There’s a game afoot across America these days: have a person of color commit an egregious crime, then get hunted down by local police. A scuffle of some sort ensues. The perp is stopped, sometimes lethally if he resists violently. Then the perp, if still alive, or his family, if he’s dead, sues the cops, the city, and God only knows who else. A media hungry for controversy publicizes the brouhaha on page one. Nightly news stations have “BREAKING NEWS” on the latest cop violence, with young, ambitious on-camera talent reporting breathless from a court house. Conversations in coffee shops drift toward “killer cops” and the need to restrain them. Anti-cop types like Cat Brooks rub their hands with glee, while ambulance-chasing lawyers line up interviews with reporters to explain how their client was a victim of “systemic racism.”

Passed in 2020, the CRJA “allows anyone serving time in a California prison or jail for a felony to challenge his conviction and sentencing retroactively on the ground of systemic racial bias.”

It was sad, but not surprising, to hear of the troubles Bay Grape is experiencing. The owners of the wine store chain, which has locations in Napa and Oakland, tried to sell both shops, but succeeded only in Napa. The buyers decided not to purchase the Grand Avenue location, they explained, because “There’s been a lot of vandalism, robberies and burglaries directed at small businesses [in Oakland].” No sane business owner wants to sink money into such a dangerous, failed city.

I’ve been thinking in broad strokes lately. Not just about the details of how many cops on OPD, or whether we can recall Thao-Price, or what Oakland should do if SCOTUS strikes down Johnson v. Grants Pass.

There’s so much horrendous stuff happening in America that sometimes it almost seems petty to focus on local politics. I mean, with Trump poised for a comeback, and “Christian” nationalists staging a slow-motion coup to take over America, and (unlikely) World War III looming, maybe our Oakland issues don’t amount to a hill of beans.