You couldn’t find more virulent cop haters in Oakland than these two: Cat Brooks (of the infamous Police Anti-Terror Project) and Rashidah Grinage (of the Coalition for Police Accountability, whose lies I wrote about last week).
Brooks & Grinage predictably reacted negatively to the good news that the Oakland Police Department is only a year away from being released from the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA), under which they’ve suffered for nearly 20 years. For Brooks & Grinage, this is bad news; they want OPD to remain shackled by the discredited NSA. When U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick announced earlier this month that OPD can now enter a one-year probationary period, having met the vast majority of 51 conditions imposed upon it by the NSA, Brooks & Grinage hit the roof.
“Shameful!” hissed Grinage. “It scares me,” Brooks lamented.
Of course, we expect that kind of stuff from the cop-hating duo. What’s truly lamentable is the way some media outlets reported the latest developments. Take National Public Radio (NPR). We all know NPR veers toward the woke side, but when they wrote (on May 13) about Orrick’s decision, whom did NPR turn to for interviews? Yes, Brooks & Grinage.
Folks, I’ve been a journalist for a long time, and let me tell you how some unscrupulous reporters work. Let’s say something happens—in this case, Orrick’s decision. You have to write about it. You need quotes from reputable sources. Whom do you call? There are hundreds of possibilities in a case as important as the NSA, but you can’t call them all, of course, so you have some decisions to make. Do you call police critics? Yes, because you want your story to have some controversy. Brooks & Grinage will be in it, because you—the reporter—know they give good quote.
Of course, you also need to talk to someone from OPD; that’s basic. But do you also interview citizens who are happy that OPD is about to be released from the punitive NSA? You should. That would be fair and balanced journalism. You could call someone from the Coalition for a Better Oakland, the city’s leading (and pretty much only) group that supports OPD. We’re not hard to find. But you, the reporter, don’t even pretend to be fair and balanced. You, yourself, are rather anti-cop; you’re not about to give precious media space to cop supporters. So Brooks & Grinage get quoted ad nauseum about how horrible it all is. “If you go to East Oakland,” alleges Brooks, “they are still profiled and they are still harassed and tormented by OPD…But they are not a police department that this community trusts or should trust."
Despicable lies and propaganda. And dangerous; for this person to accuse OPD of “harassing and torturing” Black Oaklanders is close to slander, and her implication that cops are not trustworthy is bound to have a bad influence on vulnerable Oaklanders. Any reporter with a sense of professionalism should hear this and immediately determine to find someone to rebut it. But not NPR. They cheerfully publish this crap as if it were truth. Same with the San Francisco Chronicle, which actually allows Brooks her own column in which to smear OPD, issuing calumnies to which the paper allows no rebuttals.
This is what gives us, the Coalition for a Better Oakland, the motivation to work every day to counter the likes of Brooks & Grinage. It can seem like an uphill battle, with the media hopelessly prejudiced against the police, but it’s a battle that must be waged! And you, our members, are helping us wage it.
Steve Heimoff