Did you happen to catch video of Thao giving her State of the City speech the other day? She reminded me of Shirley Temple, the squiggly-faced child actress of the 1930s, in a movie about a little girl who pretends to be a Queen.
Declaring herself shocked, shocked by all the crime, Thao has conveniently forgotten her years of attacks on the Oakland Police Department. She made no references to, or apologies for, her attempt to strip OPD of money, as for instance in June, 2021, when she voted to defund the department of $18 million to pay for so-called “violence prevention measures.”
It’s easy now for Thao to claim that “community safety remains my top priority as your mayor.” But the horse is out of the barn and running wild. Too bad Thao wasn’t focused on community safety when she was on the City Council, when support for the police might have made a difference. Instead, Thao threw in her lot with radicals such as Carroll Fife, Rebecca Kaplan and Dan Kalb and went on a witch hunt against police. A few months after her horrible June, 2021 vote, Thao—who already was running for Mayor--posted on Twitter, “WE MUST [sic] reform our criminal justice system, end mass incarceration, & tackle crime at its roots through non police programs…”.
Sounds like Pamela Price, doesn’t it? Then, earlier this year, Thao in a temper tantrum fired the best Police Chief Oakland has had in years, LeRonne Armstrong, for being too good at his job. She blamed it on “significant cultural problems” within OPD when it’s common knowledge that she fired Armstrong due to pressure from the federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, who was affronted by Armstrong’s accurate criticism that Warshaw was stringing out his job to preserve his million-dollar salary. (An independent commission last month concluded that Armstrong was entitled to be reinstated, but Thao has refused even to meet with him.)
Thao has always been incoherent when it comes to matters involving public safety and policing. When she was running for Mayor, she said her “comprehensive public safety plan” was based on, first, “increasing investments in violence prevention,” and only secondly on “more community-oriented policing, and community building.” Let’s get real here. I think readers fully understand that Thao’s “violence prevention” efforts, including the Department of Violence Prevention, are jokes. Thao’s so-called “violence interrupters” seem to spend their time listening to police reports, when driving to the scene of shootings and murders. There, they kibbitz with whoever happens to show up; in one reported instance, the violence interrupter paid for the mother of a murder victim to get “a manicure and pedicure” and “food galore” with DVP money. Doesn’t that make you feel safer?
It’s really pathetic that union dark money got Thao elected to a job she’s unqualified for. We have no idea whom she’s beholden to, or what back-room deals she laid down with the AFL-CIO or SEIU or the Alameda Labor Council. I doubt if the machers who decide where union money gets invested wasted 2 seconds in actually wondering if candidate Thao would make a good Mayor. They were content to hear her promise to carry their water.
As the Price Recall gathers steam, I’m hearing more and more about a Thao recall. I’m not naming names at this point, but the idea is out there. And the more Thao holds stunts like her State of the City speech, the more she offends ordinary voters who look at her, and then look around at the true state of the city, and wonder how we ended up in this mess. Thao is the living embodiment of the Peter Principle, and we’re all suffering as a result.
Steve Heimoff