Maybe Dan Kalb meant well when he objected to a bill that would have made watching a sideshow a misdemeanor. Kalb instead would let spectators off the hook. But he’s profoundly wrong. The reason we don’t want idiots watching sideshows is because the sideshow drivers thrive on their attention. If there was no crowd cheering them on, sideshows would dry up like our hills in summer.
The City Council previously had unanimously agreed to consider a new ordinance that made it unlawful to be a “spectator” at a sideshow. It defined “spectator” as “any person who is present at a Sideshow.” It was the City Council’s impression, with which I agree, that sideshow spectators encourage sideshows, which are illegal, and therefore should be subject to the full penalties of the law.
But Dan Kalb was upset. Joe DeVries, Deputy City Administrator, wrote, in a memo to his boss Ed Reiskin, that “concerns raised by Councilmember Kalb about the specificity of the language in the draft ordinance” necessitated a redrafting of the ordinance. “[Kalb’s] primary concern,” DeVries wrote, “was the use of the word ‘Spectator’ and a lack of clarity as to when a person could be charged with either promoting or assisting in the creation of a sideshow.”
Dan Kalb seems to have been worried that an innocent bystander, who just happened to be walking by a sideshow, could be rounded up by the police and charged with a crime they had no intention of committing. The proposed new language, which the City Council will consider at their meeting today, substitutes the word “Facilitator” for “Spectator,” thus “remov[ing] any doubt that one could be criminally cited for merely being present at a sideshow whether willingly, deliberately, or by chance.”
This makes no sense. I agree that our criminal justice system needs to throw the book at sideshow drivers, their passengers, and anyone who actively promotes the sideshow. But why is Dan Kalb (and his co-sponsor, Noel Gallo) deliberately letting sideshow spectators off the hook? Let’s be logical. Assume that you and your friend are walking to your favorite restaurant on International Boulevard. There’s a sideshow; you just happen to be there. You’re scooped up by the cops. Bad timing. But I would hope and assume that, once you explained your situation to the cops, they’d let you go, with apologies all around. Video would probably exculpate you. At any rate, the chance that a random passerby would be at a sideshow are miniscule. We’ve all seen video footage of sideshows. There are never “random passersby” there. It’s always a couple hundred mainly young people, taking videos on their smart phones, laughing, dodging cars and high-fiving each other. These are precisely the people we want to be rounded up and indicted.
I cannot sympathize at all with Kalb-Gallo. They claim to be so concerned about civil liberties, yet when it comes to the civil liberties of people living in their districts whose lives are upended by encampments, psychotic people and mounds of junk and filth, they’re nowhere to be found. Let’s face it: Dan Kalb and Noel Gallo are faux civil libertarians whom we shouldn’t take seriously. If they really wanted to end sideshows—and homelessness, and psychos prowling the streets—they would have voted to strengthen the Oakland Police Department years ago. They didn’t. They never see crime as a problem, only as a symptom of social inequity. Kalb and Gallo are part of the problem, not the solution.
Steve Heimoff