The leading cop-hater in Oakland, Cat Brooks, tweeted yesterday to Loren Taylor, who just narrowly lost the mayoral election to union-backed Sheng Thao. Brooks told him, “We are clear that IF you were mayor that you would have continued the collusion/corruption between the mayors [sic] office & OPD. You would have continued to reward bad actors with the ppls dollars. And made us no more safe. That’s why we didn’t vote for you.”
Nasty! Brooks’ hatred of the police goes back to her Black Panther associations, which make her think of herself as some kind of social-justice warrior queen at war with cops. In her delusionary universe, there are no problems at all in the Black community except those caused by racist cops. There’s no crime, no violence, no gun fetishizing, no drug addiction. Everything would be perfect except for racists.
She’s made quite a nice career from it. We don’t know how much of the money that pours into her Anti Police-Terror Project recurs to her personal benefit. Perhaps some enterprising investigative journalist will do a little digging and find out. (I, myself, prefer to think that Cat Brooks would never do anything unethical.) As for her past, present and presumably future state of mind concerning law enforcement, read her tweet again. She is accusing a fine, upstanding, decent man, Loren Taylor, of “collusion/corruption,” an allegation that, I would think, is a slur upon Loren, and one that should open Brooks up to a defamation of character lawsuit.
Why, in Brooks’ fevered hallucination, would she say that Loren—and Libby Schaaf before him—“colluded” with OPD in a “corrupt” relationship? Because both Loren and Schaaf understood the need for adequate policing in a crime-ridden town like Oakland. Both attempted to work amicably with OPD and former Chief Armstrong in a professional, mutually-respectful way. Of course, to someone like Brooks, to show any courtesy to any cop anywhere is anathema. She portrays cops as evil incarnate—and Cat Brooks does not sup with the devil.
“Bad actors,” Brooks calls the police. Can you believe it? That’s why I titled this post “Such hatred!” Hatred is a nasty acid that corrodes the heart and mind of the hater. The hater loses all perspective, all connection with reality, all common sense, all empathy with the community, and turns into little more than a predator seeking to destroy the hated object. Of course, if all humans were like that, civilization would screech to a brutal halt. But thank God all humans are not like that. Most people are fair and open-minded. They’re not consumed with vitriol. For that matter, most people like cops.
What immediately prompted Brooks’ nasty tweet to Loren was the latter’s public statement concerning the placing of Chief Armstrong on paid leave by Thao. Loren—like me and, I suspect, like most of you—believes that Chief Armstrong was wrongfully disciplined. In his [Loren’s] words, Thao’s action was “excessive,” and he [Loren] “would not have done it.” We all know that Thao lashed out at Armstrong in a violent, excessive way, but it was hardly a surprise: she’s been out for OPD’s scalp for years. She wasted no time in embarrassing and harming Chief Armstrong the first chance she got, and I’m pretty sure she’ll fire him soon.
That will make Cat Brooks purr. Her vengeance has only been fluffed now that Thao, Ramachandran and Pamela Price have been elevated to power; they’re all crime-enablers along with Kaplan, Fife and Kalb. Brooks imagines herself as the puppet master controlling the strings that animate her woke acolytes. Her time has come! She has slouched unopposed into Bethlehem! When wannabe dictators who have struggled for years finally achieve power, what usually happens is purges. Think Hitler, Castro, Stalin, Mao, Trump, DeSantis. They come into office carrying deep-seated resentments and enemy lists. Cat Brooks, who ran before for Mayor and may do so again, has an enemy list as long as my arm. I’m probably on it, Loren Taylor and Libby Schaaf are on it, but No. 1 on that list is the Oakland Police Department, for it’s the only entity standing between her and a total seizure of power.
That, my friends, is what’s going on here: who will have their hands on the levers of public safety and a functioning city. Right now, things are heading in the wrong direction. We can change it, and I believe we will. But time is running out.
Steve Heimoff