The good news is that East Oakland is a little safer, now that OPD has transferred an additional 48 officers to that crime-plagued part of town.
The move means that about 300 officers will now be patrolling East Oakland.
The bad news is that OPD had to “shuffle” those officers from other parts of Oakland. Will that make the rest of Oakland more insecure? “There will not be less safety in other parts of our city," Chief Armstrong says. Let’s take him at his word: the two new Police Academies the City Council approved in December—under enormous public pressure—should make up for the lion’s share of those 48 cops now working in East Oakland.
What I don’t quite understand is why the City Council is still considering stripping OPD’s Public Information Office (PIO) of $493,000. As I wrote last week, Fife and Kaplan are saying that they’ll take that money and invest it in more cops for East Oakland. Nevermind that it will wreck OPD’s ability to communicate with the public. The City Council was supposed to vote on that measure on Jan. 18, but for some reason, they kicked the can down the road, and now will vote on it on Feb. 1.
But why? If Chief Armstrong has already sent the extra cops to East Oakland, then what is that Feb. 1 vote for, anyhow? As I wrote last week, the only reason I can see for Fife-Kaplan’s aggression against the PIO is to censor OPD. They don’t want cops telling the public what’s going on, because they want to control the narrative themselves.
I also wrote last week that OPD needs a minimum of 1,100 cops to truly protect the city. The City Council is acting all high and mighty pretending they’re the cavalry riding to the rescue by guaranteeing maybe 800 cops in a year or so. But that’s not enough. The public must continue to keep the pressure on the City Council and not let them get away with trivializing public safety, as they tend to do.
Well, at least East Oaklanders can breathe a little easier. Now, can we please let the cops do what they do best—arrest perps? We can put a million cops into East Oakland, but if they’re not allowed to bust shoplifters, stop sideshows and use surveillance technology to arrest smash-and-grabbers, then what’s the point?
Steve Heimoff