The San Francisco Chronicle, which will go to its grave insisting that wokeness is all we need to cure everything, just published a letter to the editor from someone named Kalimah Priforce, who identifies herself as an Emeryville City Council member.
In her letter, she lectures us that we should stop criticizing Pamela Price and cease the Recall. My response: Fat chance, Ms. Priforce. This train has left the station, and we’re all going to ride it to the end.
Priforce concedes that crime in our cities is “frightening.” But instead of holding Price at least partly accountable, she surprisingly claims the fault lays with elected officials like herself, who “failed to proactively update our crime-stopping systems by not deploying modern tools to intervene against modern crimes and failed to fund proven preventative models…Since we as leaders, past and present, failed to uphold our constitutional oaths, Price is now being pressured to break hers and the law by prosecuting based on insufficient evidence or circumventing ballot measures approved by public majorities.”
It's nice to hear a public official admit that she failed on the job. It would be nice to hear Sheng Thao or Carroll Fife or Nikki Bas or Madame D.A. say the same. Of course, they never will, because their egos won’t permit them to own up to their failures, and because, already anticipating the next election, they don’t want to give ammunition to their political opponents.
But to call Price a “scapegoat” is insulting to our intelligence. While it’s true that Price has only been in office for eight months, she’s already done enough damage to Alameda County, and particularly to Oakland, to last a lifetime. It’s not just the criminals whom she treats so leniently that are her disastrous legacy; as I wrote the other day, it’s also Price’s messaging over the years. Word on the street among the bad guys is that they have the Top Cop on their side—someone who won’t send them to jail if they’re under 25 years old, and who will charge them with the lightest crimes possible, if she can’t avoid charging them at all, especially if they’re Black. Under the circumstances, gangbangers are having a field day, running rampant with virtual impunity, knowing that not only do they have a D.A. who feels sorry for them, but that the same “progressive” system that put Price into power has almost thoroughly destroyed local law enforcement’s ability to fight crime. No cops, no indictments, no jail—if you’re a thug, it’s a good time to do your thing in Alameda County.
By the way – is Sheng Thao still enjoying pho on her luxury trip to Vietnam, paid for by us taxpayers? Some people have criticized her for traveling overseas during our multiple crises, but I say, Please stay there, Madame Mayor. Permanently. We never expected responsible leadership from you, and you haven’t disappointed us.
Steve Heimoff