A group called the Coalition for Police Accountability, which is a front for the Oakland Police Commission, held a Zoom discussion on “The Future of the Oakland Police Department” the other day. Its panelists were six-well known opponents of OPD who have made careers in attacking the police.
Here are their names: Jim Chanin, Jose Dorado, Charlotte Jones, Dr. Tyfahra Milele, Michelle Phillips and Pamela Price. We’ll get to them in a moment. First, what is the Coalition for Police Accountability?
They are, simply put, part of the cadre of anti-police organizations in town whose agenda is to weaken, if not destroy, OPD. They have nice rhetoric: to make sure that OPD “operates with equitable, just, constitutional, transparent policies and practices that reflect the values and engender the trust of the community.” But behind the words lies a deep-seated and irrational antipathy toward the police, based on a far-left ideology that, frankly, has been repudiated by the American people.
Let’s take a closer look at the panelists:
Jim Chanin is well-known as the lawyer, specializing in police misconduct cases, who’s made a good living partnering with that other “civil rights” lawyer, John Burris, in suing the Oakland Police Department. I think we know where Chanin is coming from.
Jose Dorado is an East Oakland accountant who was a driving force behind the 2016 creation of the Oakland Police Commission, and was part of it until recently. As a Commission member, Dorado voted to fire former OPD Chief Anne Kirkpatrick, a disastrous decision that led Kirkpatrick to sue the city for wrongful termination. Kirkpatrick won, and was awarded $337,000 in damages. I think we know where Dorado is coming from.
Charlotte Jones is a career bureaucrat who works for the Community Police Review Agency, which describes itself as the civilian arm of the Oakland Police Commission. Started under the Schaaf administration, CPRA handles police misconduct complaints, and has made it easier for people to file such complaints online. Jones lately has been active in trying to move internal OPD investigations away from the department and into CPRA. It’s pretty obvious that Jones stands for weakening OPD and strengthening its opponents.
Dr. Tyfahra Milele is an equity warrior, commendably known as the director of Camp Phoenix, a summer camp for disadvantaged kids. She also is the current Chair of the Oakland Police Commission. In that capacity, she is front and center of the controversy surrounding Chief Armstrong’s recent suspension. She was severely rebuked by ex-Chief Kirkpatrick for running an “out of control” Police Commission. Milele is not kindly disposed toward the police.
Michelle Phillips is Oakland’s first-ever Independent Inspector-General, a post created by the Oakland Police Commission, who appointed her in 2021. Her role, according to the City of Oakland’s website, is “to ensure the Oakland Police Department (OPD) is performing to the highest standards and complying with its policies and Constitutional policing practices.” Since OPD’s “policies” have largely been written by the anti-cop Police Commission, it seems apparent that Phillips is determined to hobble the Oakland Police Department.
Pamela Price is, of course, the new District Attorney. She is a lifelong opponent of cops. (Price just launched her expected purge of Alameda County cops by renewing investigations of police officers that had been deemed unworthy of prosecution by her predecessor.) One of Price’s campaign promises was to fight “unfair prosecutions and excessive sentencing practices with a special focus on racially-biased prosecutions…”. Her anti-cop antics are far too numerous to document here, but it’s safe to say that Price wants a defunded, emasculated police department, whom she views as her enemy—not the street criminals she was elected to prosecute.
That OPD panel, with those people, is like having David Duke and the Grand Council of the Ku Klux Klan discuss “the future of the Blacks.” I don’t mean to be irreverent, but really, every one of its members is a die-hard police hater, with a connection, overt or hidden, to the irresponsible and incompetent Oakland Police Commission, and a desire to punish cops but go soft on criminals. These are exactly the kind of meddlers we don’t want or need in Oakland, radicals who undermine public safety, wreck morale at OPD, and enable criminals, thereby perpetuating Oakland’s dangerous culture of crime. Face it, if this Police Commission is in charge of “the future of the Oakland Police Department,” we’re in big trouble.
Steve Heimoff