The Broken Chain: What Happens When The Police Stop Arresting Criminals

You'd think the "More Arrests = Less Crime" would be one of those self-evident public policy formulas that resist all but the most blockheaded "cop watch" activist, but you'd be wrong. Witness Oakland, CA, where the City Fathers are expressing bafflement over that city's inexorable rise in crime despite a steep drop-off in arrests.

Oakland police officers made 44 percent fewer arrests last year than they had just three years before, city records show, a plunge in enforcement that extended from armed robbery cases to drug busts to minor crimes like public drunkenness. 

That's 6,410 fewer arrests - an average of 18 fewer per day - in a city that has the highest crime rate in the state and, this year, is grappling with a 23 percent spike in murders, muggings and other major offenses. 

The drop is so steep it has eased a backlog of cases in Alameda County Superior Court and may be contributing to a shrinking county jail population, officials said. 

The arrest figures, obtained under the state's Public Records Act, raise questions about the effectiveness and assertiveness of the Police Department, which is struggling under the weight of job cuts, low morale and the demands of federal court oversight.
... 

Sgt. Chris Bolton, chief of staff to Police Chief Howard Jordan, who took his post in October 2011 following the resignation of Anthony Batts, said arrests were an important tool in crime-fighting but "not the sole answer." 

Bolton said a lot of the proactive work that yields arrests - operations that target gangs and drug dealers, for instance - has fallen off as a result of job cuts. More than ever, he said, officers spend their time hustling from one emergency call to the next. 

Due to layoffs and attrition, the force has 626 officers, a 25 percent decline from a high of 837 in December 2008. By comparison, San Francisco - which has twice the population of Oakland but 20 percent less violent crime - has 2,164 officers. 

"In 2010, we said we needed at least 900 cops to be effective," Bolton said. "The first units to go when we faced staffing reductions were squads that were not tied to calls for service and were designed to address gangs, drugs and guns through proactive enforcement." 

In a written statement, Mayor Jean Quan said, "We need to be taking more criminals off the streets, and tackling the problem requires both immediate and long-term solutions," including partnerships with outside agencies.

All I can say is, thank God I am a stoopid right-winger and not a liberal. Not that I am calling liberal politicians stupid. They know exactly what kind of line they can peddle to try to explain why it is that crime, which has been quiescent since the Willie Horton days, has come rocketing back. OTH, anyone who believes this stuff deserving of the patenting Free Will Glance of Pitying Scorn.


What liberals are desperate that no one notices is that they are the root cause of rising urban crime, and not because of the culture of dependency bred by the welfare state. Oakland started firing cops because the budget got out of control, and city progressives would rather pay pensions to retired bureaucrats, and pay "grants" to dubious non-profits, rather than police the streets. Add to that the state's determined effort to empty the prisons for the same reasons, and it's not hard to make the connection between an influx of criminals meeting a winnowed police force.


"Luckily" for Oakland's politicos, people would rather march in an anti-cop rally, and bitch about the decade-old "Riders" case, instead of giving the police the minimal resources to do their jobs.

Welcome To The Occupation: Occupy Oakland Attacks City Hall

Oakland was beset by its Occupiers once again. This time, several hundred protesters wandered the streets, looking for something to occupy, before wandering back to City Hall, which they attacked and trashed. 

Oakland officials and Occupy protesters confronted the fallout from their increasingly toxic conflict on Sunday, a day after the tensions reignited in chaotic, often violent demonstrations that resulted in at least 400 arrests. As usual, each side blamed the other for sparking the violence. 

City officials took stock of the damage from Saturday's clashes, which included injuries to three police officers and several protesters, as well as vandalism inside City Hall. 

There, dozens of protesters had broken in with a crowbar, grabbed an American flag, and ignited it on the front steps.

