I wrote yesterday about how the Riders were never convicted of anything, and how the jurors who acquitted them were scathing in their denunciation of the prosecution. This whole case was a farce and a sham, and brought only because of anti-police bias.
And yet, even some of my readers told me they had believed the Riders were convicted of crimes, until they learned from me they weren’t. This astonishes and troubles me greatly. As a journalist, as a believer in the First Amendment, as someone who has dedicated his professional writing life to truth, I’m flabbergasted that our local media continue to trot out the Riders case as an example of the “scandal-plagued Oakland Police Department.” The worst offenders are the San Francisco Chronicle and Oaklandside, which never shy away from insulting OPD. It is a lie of the greatest magnitude that OPD is scandal-plagued. The only reason anyone believes this is because the so-called journalists who work for the Chronicle and Oaklandside and others as well (KQED) are irredeemable police haters who do not care about public safety but subscribe to a discredited theory of defunding the police and shutting down the prisons.
What’s particularly disgusting is the sympathy the media and far-left woke groups display toward thugs who get injured, or sometimes killed, while committing their crimes. Every time a criminal is shot, tased or tackled by a cop, the media (including TV) are up in arms. The perp’s family gather in front of the camera, bemoaning how their “little baby” was tortured by the police for no good reason, while, in the background, circling like a shark, is an ambulance-chasing lawyer like John Burris, who just can’t wait to get this share of a multi-million dollar settlement. Of course, never is it admitted that the “little baby” had cruelly attacked an innocent pedestrian, or robbed a liquor store, or was loaded up on fentanyl and meth when he punched a cop and tried to run away. Oh, no! That inconvenient truth would run counter to the narrative that the cops are vicious, racist predators.
Well, when I hear about a thug getting shot by the police, I couldn’t care less. They get what they deserve. For that matter, how come the woke leftists never complain about all the cops who are injured or killed by thugs? It happens all the time. From today’s Chronicle, two stories: “S.F. officer injured by man with knife” and “Chase ends in arrest of driver who crashed into police vehicles on bridge.” Will we ever see Burris out there demanding a cash payment to the injured cops by the thug or his family? Not bloody likely. Will we ever hear Cat Brooks condemning anti-cop violence by “the community”? Not in our lifetime. Will we ever see the City of Oakland organize a new department to look into the causes and cures of anti-police violence? Not on Kevin Jenkins’ watch, or Barbara Lee’s, or whoever is going to be the next mayor.
It’s all so twisted, just the opposite of what it should be. We’re down the rabbit hole, where the good guys are hounded and prosecuted and the bad guys—the thugs, thieves and killers—are coddled and protected by a city that is so anarchic, so misguided, so stupid that we actually have racist reprobates like Carroll Fife on the City Council. Well, at least we got rid of Pamela Price…for now.
Steve Heimoff