I’ll admit it, I get depressed thinking how badly led we are by our Oakland government, and how little we can do about it. When I met with Nikki Bas last week, I tried my best to convey to her how hurtful she has been to the Oakland Police Department, and how wrong it is for her and her fellow cop-haters on the City Council, especially Rebecca Kaplan and Carroll Fife, to try to take money away from them and demoralize them all the time. I thought I was being articulate, speaking from the heart of our fears and concerns; I hoped to make some dent in her armor.
But then I watched her afterwards, during the Dec. 21 City Council meeting, when she doubled down on her anti-cop ideology. More “reimagining,” she insisted. More “social justice.” More “root causes.” Less support for these brave women and men who wear the uniform, and who put their lives on the line every day protecting all of us, including her and her family. Her hard heart, her ideological rigidity were shocking. If 135, or whatever the current number is, of murders isn’t enough to convince the City Council President that OPD needs significantly more cops on the beat, then I don’t know what is. 200 murders? 500? 1,000? Nikki Bas, tell us: How many dead Oaklanders will it take?
So I get depressed. But not defeated.
I just don’t get her. We’re supposed to throw massive amounts of money into “anti-violence” programs. But no one ever explains just how these programs are supposed to work. We’re asked to trust the kind-hearted intentions of Nikki Bas that some vague, shadowy network of “violence interrupters” will convince gangbangers to lay down their guns. Who are these magical people? Do you know any “violence interrupters”? Are they supposed to just show up at the scene of a shootout and convince both sides to sing Kumbaya? Is there any evidence, anywhere, that this sort of thing has ever worked? This isn’t a West Side Story musical; we’re dealing with seriously deranged sociopaths who get off on killing.
And so, when I ponder the future, my depression deepens. Nero fiddling while Rome burns…Chamberlain appeasing while Hitler schemes…Trump idle while COVID ravages the country. History is replete with instances of politicians doing nothing while their nations are imperiled. And so it goes in Oakland. Yes, we embarrassed the City Council into adding a few new Academies for police training, but they did it resentfully, and only because they had to. Please, let’s keep up the public pressure, because I guarantee you, the moment we let up, Bas, Fife, Kaplan & Co. will be back out there, putting OPD on the chopping block.
Steve Heimoff