We now know that San Francisco is experiencing the same shortage of cops as we are in Oakland. The S.F.P.D. has 459 officers less than the 2,182 needed to perform its duties. This has caused even the liberal members of the Board of Supervisors to come up with ways to attract more cops, including higher salaries, newer police vehicles and even subsidized housing.
The reason San Francisco is so short of cops is the same as here in Oakland: for years, both cities have been governed by progressives who preferred to focus on issues related to racial justice than on public safety and common sense. Both cities, of course, are historically liberal, so that’s not so surprising. What is surprising is that San Francisco’s elected officials have gotten the message that being against the police is passé. It’s no longer politically correct to want to defund the police. In fact, it’s become political poison.
Oakland’s elected officials, on the other hand, are a little schizoid lately. They can’t quite bring themselves to make the 180-degree U-turn that the San Franciscans made; when Oakland gives something to O.P.D., it does so begrudgingly, and even then, O.P.D. needs to be constantly watching the City Council to make sure it doesn’t do something really stupid, like sell police headquarters, or turn the building on Seventh Street into a homeless shelter, or defund O.P.D.’s communications office.
One of the San Francisco supervisors looking into police staffing levels sounded as though she could be a member of the Coalition for a Better Oakland. “We cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the conditions in our city,” Catherine Stefani said. “We must begin to meet the needs of so many that are calling [for police help].” She added, “Without meaningful investment in [police] staffing, this trend [of rampant crime] will continue.”
Can you think of a single Oakland City Council member who would say something like that? I mean, who would come right out and call for “meaningful investment” in O.P.D.? No, there isn’t. All seven of them live in bubbles of their own making. They got elected, and continue to be re-elected, by snarling at cops and telling their constituents that social justice is more important than an adequately-staffed police department. Their constituents tend to be younger, kneejerk idealists. Less knowledgeable about facts than the readers of this blog are, they don’t really have the time or inclination to read the news and understand the issues. Instead, they intuitively believe insinuations that cops are brutal and that funding O.P.D. is a waste of funds that could better be “invested” in “the community.”
The irony is that, for these benighted Oakland City Council members, they, too, are feeling the heat from their constituents for more safety. So they, the council members, have to perform a balancing act: on the one hand, keep up their anti-cop rhetoric, and on the other, hire more cops. It can’t be easy living such a lie.
If you read the article I linked to above, check out the final paragraph. The reporter writes that “some crime researchers…say the [staffing] report doesn’t clearly state how an increase in officers could translate into improved public safety.” I’d love to know who these “crime researchers” are. Look: the great 18th century philosopher, David Hume, once pointed out that when a cue ball strikes another pool ball, causing it to move, what we see is a sequence of events, but we cannot prove that the first pool ball was the cause of the second’s motion. And yet, we humans know that the cue ball “caused” the second ball to move, even if we can’t prove it.
It’s exactly the same with cops. Everyone who’s honest knows that “an increase in officers” translates into “improved public safety.” So-called “crime researchers” who deny it are just trying to muddy the waters, in a disinformation campaign that should end now.
Steve Heimoff