At last week’s big City Council meeting on the Oakland A’s Howard Terminal term sheet, Carroll Fife said: “I feel bad for the division this has caused between neighbors.” I take Fife at her word; she feels bad. The situation with the A’s—will they leave town or won’t they?—is truly pitting brother against brother. We all feel bad about it; something always seems to be dividing Oaklanders, and it’s sad.
But what Carroll Fife doesn’t feel bad about is the “division between neighbors” her own personal policy of defunding the police has caused. That division is at least as powerful and destructive as the one caused by the A’s situation. It may in fact be even more powerful; how do we measure such things? But what can’t be doubted is the anger and frustration the City Council’s defunding of the cops has stoked in Oakland. And if there’s any one person on the Council primarily responsible for that, it’s Carroll Fife.
We must remember that her common-law partner, Tur-Ha Ak, is a co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, one of the most virulent cop-hating organizations in America. With a conscious nod to the Black Panthers, APTP and its gadfly leader, Cat Brooks, have exploited the rift by which so many Oaklanders mistrust their own police department. APTP also profits by it; it’s in their interests to keep this rift open and sore, for only by that method can they obtain the funding and media attention by which they thrive. I do not believe that the gulf between the police and the people is as great as Brooks, Ak and APTP allege; but in our media-saturated culture, with its credulous “journalists,” it can be inflamed to appear more serious than it really is. And this is where you find APTP: picking at the wound, pouring salt on it, constantly provoking people to remember how much they hate the police.
Why doesn’t Carroll Fife feel bad about that rift? Oakland is, presumably, her city, just as it is mine and yours. Shouldn’t we all want to get along, with each other and with our cops? What is it about agitators that they have to constantly stir the pot and rile people up? Left to our own devices, many of the rifts in Oakland, including the alleged one between cops and “the community,” would heal, in a natural way, given good faith on both sides, and OPD’s commitment to reform. But there is no good faith at APTP or, apparently, within Fife’s heart; and healing can’t be done when people don’t want healing to happen.
With all due respect, it’s only fair to question Mr. Ak’s influence on Ms. Fife’s policies. Fife has, through her high office, extraordinary power over the Oakland Police Department. Mr. Ak, meanwhile, is an ardent opponent of the police, as even a cursory glance at APTP’s website reveals. Shouldn’t Carroll Fife represent all the people of Oakland, and not just an angry minority with a woke ideology that is rejected by most Americans, including the current President of the United States, Biden, and the former President, Obama? In the interests of transparency, Carroll Fife must be more forthcoming in letting us know the extent to which her policies are crafted by APTP. We all have been shocked by the cronyism, corruption and secrecy of the Trump regime (now blessedly gone). Shouldn’t we hold our own City Council members to a higher standard?
Steve Heimoff