I thought the whole point of Occupy (This Space) was to protest Wall Street greed, but Oakland is about as far as you can get, physically and philosophically, from Wall Street. The real problem is that Oakland's city fathers have shown themselves to be real pushovers. Rather than arrest these clowns and keep them in jail, they let them out to do more harm, psychoanalyzing all the way

"It's like a tantrum," Mayor Jean Quan said while displaying the damage inside the building, which included a broken model of City Hall she estimated to be 100 years old. "They're treating us like a playground." 

Quan said Occupy Oakland had "refused to be nonviolent" and, as a result, was "turning off the rest of the movement." She said police would step up efforts to obtain restraining orders against some protesters to keep them from approaching City Hall.

A "tantrum?" No, they are responding to weakness, something Mayor Quan has displayed in abundance these last few months. You have to admire the Oakland Police Department, which has to do battle with white-bread street anarchists on the one side, and a feckless fifth column worried about the "movement" on the other. I would have turned in my badge long ago. 


Typically for leftist revolutionaries, the Occupiers are exploiting the idealistic dupes among the Bay Area's progressive community and beyond. Despite the manifest squalor and crime surrounding all of the Occupy camps, the "1%-99%" formulation remains media talking point for everyone from the president and Warren Buffet, all the way down to Boots Riley and Van Jones. Occupy Oakland's leaders engaged in some pretty sleazy chicanery to draw a crowd this weekend:

Saturday's demonstration, which brought more than 1,000 people downtown, began on a festive note. After a brief noon rally at Frank Ogawa Plaza, Occupy supporters, accompanied by a small marching band, filled the street with banners. 

Jordan said he did not consider the rally to be peaceful, however, because of marchers' plan to seize a building and because some of the protesters slashed tires as they walked. 

Most marchers had no idea where they were going, because organizers kept secret the building they hoped to seize. Tensions rose as marchers arrived at the long-shuttered convention center just south of Lake Merritt and began tearing down fences.

That's actually pretty typical among leftist protest leaders, who want to lead a revolution, but know they could never draw a crowd if people really knew what they were up to. Instead, they just lie, brazenly, hoping to bring enough people to provide cover for the destruction they plan to wreak.

Martyr's Square: Drama Queen Resigns From Oakland Mayor's Staff

The Oakland PD managed to evict the Occupy Oakland encampment without much incident this morning. The Occupiers have apparently returned to the plaza outside City Hall, but now they say they will not camp there, but simply...remain. Clearly, we have not quite reached the end of this. 


In the meantime, let's spare a minute for Dan Siegel, former legal advisor to Oakland's socialist mayor and now an official Martyr For The Cause

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan's chief legal adviser, a longtime friend, resigned Monday after what he called a "tragically unnecessary" police raid of the Occupy Oakland camp. 

Dan Siegel was one of two aides to defect from Quan's administration Monday. Deputy Mayor Sharon Cornu also quit but said her resignation had nothing to do with the police sweep. 

Siegel, a civil rights attorney and one of Oakland's most active and vocal police critics, said the city should have done more to work with campers before sending in police. 

"The city sent police to evict this camp, arrest people and potentially hurt them," Siegel said. "Obviously, we're not on the same page. It's an amazing show of force to move tents from a public place." 

Siegel strongly opposed any plan by the city to take down the month-old camp in the days leading up the police raid.

Laaaaaammmme!


I swear, the gap between the Occupiers' media halo of idealist dreamers versus the grubby reality of a disgusting squat is big enough to drive Michael Moore's food truck through. Siegel calls the peaceful removal of these criminals "tragically unnecessary." What was unnecessary was the faux-drama behind the removal. If they were truly peaceful, they would have left when the first eviction notices were passed out. Instead, they went on a rampage, attacking the police and the City's long-suffering small businesses.  I'd say hiring Siegel to work on the public dime was what was tragically unnecessary. 

Riot Squad: Oakland Gets Ready To Re-Evict The Occupiers

After a shooting death at the Occupy Oakland encampment, Oakland's city fathers - well, really, mothers - are planning another eviction. 

