As Pamela Price becomes increasingly desperate to keep her job, she’s doubling down on unproven allegations against the Oakland Police Department, and particularly its union, the Oakland Police Officer’s Association.
Last Thursday, she told a Democratic panel discussion (which Chesa Boudin was part of) that OPD is deliberately not arresting people, in order to let crime surge and turn the public against her. This police strike, she alleged, “is happening in Oakland, and it is a strategy.”
Well, crime is certainly surging in Oakland, and the public is turning against Price. But for her to allege that OPD officers are purposely turning a blind eye to criminal behavior is despicable. Officers take an oath: “On my honor, I will never betray my integrity, my character or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions. I will always maintain the highest ethical standards and uphold the values of my community, and the agency I serve.”
I can assure you that Oakland police officers take this oath seriously. The ethical values undergirding that oath are drummed into new recruits as soon as they reach the Police Academy. As one recent graduate, Eyob Worku, noted, “We are trained in the academy to keep our bearings, to be professional, for the city of Oakland and to have sanctity of life. That is my goal to be able to help and educate others.”
For Pamela Price to smear this young man, and all other police officers—including the scores who have been killed over the years in Oakland in the line of duty--goes beyond the bounds of decency. We can truly ask Madame D.A., “Have you at long last no shame?”
In conversations with senior OPD officials, I’ve been told over and over that the reason cops may be slow to respond to crime, or to answer 9-1-1 calls, is because the anti-cop City Council (especially Bas, Kaplan, Fife, Kalb and Thao, when she was on the Council) deliberately engaged in a strategy of underfunding the department, thereby leading to severe staff shortages.
According to NBC Bay Area News,“With [OPD] staffing levels at their lowest in seven years, despite the population growing by more than 40,000 in the decade leading up to the pandemic, [OPD Deputy Chief James] Beere said the department needs 45 more officers but would like to see hundreds more.” As I’ve noted previously, former OPD Chief LeRonne Armstrong said (before he was vengefully fired by Thao) the department, which currently has about 730 officers, requires a minimum of 1,100 officers, and probably closer to 1,200, to effectively fight crime in Oakland.
Police officers take these allegations by cop haters personally. As one highly-placed OPD official told me, cops are loathed throughout the city, except in East Oakland, where a strong minority population understands the need for more intense policing. Despite their reputation for toughness, police officers are only human. They joined the department, as did Eyob Worku, “to help others.” Once they hit the streets, however, they discover that “others” often don’t want to be helped by them. “The community” apparently prefers to be robbed, mugged, beaten, intimidated, and even murdered, rather than to accept help from the cops whom Fife, Price and other progressives routinely smear as racist thugs.
Price concluded her remarks to the Democratic panel with these words: “Yes, there has been a surge in crime, but it has nothing to do with my election. I have not been able to destroy the entire criminal justice system in eight months.” No, not yet…but Price is trying her best. Her strategy—undeclared, but painfully obvious, and based on animosity toward cops--is to undermine law enforcement in Alameda County, to drain resources away from police departments and redirect it to crackpot “anti-violence” schemes run by her cronies (including her boyfriend), to turn public opinion against cops, and in general to make policing in Alameda County so unpleasant that no sane person would want to be a cop here.
But that strategy isn’t working. Just ask Eyob Worku.
Steve Heimoff