Sheng Thao and her woke pals on the City Council are saying how proud they are of Oakland’s new budget. What they’re not talking about (because they’re ashamed of it) is how severely they’ve cut staffing at the Oakland Police Department.
East Bay Insiders, an online news publication, reports that Thao “seeks to freeze 93 vacant full-time sworn police officer positions. Current staffing will be reduced to 710 police officers, down from the 726 budgeted in the prior fiscal year budget. The freeze includes 29 fewer funded officers patrolling the streets; 28 fewer sworn officers in crime investigations; 21 fewer in crime reduction; and 14 fewer in traffic.”
Keep in mind that, by every objective standard, the Oakland Police Department requires at least 900 fulltime officers to patrol a city the size of Oakland, with its astronomically high crime rate. But Thao is reducing the number of cops we have to a pitiful 710.
The defund-the-police crowd has been waiting for this moment for many years, and they finally found the opportunity to hurt OPD and blame it on a budget deficit. As East Bay Insiders noted, “During a period when Oaklanders perceive violent crime is skyrocketing, along with mayhem seen nightly on local newscasts, it remains to be seen how cuts to OPD will be received after an ill-fated ‘Defund the Police’ movement fizzled out two years ago.”
Look: if we can manage to penetrate the coma that most Oakland voters exist in and let them know that Thao has, at long last, done precisely what we feared—slash OPD staffing--we might get some headway in recalling her. Of course, Thao’s cop-hating enablers on the City Council are praising her. “My budget team Commends Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao's smart budget proposal — closing deficit while avoiding layoffs, maintaining critical services & investing record $200M in affordable housing,” tweeted Nikki Bas. Yes, the same Bas who for years has tried to defund the police. Her fellow cop-hater, Carroll Fife, in a signal of support, managed to retweet Bas. Cat Brooks’ cult, the Anti-Police Terror Project, is still calling for OPD to be defunded, even though that movement has been thoroughly repudiated by the vast majority of Americans.
To make matters even worse, Thao wants to eliminate OPD’s Internal Affairs Division and replace it with the Oakland Police Commission. Anyone who reads this blog knows that the Police Commission is staffed by leftwing activists who hate the police and, in some cases, wish to completely abolish OPD. Thao is now proposing to give these maniacal extremists almost total control over OPD. I can tell you that morale within OPD is at an all-time low. Our cops feel like they have targets on their backs. All they want to do is perform their jobs with integrity and keep Oakland safe, but everybody is conspiring against them. Pamela Price is reopening years-old investigations of cops who have already been found to have done nothing wrong; a vengeful, retributive Price will not stop until she gets as many cops as she can fired or imprisoned—or until we stop her through a recall.
Look, Oakland is one of the most violent, dangerous cities in the U.S. Our murder rate per 100,000 people is 23--251.3% higher than the rest of America. Our violent crime rate per 100,000 people is 5,653--232.9% higher than the rest of America. In the face of this, Sheng Thao and her progressives are telling Oaklanders we have to fend for ourselves because, really, there’s just not enough money to keep us safe.
Is that the message you want to hear from your mayor? “Sorry, we can’t staff OPD properly because we have to house homeless people and ramp up our violence-prevention programs, which don’t actually work but might, someday, if we cross our fingers and believe!” If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. As Barry Donelan, head of the Oakland Police Officers’ Association, accurately says of the Thao staffing cuts, “We don’t have enough police officers now just to deal with the calls for service that we have. It’s not a recipe for success in a city that has the call volume and violence we’re experiencing.”
Friends, if you voted for any of the members of the City Council, or Thao for Mayor, or Price for D.A., you have no right to complain about not feeling safe. You’ve brought this upon yourself. If you’ve been supportive of “defund the police” lunacy or any other type of anti-police slur, then the next time you or a loved one are robbed or mugged or stabbed, don’t call the police. Suck it up and tell yourself your blood is your sacrifice to the woke cause of “social justice.”
Steve Heimoff