Yesterday I wrote about the Coalition for Police Accountability. Today, it’s the Office of the Inspector General here in Oakland. You might have thought the official overseer of the Oakland Police Department was the Police Commission, or, perhaps, Mr. Warshaw, the federal monitor who corruptly prolongs his $1 million salary year after year with no challenge or obstruction from the city. But no! Why have just two or three police overseers when you can have four, five or more?
So what is the OIG? It’s actually quite a new city department, established by voter approval in 2021, under Measure S1, which greatly strengthened the Police Commission and the Community Police Review Agency (CPRA), yet another entity created to “investigate allegations of Oakland Police Department (OPD) misconduct.” Let’s back up for a moment and ask why Oakland, more than any other city, has so many agencies to “investigate police misconduct.” The answer is that decades ago Oakland fell into the grip of Black Panther-style radicals and has remained in their chokehold ever since. Suffice it to say for now that this domination of leftist, racialized politicians is directly responsible for everything wrong with Oakland today. Before they seized power, Oakland was a happy, thriving city. Today—well, you can see for yourself.
So here’s the OIG, led by a racialized group of radicals, whose self-defined mission is “to ensure accountability, enhance community trust, and increase transparency via fair and thorough assessments of OPD’s compliance with the law and departmental policies.” Just as with the Coalition for Police Accountability, OIG’s self-justifying language is a hodgepodge of nonsense, a bunch of words that sound impressive but are meaningless wokespeak. OIG is simply another drag on police efficiency. In fact, it’s safe to say two things about all these “police watchdog” agencies: (1) they exist to harass cops and (2) their members are incompetent hacks who would never be hired in a normal city run by responsible leaders.
OIG sends reports directly to the Police Commission, with which it works hand-in-glove to weaken law enforcement in Oakland. OIG has since its inception made it clear that it sides, politically, with the so-called “social justice” movement in Oakland. As its previous inspector general stated on their website, “From the Black Panther Party to the social justice groups we see today, the Office of the Inspector General recognizes that this office is a culmination of decades of hard work and advocacy.” In other words, OIG forms, with people such as Carroll Fife, Pamela Price, Cat Brooks and others, a bulwark against effective policing that is one of the more unfortunate legacies of 1970s-style Black liberation. The Black Panthers hated law enforcement, and today, fifty years later, their ideological descendants continue that fury into the 21st century, with ruinous results.
There’s no use pretending that OIG is anything other than what it is: a racialized, politically-extreme anti-cop cult. That we, the people of Oakland, have permitted this cancer to metastasize in our city, killing safety, economic growth and human decency, and by the way killing each other, is appalling. When OIG states their “vision is to build trust in civilian oversight of policing through encouraging, implementing, and preserving a culture of impartiality, transparency, and accountability,” one doesn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or throw up. Oakland doesn’t need more “vision” in order to control crime; it needs greater will power. Oakland doesn’t need to “reimagine” law enforcement. Everybody knows what good law enforcement is; Oakland doesn’t have it because generations of leftwing, racialized radicals have fought against it. As for “civilian oversight,” rest assured this phrase is a lie. The only “civilians” permitted to “oversee” cops are those political activists vetted and approved by the anti-cop wokes—people committed to weakening law enforcement and funneling taxpayer dollars into “the community.” How come every member of the Police Commission, of the Coalition for Police Accountability, of the Office of Inspector General, is a leftwing radical, usually of color? Can that be an accident? Or is it that we’ve had a coup here in Oakland that, over the years, has seized power and handed it over to a gang of corrupt grifters?
Does the Police Commission speak for you? Does the Coalition for Police Accountability? Does the Inspector General? I don’t think so. But I will.
Steve Heimoff