One of the more dishonest things you hear from Carroll Fife lately is her new one-liner: “Police don’t prevent crime, they respond to it.”
Well, when we recall Fife and she needs a new gig, she can try standup comedy. Let me explain what’s so ridiculous about her crack. Let’s say you have some morons out on the street with the intention of committing a crime. Maybe mug someone, or break into a car, or steal some boxes from a front door. Suddenly, they see a couple cops patrolling the beat. What happens? They don’t commit the crime. They’re deterred by the police presence. The cops prevented the crime from happening.
Or let’s say there’s a big gathering somewhere. OPD announces in advance they’re going to have a heavy presence in the crowd, including undercover officers. The gathering comes off peacefully; no one is shot, no stores looted. Why not? Because of the police presence. You can’t prove a negative, but common sense tells you peace prevailed because the cops were there.
But it’s important for Fife to lie about the role of police in preventing crime. She wants to hoodwink you, the public, into believing that cops have no useful role to play in Oakland. Her entire political career depends on advancing that myth. She got elected in part on a defund-the-police platform because too many voters in District 3 are disengaged and maybe not very smart. Were she not to forge ahead with putting cops down, her public might start to suspect her wokeness—and that would not be good for Carroll Fife’s future earnings.
Rest assured, every minute of her day Carroll Fife thinks about what is politically advantageous for her. If she cared about you and me, about the people of Oakland, she’d want a safe Oakland, which is exactly what Chief Armstrong held his rally for last week: #SafeOakland. Where was Fife? Not at the rally for peace and safety. Instead, she went to the hatefest on the other side of the Lake, organized by her fellow cop-hater, Cat Brooks. Every chance she gets, Fife insults, demeans, attacks, smears the Oakland Police Department, as if they are not decent, caring human beings but some kind of storm troopers. And whenever she can, she raids its budget, and her enablers—Kaplan, Bas, Kalb, Thao, Gallo—let her get away with it.
It gives me no pleasure to point out these truths. I truly wish District 3, where I live, had a council member we could trust and believe in, someone working for the common good, instead of playing the race card every 5 minutes, who pushes the falsehood that the police brutalize children. Come to think of it, that gives Fife something in common with Trump: they both spread the Big Lie, and they think that the louder and more often they repeat it, the more it will stick. “The election was rigged.” “End racist police brutality.” Scream it from the rooftops, over and over and over. There are enough gullible people out there that some of them will believe it. Maybe even enough to get you to City Hall, or the White House.