After an intense day of behind-closed-door meetings Friday, Oakland officials are moving forward with plans to evict Occupy Oakland from Frank Ogawa Plaza. 

The eviction, which has the blessing of a majority of the City Council and the reluctant concurrence of Mayor Jean Quan, is likely to come sooner rather than later. 

That's the word we're getting from several officials who were in on the meetings Friday, trying to find a way out of the mess surrounding the month-old encampment outside City Hall. 

The first move: The notice that police handed out to Occupiers on Friday afternoon, telling them all tents, cooking utensils and the like must go and that anyone sleeping in the plaza overnight "will be subject to arrest." 

The order came after an afternoon meeting that included Quan, interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, City Administrator Deanna Santana and City Council President Larry Reid

(just as a parenthetical, I'd like to note that we don't know the identity of the guy who was murdered, nor do we have any descriptions of the suspect(s), even though the shooting happened in broad daylight across the street from City Hall in front of dozens of witnesses including members of the media. Just underscores how the Occupiers are a criminal element and heartless to boot). 


Oakland should have stuck with the original eviction, especially after it descended into chaotic rioting, but most progressive politicians and their constituents (especially white-bread bureaucrats and teachers), suffer from the leftist's Walter Mitty fantasy that they are bad-ass street rebels. It was no surprise when Occupiers began to attack the police, and it wasn't a surprise when Oakland's socialist mayor meekly let the Occupiers return to City Hall. Speaking of Jean Quan, she still hasn't bought into the idea that the City should evict the Occupiers. 

According to sources, Quan went into the meeting asking for more time for negotiations with Occupy Oakland, suggesting that its camp be transplanted to nearby Jefferson Park while an unidentified benefactor tries to line up an empty building for the movement. 

Time, however, is not something that other officials and public safety workers believe the city can spare. And when the meeting ended, Quan agreed to a police sweep if and when Jordan finds one necessary.

For those of you wondering how someone could be dumb enough to wreck their mayorality over these bums, well, it happened 20 years ago in SF when then-mayor Art Agnos let the homeless set up camp next to City Hall. The idea was to dramatize the alleged horrors of the George HW Bush recession - supposedly the worst economy since the Great Depression - but quickly degenerated into a squalid mess.  But, no matter how bad it got, Agnos could never bring himself to roust the homeless. It became a big issue that eventually scuttled his re-election, and was the last time SF elected a real leftist as mayor*. Quan is simply serving the interests of her "base" - that base being the thugs, revolutionaries, public employees, and useful idiots who are the foot soldiers for the progressive left. 


Oakland, you'll be happy to know, is going to be doing this alone. During the previous eviction, other law enforcement agencies, including the Alameda County Sheriff, and the police departments from neighboring municipalities, pitched in to help. Not this time.

The Alameda County Sheriff's Department now wants to be paid, rather than picking up its own costs for deputies' participation. 

"It's not an emergency anymore," said sheriff's spokesman Sgt. J.D. Nelson. "They basically allowed this to happen when the mayor allowed the encampment to come back in" after the Oct. 25 sweep. 

"It's changed from an emergency call to a planned event," Nelson said. 

Other agencies are also balking. The city of Alameda says it wants to be protected from any possible lawsuits that might result from its officers' actions. 

Plus, other demonstrations planned next week at UC Berkeley and Cal State East Bay are likely to tie up UC and Hayward police, along with sheriff's deputies.

Just desserts, but also a signal that this latest eviction may not work either, especially with the thoroughly unreliable Quan who will be able to throw the police under the bus at the first sign of trouble. We may yet see the spectacle of Gov. Brown, who also happens to have been mayor of Oakland, calling in the National Guard to settle this business once and for all. 




*you'll be happy to know that Agnos failed upward into a job with Bill Clinton's HUD where he did some admittedly good work tearing down SF's truly awful housing projects and replacing them with more family friendly developments.

