A new report commissioned by the City of Oakland that describes dangerously low staffing levels, both sworn officers and civilians, in the Oakland Police Department was muzzled by the City before pressure from the media compelled the City Council to release it.
At first, Oakland tried to hide the report. The Oakland Inspector General had it way back in November, but only now—after covering it up for five months—has he publicly released it.
Kudos to Oakland Report, a subscription service on Substack, for researching this. Oakland Report pressed the city on why it waited so long to release the report, and received only gobblygook in response; the city tried to make the point that the report was “incomplete.” Says Oakland Report: “After half a dozen inquires by Oakland Report to city staff, it remains unclear what is the basis for the city’s claim that the PFM report is incomplete.”
Maybe the mayor’s race had something to do with it. The report is highly embarrassing to Oakland’s City Council, which along with the Inspector General is the guilty party in the coverup. Any information suggesting that Oakland needs more cops is detrimental to Barbara Lee’s chances, and as we all know, the City Council is solidly lined up behind Lee. Withholding the report until the day after Election day was an obvious attempt to influence the vote and muzzle a fact that could have hurt Lee in the polls.
As for the report itself, it emphasizes that OPD is at least 200 officers short of the number needed to do the job in Oakland. This will not come as news to most of my readers. We’ve known it for years; this is merely the latest iteration. The City Council has ignored this since the Schaaf administration, and they’re likely to ignore this new warning. Years of progressive, anti-cop government in Oakland has allowed the crisis—of being under-policed—to be used as a sop to the unions, who hate the Oakland Police Department. All of those nasty politicians—Carroll Fife, Sheng Thao, Nikki Bas—couldn’t have been elected dogcatcher without union money, but in order to get that money, they had to promise to kneecap OPD. And they did their best.
Why do the unions hate the police? After all, their individual members don’t. Their members understand that living in a lawless city requires an active, engaged police department to keep them and their families safe. But the union leaders—whose names we rarely know because they hide behind a cloak of anonymity, as often happens in fascist states—hate the police. They’ve never explained this anti-safety position of theirs. Answers have never been demanded by the City Council because the unions have ordered Council members to stay away from this sensitive topic. It would be great to haul the leaders of SEIU Local 1021, IFPTE Local 21, and the California Nurses Association into public-session hearings where, under oath, they would be compelled to spell out their precise views on the police and be asked tough questions. This won’t happen anytime soon, if ever, because the City Council continues to be owned and controlled by the unions. Can you imagine Carroll Fife demanding of union leaders why they have failed to support the police?
If there’s a single issue I hope people concentrate on going forward, it’s the role of unions in Oakland politics. It sure looks corrupt. And if it walks like a duck—well, you know the rest. Meanwhile, we’re sweating the results of the election. At least we can content ourselves that the union’s preferred candidate for City Council in District 2, Kara Murray-Badal, lost in a landslide to the moderate Charlene Wang. This is in line with other recent developments, especially the recalls of Pamela Price and Sheng Thao. Extreme woke politicians in Oakland appear to be an endangered species, as the public wearies of their antics. We can only hope this is a permanent reality and not just a trend, but in crazy Oakland, you never know.
Steve Heimoff