On weekdays there are tables selling goods at the northeast corner of Lakeside Park, where Grand Avenue meets The Pergola. On weekends, the number of tables explodes. Vendors hawk everything from hats and shirts to electronic devices. And all the items, to my eye, appear to be stolen.
This is known as “fencing stolen goods” and it is illegal. You can’t steal stuff from, say, Walgreens or Best Buy and then sell it on the street for profit. And yet it appears to be a longstanding practice at Lakeside Park, and we can only ask “Why?”
Of course, Oakland for decades has had a government that is super-tolerant of crime, especially the kind of low-level retail crime often committed by people of color. Oakland has a “soft spot” for Black people, and too often this means letting them skirt the usual consequences of breaking the law. This is a form of virtue-signaling: because Black people have suffered so long under the onus of racism, the government of Oakland has decided to be lenient with them. It’s a form of redistribution of wealth by other means, and if the socialist leaders of Oakland have any political philosophy at all, it certainly includes the redistribution of wealth.
Still, this activity of fencing stolen goods is illegal, and the law ought to be enforced. Is there some rational reason why a cop isn’t allowed to ask a vendor for proof that he purchased the goods he’s selling? For that matter, you need a license to sell things on the street. Are the fencers at Lake Merritt in possession of legal vendor licenses?
Well, you know the answers to these questions. It will be a cold day in hell before an Oakland police officer asks to see sales receipts from the fencers proving that they actually bought the items. But this illegal fencing has terrible consequences. It’s largely responsible for the epidemic of retail theft and smash-and-grabs that plague Oakland and are driving businesses out of town. You want an easy way to make money? Steal a bunch of phone carrier cases from the local store, sell them for $9.95 on the street, and it’s free money, no questions asked.
We, the public, ought to demand from our elected leaders that the retail theft laws be enforced, at the Lake and everywhere else. We can also refuse to buy anything from these unlicensed purveyors; if you do so, you’re enabling a lawless underground economy that is contributing to the ruination of Oakland. As long as the Lakeside Park fencers are permitted to remain free to peddle their stolen goods, Oakland will continue to normalize such behavior—and normalizing aberrant behavior is exactly what got us into such trouble in the first place. No, it’s not okay to tolerate open-air retail theft markets in Oakland.
San Francisco, to its credit, has proposed a state bill “that would allow police to take tougher action against people who sell illegally obtained items on city streets, as is now common in parts of the Mission District, South of Market and other areas.” Why is it always San Francisco that takes the lead on responsible governance while Oakland remains mired in racialized politics and crime? Well, I think we know the answer to that, too. And while we’re on the subject, please don’t vote for Barbara Lee. If you think that old socialist will do anything to fix Oakland, you’re sadly mistaken.
Steve Heimoff