Civil War: Oakland's First Husband On The March

The SF Chronicle, which has bought into the "Occupy-Oakland-violence-caused-by-a-fringe-minority" spin - odd that a "leaderless" movement has spin - takes us inside the bunker when Oakland city officials decided to send in the police. News flash: hapless mayor Jean Quan was a spectator during the most important moments of her mayorality. 

Even after the bandanna-wearing, rock-throwing, fire-starting fringe demonstrators took over a downtown Oakland building and blocked off a street late Wednesday, Mayor Jean Quan did not want police to intervene. 

Instead, Quan asked that police hold off on any confrontation until daylight - or, barring that, send in negotiators to try to work out a peaceful resolution. 

"She didn't want to incite the anarchists any more than they already were," said one source who was in the city's emergency operations center when Quan stunned the assembled staffers with her comments. 

Finally, interim Police Chief Howard Jordan, with the backing of City Administrator Deanna Santana, made the call for police to take action. Both were in the emergency center with Quan.

However, the story absolutely buries the lead; mentioning only in passing that Mayor Quan's husband was part of the group that shut down the Port of Oakland.

In fact, eyewitnesses say Quan's husband was among the banner-wavers blockading the port in a nonviolent action earlier Wednesday.

Have to love the characterization of the Port blockade as "non-violent." The Occupiers weren't letting trucks drive in or out of the Port. It's not like the truck drivers were given a choice. Maybe there wasn't any actual physical violence, but the threat of violence was certainly there, and was palpable. Just the sort of thing the mayor's husband should be mixed up in. 


This only underscores that Quan's reluctance to send in the police, and her repeated undercutting of the OPD's efforts, arises from her sympathy with the Occupiers, even as they wreak havoc. Quan is a street activist of long standing. She undoubtedly thrills to the sight of banner waving crowds taking it to the streets to denounce The System. I doubt that she literally approves of the violence of the mob, but she certainly is willing to facilitate it. 


The Free Will Wife is a psychologist and has noted how tired and unhappy Quan has looked in the newspaper photos from the last couple weeks. This one is the "iconic" picture:

Hard to disagree that this is the face of someone who would rather be doing something else, like say marching at the head of a crowd denouncing capitalism.


The Occupy Oakland crowd has already "won" in that they have set up a tent city in front of City Hall - something I could never do, of course - and then successfully repelled the police's attempts to clear them out of what is an illegitimate and disgusting encampment. Quan can't admit this, but she loves this stuff. How wrecking the already wrecked Oakland economy is going to stick it to Wall Street is beyond me, but  that's why I'm not mayor of Oakland. 


Oakland residents can bitch about this now, but they got what they voted for. There was a perfectly acceptable Daley-esque machine Democrat running for mayor last time out, but the progressive left ran a slate of leftists, headed by Quan, who urged Oaklanders to vote for the three of them in Oakland's ranked choice balloting, thus ensuring that Quan, or someone similar, would win the race. At the time, this was seen as a victory for the People over yucky "downtown interests" (yes, Oakland still has "downtown interests"). Guess they didn't realize that when you elect a socialist as mayor, you get mob rule in the streets. 

East Bay Rays: The News From Oakland

Today was a rare day when the front page of the SF Chronicle was dominated by news from Oakland.

First, there was the "community reaction" to the announcement that the transit cop who shot an unarmed perp named Oscar Grant had been sentenced to two years in state prison. (see here for my previous commentary onthe Oscar Grant case) As every major development in this story has been accompanied by major rioting and dozens of arrests, you can imagine the reaction.

Looking out her front window in a usually quiet residential neighborhood in this city, Deanna Goldstein's knees began to shake.

More than 100 protesters were hemmed in by police in riot gear. A trash can was blazing on the street.

"I came home early from downtown to get away from the craziness, but the craziness came to me," she said.

In the past, the violent protests over a white transit officer's slaying of an unarmed black man trashed downtown Oakland businesses. But after Johannes Mehserle on Friday received the minimum two-year sentence for slaying Oscar Grant, angry demonstrators marched into residential areas near Lake Merritt for the first time, putting innocent people in harm's way.

