Yesterday was a bad day for Sheng Thao. A very bad day. The prom queen saw the outrage grow (as I reported yesterday) over her regime’s loss of that massive multi-million dollar grant from Gov. Newsom to fight retail theft. The nightly news shows led with it, raising public awareness and resentment even higher. And then, Thao was hit a second time: by an official report declaring that former OPD Chief LeRonne Armstrong had been unjustly fired by Thao--something the Coalition for a Better Oakland has maintained ever since she did the dirty deed.
The city is still reeling over that corrupt firing. I’ve lived in Oakland since 1987 and seen mayors do a lot of stupid stuff (Jean Quan leading a defund-the-police march was at the top), but Thao’s firing of the Chief was pure evil. She’s never really explained why. We know that cop haters, especially the discredited Cat Brooks, celebrated it, because Armstrong was tough on the criminals she coddles. I continue to believe that Thao yielded to pressure from the federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, a greedhead who wanted Armstrong gone in order to protect his (Warshaw’s) million-dollar salary and keep Oakland in a state of criminal turmoil to benefit himself.
The firing was only one example of Thao’s attacks on cops. She’s never apologized for her career-long opposition to the Oakland Police Department, the result of her bizarre belief that crime is the result of a racist society. Thao is now under scrutiny she never expected, and it’s not going to go away.
The report urged Thao to meet with Armstrong to discuss re-hiring him. That would be embarrassing for Madame Mayor. Armstrong is a strong, proud Black man, and he’s not going to take guff from an inarticulate prom queen who struggles to put together a coherent sentence. He knows that a big percentage of the city loves him and wants him back. While the report didn’t order Thao to rehire him, it did insist that she include him in a list of final candidates—a list that doesn’t yet exist despite the fact that Oakland has been without a Police Chief for almost this entire year, and crime is once again spiraling out of control. This is further evidence—as if more were needed—that Oakland under woke leadership can’t do anything right. Things were bad enough under Libby Schaaf, who presided over, and permitted, the explosion of encampments and crime. But things are much worse now, and I dare say everybody knows it.
It’s impossible to explain Thao’s behavior without considering the influence the labor unions have over her. For reasons I’ll leave to historians to explain, local unions have become obsessed with ridiculous social justice issues that do not include the crime that impacts their members every day. It’s horrible that union leaders don’t care to explain their true motives to us, the people, who suffer by their complete control of our local politics.
P.S. Cat Brooks, the No. 1 cop hater in Oakland, just blocked me from reading her tweets on “X”, I mean Twitter. You know why? Because Brooks, who has done more harm to Oakland than anyone else, writes BS lies and I expose and ridicule them and her. People who operate in the dark are up to no good. It doesn’t matter: I’ll get her tweets anyway. Unless, that is, I quit Twitter, which I will the moment Schmusk starts charging for it.
Steve Heimoff