Next time Sheng Thao boasts about being personally responsible for decreasing crime in Oakland during the first quarter of 2024, ask her if she also takes credit for lower crime in San Francisco.
Or Baltimore.
Or Charleston.
Or Philadelphia.
Or Killeen Texas.
Or Seattle.
Or Dallas.
Or just about any place in America.
The fact is, crime of all sorts, including homicide, has plunged from coast to coast between January and April of this year; and although the “experts” don’t exactly understand why, it’s clear this is a nationwide trend. As for Thao, she’s merely the beneficiary of the trend, not its cause, so don’t believe her next time she’s out there taking credit for making Oakland safer. It’s a self-serving lie.
Some of the biggest drops in crime in Oakland have occurred along the troubled Hegenberger Road corridor, near the airport, which is where Thao predictably showed up on Monday to host a news conference to again take the credit. “We are seeing that crimes, whether it's burglaries, property crimes, homicides, all in this corridor, that they are trending down," she said.
What Thao did not stress was that cops have been flooding the corridor for weeks now, after Gov. Newsom sent in the Highway Patrol, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office got involved, and OPD itself dramatically created a surge in policing, including foot patrols. Obviously, increasing the number of uniformed officers in any neighborhood scares the thugs away, but Thao can’t come out and say so, because her supporters, who still include many defund-the-police types, would be upset.
We, the Coalition, are going to be publishing our political endorsements for the November election in due course. For now, I’ll just say that we’ll support the candidate, in each race, who comes out most strongly for additional funding for the Oakland Police Department. Don’t believe police haters when they say it can’t or shouldn’t be done. That’s been their standard line for years. They’ve never been able to explain why police surges are so effective in preventing crime, so they no longer even try; they just wave shiny objects and hope the public will look away. From Cat Brooks’ website: “The answer is always—ALWAYS—more cops. Crime up? More cops. Crime down? More cops. Cops didn’t beat anyone? Reward them with more cops. Cops DID beat someone? More cops. Just one more cop, bro, and we can solve this. Just one more, one more cop—bro, bro hear me out, just one…”.
Yes, “bro,” more cops! We, the People, demand it. And we, the People, will get more cops. Hundreds more men and women in blue, surging through our neighborhoods, busting bad guys and throwing them in jail, where they’ll be kept when we recall Pamela “Madame D.A.” Price.
Steve Heimoff