Oakland under siege by violent criminals. An explosive increase in the murder rate. Illicit drugs rampant. Senseless slayings that overwhelm police detectives and set residents on edge. Domestic fights and armed robberies.
Oakland 2022? Nope. Oakland 1992. In thirty years, nothing has changed.
The Mayor back then was Elihu Harris. “Our city is in dire distress from the wave of violence that has been building over the last 10 years,” he said, suggesting that the pattern of violence in Oakland extends back to at least 1982. The city had the highest murder rate of any large city in California. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Harris’s 15-point program was the youth curfew, in which juveniles would be banned from the streets after 10 p.m.
Sadly, nothing has changed today. The situation is perhaps even worse.
We can thank decades of irresponsible politics in Oakland for the peril we face. Administration after administration has failed to keep us safe. The same politics, repeated time and time again, result in the same situation—and it’s always the City Council that stymies cops and ignores the safety of citizens. It’s the definition of insanity, and what makes it even crazier is that the people of Oakland fall for the same B.S. over and over, decade after decade. You’d think we would have learned from the mistakes of the past—but no. There are always political hustlers who realize they can seize power—and make money for themselves and their friends—by peddling the same steaming pile to new generations of voters gullible enough to believe them. Now here we are, 30 years later, 40 years later, with grifters demanding that yet more money be sunk into their dubious “social programs.” Well, they didn’t solve crime in 1982, or in 1992, and they’re not solving crime now.
Maybe Oakland deserves what it gets, by the immortal law of karma. But I refuse to believe it. I think we can have a better Oakland—safer, respectful of us law-abiding citizens, intolerant of crime, less “idealistic,” if you will, in the sense of admitting that some incorrigibles need to be removed from circulation. Do we need to go back to imprisoning them? Should we reinstitute something like “three strikes and you’re out”? Should we change some misdemeanors to felonies and demand that our DAs prosecute and that our elected judges sentence? Let’s finally have an honest conversation.
Steve Heimoff