So Price is out there, following her recall, trying to rehabilitate her wrecked reputation by blaming Oakland’s gun violence on “pandemic-era cuts to violence prevention programs.”
The violence isn’t due to her own soft-on-crime policies, of course. Nor on years of coddling criminals. Nor on the dysfunctionality that marks ghetto life in Alameda County. No, according to Price, people get shot because the woke city government of Oakland didn’t waste more money on so-called “anti-violence” programs that are little more than free bank accounts for shady nonprofits run by Pamela Price’s friends.
As usual, Price has to drag the red herring of race into the conversation. “There is no other disease or injury in Alameda County,” declares the Queen of Crime, “that displays such stark disparities in race and ethnicity as the epidemic of gun violence.” But Price can’t bring herself to blame the actual perpetrators of gun violence—the thugs who attack and kill anyone they don’t like. Statistically, suspects in the most heinous crimes committed in Oakland, like murder, attempted murder, robbery, weapons possession, and assault and battery, are overwhelmingly Black.
Talk about an inconvenient truth for a race warrior like Price! She can never admit that things are out of control in her own community, and thus it is in that community that solutions must be found. Instead, she has to invent a straw man to take the blame—and in this case, it’s a lack of taxpayer money funneled into “the community,” which means, in Price’s Wokespeak, Black nonprofits.
“Investing in communities and violence intervention programs” is her solution to gun violence. Well, Oakland has sunk untold millions of dollars into so-called “anti-violence” programs and what have we got for it? We’re one of the most violent cities in America. While it’s true that violent crime in Oakland has diminished in 2024, as I reported the other day, crime has plunged in every major city in the nation, proving that the crime decrease here has little or nothing to do with our policies, but is a nationwide phenomenon Oakland is benefiting from.
But Price doesn’t care about facts or truth. She wants money, money, money infused into “the community” because her political allies are on the receiving end. They get free money to hire their friends, family members and cronies, who fill out forms citing their successes—forms that the city bureaucrats who examine them are all too ready to accept as valid. A typical nonprofit report goes like this: “Anti-violence program ‘X’ made 1,254 contacts with at-risk youth in November. Of these, 1,251 included followup interventions that were deemed successful. We, the District Attorney’s office, therefore award Anti-violence program ‘X’ with an Award of Merit.”
Don’t you feel safer now? If you don’t, Price says you’re racist.
Price also trots out the discredited “racial disparities” theory, for instance in this statement: “Black males ages 15 to 34 make up roughly 5% of the population in [Alameda] County but accounted for 48% of all gun homicide deaths from 2019 to 2023.” Is this because not enough taxpayer money is flowing, unaudited and unmonitored, into Black nonprofits? I suggest there are more plausible reasons to explain the disparity. Many Black males turn to violence to resolve their differences with their enemies because that is the culture that long has thrived in the Black community, celebrated in gangsta rap and on the streets. As long as that pernicious culture exists, and the parents of these feral youth don’t step in and take control, young Black men will continue to turn to violence, with the predictable result—as Price herself puts it—that “a Black male turning 15 today has about a 2% chance of dying by gun homicide before reaching age 35.”
The new mayor and City Council need to initiate a complete review of every so-called “anti-violence” program in Oakland, in every department and bureau. If necessary, independent experts must be brought in, because we can’t trust the bureaucrats who have been hired over the years by the Schaaf/Thao regime, which has stocked City Hall with sycophants and race ideologues. I truly believe that if the people of Oakland knew what was happening with these anti-violence programs, and the “equity” programs that are ideologically aligned with them, they’d march on City Hall with pitchforks and flaming torches, demanding redress.
Steve Heimoff