A couple of years ago, “defund the police” was all the rage. Some of us realized it was bogus, dangerous nonsense, but a lot of gullible Americans bought into it.
But now that America has seen a spate of violence that’s almost unprecedented in scope, there’s been a remarkable sea change. People now like cops, having discovered how much they need them. Take, for example, this headline the other day from the estimable Washingon Post: “Killings by police brought reform. Fear of crime is unraveling them.”
The article summarizes efforts, from Memphis to Portland OR, Los Angeles to New York City, San Francisco to Washington D.C., to increase police funding, expand police surveillance, allow police pursuits of criminals, and even to ban civilian-run police boards such as Oakland’s Police Commission. Public opinion has shifted 180 degrees on police, with growing numbers of Americans saying they want spending on cops to increase in their areas.
Gallup found that just 15% of Americans favor abolishing the police (as Pamela Price and Cat Brooks wish to do). A very interesting poll by the University of Massachusetts found support for so-called police reform as well as for Black Lives Matter is dropping off a cliff; the poll’s director said, “It is no surprise that the public’s one-time enthusiasm for policies designed to bring about wholesale changes to the nation’s police departments has waned in the past year.” On the other hand, Gallup data also found that “Black Americans’ perceptions of policing in their communities remain substantially less positive than those of other U.S. adults.” Black adults’ confidence in police is 13% lower than the national average.
I welcome the public’s renewed confidence in police. The past four or five years of anti-cop hysteria in America was like the COVID pandemic. It swept through the nation, infected a lot of people, and seemed like it would never go away. But it did end, mercifully. But I’m troubled that so many Black people still mistrust the police.
I’ve tried to understand why. The conventional wisdom is that Black people have been harassed by cops all their lives, and so their resentment is only natural. Not being Black myself, I can’t say I’ve had a hard time with the police. When I was younger, I was arrested a couple times for minor stuff, and I certainly was hassled by cops back in the day. But I was never roughed up, or set up, so I never formed that anti-cop bias in my head. I accept that Black people have been hassled by cops. But I think the majority of that lies in the past. The demand for police reform has been so strong that police departments everywhere have had to double-down on procedures and training meant to eliminate every last vestige of police misconduct. I think and hope that, at least here in Oakland, Black residents no longer take such an extremely negative view of cops.
Unfortunately, we have politicians who have built their careers on instigating anti-cop sentiment. People like Carroll Fife, Cat Brooks, Nikki Bas and Pamela Price achieved considerable power by driving an anti-police narrative. These people have out-sized voices in their communities. It’s my belief that many Black Oaklanders, who may say they don’t like the police, actually have a secret place in their minds where they realize that the OPD of 2024 isn’t their grandfather’s OPD, and that the diverse men and women of the force bear them no malice but simply want to help keep Oakland safe.
But these anti-police rabble rousers are good at what they do, which is to stir the community up with inflammatory rhetoric and remind them all the time that they’re victims of White supremacy and police violence. Neither of those things is true, but the rabble rousers have had plenty of experience, and they know just what buttons to push, what slogans to use, in order to perpetuate anti-police sentiment. They are, by definition, demagogues.
And then I look at our beleaguered, rather dim-witted mayor. I don’t think she’s a bad person. I think she has a decent heart and wants to help poor people in Oakland. We all do, really; the question is, How? If Sheng Thao were a little brighter, she would have realized that the people with whom she chose to align were not making the best choices for Oakland, or even for their own communities. Thao may have had to make bedfellows with them of necessity, in order to form the coalitions she needed and get the money to be elected. But now she’s got her dream job. She no longer has to carry water for Cat Brooks or Carroll Fife. She’s free to declare her independence from a far-left cult that she must know, in her heart, has done so much damage to Oakland. She fact that Thao has not yet repudiated these people is the very reason why we’re recalling her. Here’s the link to the Recall Thao movement, who can use your donation. Thank you.
Steve Heimoff