I was going to write today about Judge Orrick, but then I opened my morning San Francisco Chronicle and saw something that superceded it: A column, on page 2, by the newspaper’s race columnist, Justin Phillips. This was unusual because Phillips normally writes his column for the Sunday paper. Today is Friday. It took me a second or two to realize that this was the first time ever I’ve seen Phillips’ column on a weekday. And as soon as I read the headline, I knew why.
“Oakland police reinforce inept, corrupt reputation.”
(The headline in the online edition is different: “The Oakland Police Department’s worst enemy is the Oakland Police Department.”) Now it made sense. OPD is down—again—and race baiters such as Phillips love kicking the department when it’s hurting. Now, the thing to understand here is that Justin Phillips specializes in the sort of aggrieved Black man whining we’ve come to expect from progressives of color. He perceives everything that happens through a racial lens. Just as cop haters, such as Judge Orrick, perceive every donut that an Oakland cop eats as evidence of corruption, so Justin Phillips perceives everything in terms of racism and White supremacy.
The substance of his column is not worth going into in detail. It’s a standard rehash of the same, tired old memes: OPD is inept, corrupt, not worth saving. OPD’s reputation in “the community” is beyond repair. Nothing but scandal issues forth from the department. And just to “prove” that Phillips isn’t just voicing his own opinions, he brings in a Rolodex of “experts” to quote who—surprise—agree with him.
Which experts? There’s Brian Hofer, chair of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission, who’s been trying to increase his control of OPD. “It’s really sad to see,” Hofer said, through crocodile tears, of the current brouhaha involving Chief Armstrong. Then there’s George Galvis, who runs something called Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice. Galvis is an ex-con who reinvented himself as a social justice warrior: he was a leader of the fight against gang injunctions. OPD, he told Phillips, “has the rhetoric around…wanting accountability to wipe out the few rotten apples. But it’s not one apple, it’s the entire barrel.” With mendacious and inflammatory rhetoric like that, no wonder Galvis is one of the first people Phillips calls when he needs good quote.
And then, of course, there’s the most infamous cop-hater of them all, Cat Brooks, who spewed the same clichés we expect from her. “This just proves that when it comes to the whole policing system, the only answer is to dismantle and rebuild a new version of public safety in Oakland.” There it is, Brooks’ version of the future: fire everyone in OPD, open the jails, and let Cat Brooks become the new Minister of Justice.
You’ll never see Justin Phillips call someone with sane and moderate views to defend the Oakland Police Department from the haters, the smearers, the ambitious hustlers and grifters who routinely savage it. He’ll never call me or anyone else who would explain to him what an embarrassment he is. Justin Phillips is not, of course, a journalist, he’s a polemicist, and that’s fine: it’s his right to have opinions, even if they’re 100% wacko. But I do question, yet again, the judgment of Phillips’ editors and publisher. The San Francisco Chronicle is dying a slow death, and it’s because the paper—which used to be good—has become nothing more than a boring propaganda rag for the woke left.
Monday: Explaining Judge Orrick
Have a great, safe weekend!
Steve Heimoff