It’s said that relations between the Oakland City Council and the mayor have never been warmer and less contentious than now, after years of squabbling between former mayor Libby Schaaf, a moderate-centrist, and the woke Council. The Council has always been to the left of the mayor, leading to ideological wrangling. But now, we have a leftist mayor who’s every bit as woke as the City Council. They get along because they’re ideological twins.
In fact for the last six months we’ve been treated to a mutual admiration society between the Council and the mayor. There’s an absolute love fest going on. It’s so different from Libby Schaaf’s days. This was reflected nowhere more strongly than in Libby’s commendable defense and support of the Oakland Police Department, which the Council was trying to defund. Libby—for all her faults, and they were many—stood up for OPD, which earned her enmity of the wokes.
The new harmony, it must be admitted, masks underlying cracks, as evidenced by the Council’s 5-3 vote to pass the new 2023-2025 budget that largely hews to Thao’s proposed one. Although three Council members—Ramachandran, Reid and Gallo—voted against it, it passed. That’s good news, but there are elements of it concerning the police that the public deserves to understand.
The main concern is that, starting in 2025, OPD’s Internal Affairs division will be transferred to a unit of the Oakland Police Commission. This is worrisome. The Commission, as those of us who follow it know too well, is essentially anti-police, and never misses an opportunity to weaken OPD and undermine its morale. Placing internal affairs into the Commission is like letting the fox guard the chicken coop.
The new budget also will cause “service reductions in key areas, including OPD,” according to an Oaklandside analysis. Despite the fact that the budget actually increases OPD funding by a little, the increase is nowhere near enough to cover the cost of inflation, which as we all know is out of control. The budget actually reduces the number of sworn officer positions from 726 to 710, and cuts the overtime budget by 15%. These factors will be felt by Oakland residents in a negative way, through longer 9-1-1 wait times and fewer cops on the beat. At a time when the public is clamoring for more, not less, police protection, this is an unconscionable act for the mayor and City Council to take.
There’s been no official reaction to the OPD cuts yet by OPD or the Oakland Police Officers’ Association. They may even be sighing with relief that things didn’t turn out even worse, given the anti-police sentiment rampant throughout Oakland government. Still, if you’re a cop in Oakland, you have to remain vigilant: this City Council and Police Commission have proven, time and time again, that they’re willing to hobble the police department in furtherance of their radical goals.
I mentioned earlier the “cracks” that were revealed in the Council’s 5-3 vote. For the time being, they can be ignored. We have, as I wrote, a new harmony in Oakland politics. You can interpret this, as I do, this way: the “split” is between wokes and extreme wokes. In other words, nothing fundamental has changed. There may be more 6-2, 5-3 or 4-4 votes (with Thao as tie-breaker) going forward, but the essential direction is still extreme progressivism. Almost alone among Bay Area cities, Oakland has embarked on a very dangerous path in which nearly every issue of importance is being viewed through the prism of race. It’s so wrong, so unconstitutional. But there it is. If you’re looking for something to break up the logjam, it may well be the looming recall of Pamela Price. We need an event of major impact to shake up the confidence of the City Council and mayor, and throwing the District Attorney out of office would be precisely such an event.
Steve Heimoff