I don’t suppose anyone is surprised to hear that Thao has sacked the Chief. Thao has been a cop hater since day one. A self-professed “progressive,” she repeatedly tried to defund the police, despite warnings that to do so would further endanger the people of Oakland. When she was on the City Council, she allied with Carroll Fife, the leading cop hater on the Council, and her underling, Nikki Bas, and also affiliated with the biggest cop hater of them all, Cat Brooks. Together, these people led assaults on the Oakland Police Department and refused to do anything about homelessness. They and their allies plunged Oakland into the crisis we see today.

Nothing seems to be working in Oakland or San Francisco, when it comes to crime, drugs and homelessness. Despite billions being poured into programs, there’s more of everything bad in both cities. Drug rehab programs aren’t working. San Francisco’s so-called “crackdown” on drugs and stolen goods at U.N. Plaza is a waste if time.

D.A. Price has made no secret of the fact she wants to “end mass incarceration,” which means opening the jails and letting everyone out. This isn’t going to happen anytime soon, thank goodness, although we have to remain vigilant. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and Price thinks she’s found another way to give murderers, thieves and assaulters a get-out-of-jail-free card: Just claim they’re mentally ill, and argue that mentally-ill people deserve “care, not cages.”

Council Member Fife, over the weekend, said I use “racist tropes” about her. What exactly does she mean?

I wrote yesterday that some people in Oakland are calling for a revolution. Revolutions, let’s remember, are inherently violent. In our own American Revolution, nearly 7,000 Americans were killed, the equivalent of 93,000 today. When you make a revolution, the system you’re trying to overthrow fights back. That’s when things get nasty. Each side tries to kill the other. Civilians are caught in the crossfire. And revolutions can escalate. The Russian Revolution grew into a world crisis whose repercussions continue to be felt. Revolutions are not a good thing. So why are some on the Left in Oakland calling for one?