Sheng Thao, in the fight of her political life due to the recall, is taking credit for the reported fall in Oakland crime in the first four months of 2024.
“Oakland is turning the corner and the public safety investments we have made are paying off,” Thao bragged, citing OPD data showing crime down in all major categories except robbery, which increased by 11 percent compared to a year ago.
Thao’s staff joined her in the victory parade. Her Violence Prevention director, Holly Joshi, said the Thao administration “relentlessly pursues those driving violence.” (I did not know that. Did you?) Thao spokesperson Francis Zamora even defended the high robbery numbers by saying the rate of increase has slowed down. (Is that supposed to be comforting?)
Of course Thao instructed her staff to go out and talk her up. At the same time, she managed to slur former Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong, her political enemy and possible future opponent, whom she fired (Armstrong is currently suing the city for wrongful termination).
Another Thao aide, Brooklyn Williams, said Armstrong had “pulled officers and resources away” from Operation Ceasefire, in order to staff up his own anti-violence program. This is a serious charge Armstrong strongly denies. “Those accusations are completely false,” he told me. “Ceasefire staffing was never reduced under my leadership and Ceasefire remained our primary strategy. The truth of the matter is that Mayor Thao and her colleagues voted to defund OPD in 2021, and those reductions directly impacted Ceasefire.”
Any diminishment in Ceasefire, in other words, was due to police cuts at the direction of Thao and her progressive friends on the City Council: Fife, Bas, Kalb, and Kaplan—cuts they are frantic to deny. I challenge Thao’s aide, Ms. Williams, to provide proof that Chief Armstrong “pulled officers and resources away” from Ceasefire. Put up or shut up, Ms. Williams.
So why is crime down? My hunch is that it’s a statistical anomaly that will reverse when summer sets in. Also, let’s not forget Gov. Newsom’s bold action last February of sending in 120 California Highway Patrol officers to help defend Oakland against the onslaught of crime. Although the number of CHP officers deployed in the city has since fallen, there remains a CHP team, and their presence, in the first third of 2024, undoubtedly made a dent in crime. According to Newsom’s office, by early April “The California Highway Patrol has recovered 414 stolen vehicles, made 181 arrests, and seized over 30 crime-linked firearms in the East Bay as part of undercover sting operations and law enforcement surges over the past 8 weeks.” This corresponds to the exact period in which Oakland crime decreased. The CHP surge, which was heavily criticized by progressive racialist police critics such as Cat Brooks, clearly lowered crime. But to hear Thao and her people, you’d never know that. And by the way, the CHP officers in Oakland have been effective because they are not under the control of the various anti-cop agencies here, including the Police Commission, which stifle and hamstring our city cops. CHP officers are free to do their job without woke bureaucrats hog-tying them, which is why wokes hate them.
Look, the last thing the Left wants is for the public to know that police prevent crime. That truth is anathema to them. They endlessly babble about divesting from OPD and diverting the money to their nebulous “root causes” of crime, but this theory has become completely untenable, as well as politically toxic, as the public realizes its untruth. Progressives are unable to credit police with anything positive. Even when we have reason to celebrate a good trend in criminal activity—for the moment, anyhow—these wokes just won’t bring themselves to thank OPD and CHP. Instead, it’s politics as usual: taking credit for things they didn’t do, attacking a good man, Armstrong, in order to smear him, and trying to hoodwink the good people of Oakland into thinking Sheng Thao is an effective leader.
By the way, let’s put the Oakland crime reduction into context. Crime is down everywhere across the U.S. since the spike of 2021, 2022 and 2023. As President Biden said last week, “Americans are safer from violent crime today than a year ago,” and he offered statistics to back that up. Oakland, like every city in America, is benefiting from this overall reduction. It’s ridiculous to suppose that Sheng Thao—a lifelong police hater who has done her best to cripple OPD—has anything to do with it. I went through the comments on Twitter to Thao’s boast that “Oakland is turning the corner and our focus on public safety is paying off” and it’s clear that the people are not buying it. Thao’s lies, smears and self-justifications are pathetic. Intellectually weak, morally cowardly, she’s in over her head. Recalling her will be the first step Oakland takes toward restabilizing our city and repudiating the politicians that got us into this mess.
Steve Heimoff