the anti-police network is in Oakland. We talk, accurately, about the City Council and people like Carroll Fife trying to ruin the Oakland Police Department. But the truth is that, behind them, there’s a powerful matrix of organizations that hate cops and have been working for years to drastically cut, if not eliminate, OPD’s budget, shut down the jails and free the inmates so they can prey upon us.

I’d wager that most people who follow the news think that Judge Robert Warshaw is going to lift the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA) against the Oakland Police Department sometime this year. Indeed, I reported on that possibility last March. But suddenly, there’s increasing feeling that Warshaw is intent on continuing the NSA for even longer.

There is no way to end homelessness in Oakland anytime in the foreseeable future. Homelessness is a national problem. Until this is recognized, it’s pointless to talk about ending it on our own.