Here’s Carroll Fife’s most recent tweet: “one of the most important news stories of 2021 is how media outlets collectively got in line to bolster local police forces by intentionally misrepresenting crime statistics and tying them to defunding that never actually happened.”
Let’s break it down, phrase by phrase.
Media outlets collectively got in line
This means that the media reported on the smash-and-grab retail thefts, the soaring murder rate, and the public’s historically high fear of being robbed and assaulted. Of course, had the media been reporting on OPD being defunded the way Carroll Fife wants, her language would have been different. Look: the media didn’t “get in line.” They reported the news.
Bolster local police forces
It’s not as if “media outlets collectively” decided they wanted more cops. If anything (and Fife knows this), local journalists who cover Oakland are more on the Left than on the Right; they’ve never been fans of OPD. In fact these same reporters have been very kind to Fife in her political rise, and she has used them repeatedly for her own purposes.
Intentionally misrepresenting crime statistics
Cite examples, Ms. Fife. Crime statistics are, by definition, impossible to “misrepresent.” Numbers are numbers: the 134 homicides that occurred in Oakland in 2021 cannot be “misrepresented.” The huge rise in shotspotter incidents—up 38% citywide in 2021 over 2020--cannot be “misrepresented.” These things are facts, Ms. Fife, and “media outlets” report on them because that’s what journalists are supposed to do.
defunding that never actually happened
Oh really? Here’s the headline from the San Francisco Chronicle reporting on that June, 2021 vote by the City Council: Oakland City Council Votes to Defund Police, Stripping More than $17M from Department Budget. Every “media outlet” in the Bay Area and beyond reported the same thing. Ever since that embarrassing vote, Fife and her colleagues, especially Nikki Bas and Rebecca Kaplan, have been trying to run away from their assault upon OPD, pretending it never happened, because their constituents hated it. Within days, they were issuing press releases “explaining” that, no, they didn’t really do what the media said they did. But the public never bought their excuses. If it walks like a duck…
And so Carroll Fife keeps on trying. Like Donald Trump getting caught with his hand in the “rigged election” cookie jar, she keeps doubling down on the misinformation, hoping that if she repeats her own Big Lie often enough, people may eventually start to believe it.
Sadly for Fife, though, that isn’t happening. She lost the defunding fight bigtime. That train left the station this past summer, when Oakland’s Season of Murder switched public opinion 180 degrees in favor of a stronger police department. If Carroll Fife had the grace to admit her mistake, she’d be better off. We would even probably forgive her.
Steve Heimoff