We saw it coming: the forces that have conspired for years to paralyze the Oakland Police Department have acted. Ruthlessly, waiting for barely two weeks after their seizure of power, the conspiracy—Mayor Sheng Thao, District Attorney Pamela Price, ambulance-chasing lawyers John Burris and Jim Chanin, Judge Orrick, the federal monitor Warshaw, all of them backed by powerful non-electeds like Cat Brooks—has just succeeded in forcing OPD Chief LeRonne Armstrong into involuntary semi-retirement.
It was just the latest dramatic move that illustrates how serious these people are in wanting to crush law enforcement in Oakland.
The charges against Armstrong smell fishier than last weekend’s garbage. Two OPD officers had a romantic involvement but didn’t tell the department about it. Shocking! There was a minor car accident in a parking garage. The end of the world! This is the sort of stuff that happens 24/7/365 all across the world, to you, to me, to cops. But Armstrong, as the Top Cop, got the blame, and the shaft. So onerous have been the “tasks” imposed by Orrick, Warshaw & Co. on OPD that a cop can barely eat a donut without breaking some rule. The conspiracy was ready from the moment the new regime took power to kneecap OPD, just waiting for the right excuse—an excuse they themselves exploited. The excuse materialized; the guillotine fell; Chief Armstrong’s head rolled.
His wasn’t the first to be sacrificed on the altar of progressivism. Price, almost as soon as she took power as D.A., fired or placed on leave several prosecutors in her office—prosecutors dedicated to doing their jobs and pursuing criminals, which is why Price didn’t like them. Letting the world know she doesn’t believe in prisons, she is now rampantly determined to release felons into the streets, where they’ll be free again to prey on us. As for Warshaw, Orrick, Burris and Chanin, everybody knows they love the money they make from 20-plus years of hobbling and suing the police department; they’re bound and determined to keep the wheels, and their palms, well-greased.
Make no mistake: this is a coup against law enforcement in Alameda County and in Oakland. It’s nothing more or less than an old-fashioned, Soviet-style purge. Its ripple effects will be profoundly harmful: morale will fall even further at OPD. More cops will quit. Fewer young men and women will apply to work at OPD, even if the City Council against its will is pressured into raising starting salaries. More unstable, violent and angry felons will wander our streets. Tempers among ordinary people will rise as the crime, danger and out-of-control feelings increase exponentially. The progressives—politicians like Carroll Fife and Thao—will use the discontent among the electorate to blame “racism” on the part of White people as the cause of the problems. They will impose parcel taxes on homeowners to raise money to pay off their cronies—and homeowners will happily offer their wrists to be slashed. Oakland will continue to slide deeper and deeper into the pit. OPD will manage, somehow, to exist, but woe to those cops who remain. They’ll be sitting ducks with targets on their backs for the conspiracy to finish off, once and for all.
Apocalyptic hyperbole? I don’t think so. We’ll see. And I’ll be able to say “I told you so.”
Steve Heimoff