I have to admit to feeling a bit defensive when I read allegations about the Oakland Police Department that seem exaggerated and misleading, if not outright untrue. Oakland is a small town, relatively speaking, and a gossipy one, so it’s easy for memes to spread virally. And once a meme is entrenched in the body politic, it’s almost impossible to purge—even if it’s nonsense.
To give an example, someone sent me this link to a “town hall” scheduled for tonight, on the topic of “Why is it so hard to change police culture?” The flyer touting the town hall references the so-called “OPD Instagram scandal” that erupted in September, in which a former Oakland cop created an Instagram account that contained jokes some felt were racist and sexist.
I’m not here specifically to defend that Instagram account. It’s long been deleted, so all I really know about it is from media reports which themselves are largely based on second-hand accounts. But this topic does cross into the broader issue of “cancel culture,” which I think of as the Left being censorious of any view or opinion they disagree with, to the extent of ostracizing the person who expressed it. If a cop is doing his or her job well, then I don’t particularly care if he’s making private jokes about boobs. Nine OPD officers were disciplined for their participation in the “Instagram scandal.” As many as 140 others had their cell phones seized, and “civil rights attorneys” called OPD’s integrity into question yet again.
Was this an overreaction to some silly, sophomoric comments? Or a legitimate response to a serious matter? We can have this conversation while still permitting stressed-out cops to utter a joke or two in what they think is the privacy of their digital life. Of course, there may no longer exist “privacy” in that sense, but if cops are to lose their private online lives, then it’s only fair we be permitted to see the personal emails, posts and comments from all of Carroll Fife’s and Cat Brooks’s social media accounts. (By the way, as a gay man and a friend of the LGBTQ community, I have to say I was not offended by Dave Chappelle’s jokes about trans people. It’s comedy, for crying out loud! Calls for Chappelle’s ostracism were cancel culture at its most ferocious.)
The Town Hall flyer also contains the following statement: “[Oakland] residents routinely report that officers make baseless political statements blaming councilmembers and reform efforts for crime, OPD response time, or morale.” Now, I don’t know who wrote those particular words, and I don’t know who the “residents” are who reported the “baseless statements.” Nobody asked me! But I do know that this sentiment echoes certain members of the City Council, from whom it could well have come. In particular, Carroll Fife has let it be known that she feels unfairly portrayed as a defunder and that she does not consider herself to blame for reportedly low morale among OPD cops.
I beg to differ. This City Council, or at least a majority of it, have directly contributed to the feeling among cops that they’re disrespected and devalued, even as they put their lives on the line to protect us. Take a look at the hate speech on the Anti Police-Terror Project website, whose directors are very close to the City Council. Read through transcripts of hearings by the Oakland Police Commission. Check out Fife’s personal website, where she still demands that Oakland “divest from policing” (which is just a synonym for defunding), where she still talks about “police violence” (her “big lie” equivalent of “Trump won the election”), and where, unbelievably, she still insists on “moving just half of the public funding we spend on policing in Oakland” into her pet projects. Yes, after the people of the United States, including the people of Oakland, have utterly denounced “defund the police” as insanity, Carroll Fife still wants a 50% reduction in OPD’s budget.
Look, there’s nothing baseless about stating that this City Council has demoralized cops. It’s the truth. People like Carroll Fife are always complaining that they and their community are disrespected, but respect is a two-way street. If you give it, you get it. It goes both ways. When we talk about “police culture,” some people envision brutal, racist thugs of all races in uniforms, terrorizing innocent people of color in their peaceful communities. Others, including myself, think of the Oakland cops I’ve known: professional law enforcement officers, trained at the highest level, dedicated to preserving the peace of the community, aware of the standards to which they’re held, proud of the traditions and history of law enforcement, respectful of the citizens they serve, eager to do the best job they can—and, at the same time, demoralized by the feeling that the very people who run the city see them as renegades.
If we’re going to talk about “changing police culture,” can’t we at least be intellectually honest and also talk about “changing anti-police culture”?
Steve Heimoff