Police arrested 152 protesters, including seven juveniles, on suspicion of crimes including vandalism, unlawful assembly and disturbing the peace.

Oakland police spokesman Jeff Thomason said 56 of those arrested were from outside the city. Investigators will be reviewing video and photographs of protesters damaging property to help prosecutors file charges, he said.

Incredibly, this display did not bring Oscar Grant back to life. Also, the sentencing judge did not come running out of the courthouse waving his arms and yelling that he had made a terrible mistake and sentenced Mehserle to be hanged at dawn. And, I'm guessing that no one reflected on the fact that - despite the bare headline summary "White Cop Shoots Unarmed Black Man" - when he was shot, Grant was part of a drunken New Years Eve scene at the Fruitvale BART station, the sort of place you go when you are looking for trouble, rather than trying to avoid it. Plus, the videotape clearly shows that Grant was aggressively resisting arrest, something that has never been a wise career move, regardless of your race.

Grant died because of a tragic mistake. Lots of guys in Oakland get drunk and run around acting like idiots on BART. Grant is the one guy who has been shot for his troubles. But, anyone rioting on his behalf is simply looking for an excuse to run wild, just like Oscar Grant. Lessons learned in this matter = zero.

The second news was the results in the election to succeed Ron Dellums as mayor of Oakland. There was a crowded field of the usual Greens, Socialists, and left-wing Dems, but the prohibitive favorite was former State Senator Don Perata who figured he would follow fellow semi-retired pols Dellums and Jerry Brown into the mayor's office. But, a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation. Perata has fallen out of the lead thanks to Oakland's system of ranked voting, which I will explain forthwith. Instead, the next mayor is likely to be a matronly looking Chinese-American woman named Jean Quan:

In an abrupt and stunning turnaround in the race for Oakland mayor, Councilwoman Jean Quan vaulted into the lead - ahead of former state Sen. Don Perata who, until Friday, held a comfortable advantage and had been expected to win, unofficial election results showed.

The latest tally of votes put Quan on top with 51 percent compared with Perata's 48.9 percent in a race that tested Oakland's first election using ranked-choice voting.

Quan was helped immensely when third-place candidate Rebecca Kaplan was eliminated and her votes distributed to the two remaining candidates. Quan received 75 percent of those votes.

"That ballot transfer from Kaplan to Quan is unprecedented," said David Latterman, who has analyzed ranked-choice voting in San Francisco since it was introduced in supervisors' races there in 2004. "I underestimated that there are so many people who do not like Perata."

We have ranked voting in SF. The idea is to put an end to the endless run-offs that follow the general election where there are multiple leftists running for each office. Instead of voting for one person, you place your vote for your first choice, second choice and third choice. Here is how it worked in the mayor's race.

Ranked-choice voting - also known as instant runoffs - allows voters to cast their first, second and third choices in a race. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote, last-place candidates are eliminated and their votes distributed until one candidate reaches the 50-percent-plus threshold.

When first-place votes were initially tallied, Quan was behind Perata by 11 percentage points - she had received only 24 percent of the first-place votes in a field of 10 candidates. After seven candidates had been eliminated - and their second- and third-place votes distributed - three candidates were left: Kaplan, Quan and Perata.

At that point, Quan was trailing Perata 40 to 31 percent. Kaplan's voters pushed Quan to victory. Of Kaplan's 20,000-plus votes that were distributed to Quan and Perata, more than 15,000 went to Quan.

Quan had been actively campaigning for months for people to put "Anybody but Don" on the ballot. She had told supporters and announced at several mayoral forums that she wanted supporters to put Kaplan second.

Kaplan, in turn, had suggested that people read endorsements that listed her first - and included Quan as a lesser choice. Kaplan had largely run a campaign avoiding criticisms of other candidates, but nearing the end of the campaign, Kaplan had also taken a more active role in criticizing Perata.

We've never had a mayor's race decided like this in SF, but a couple Board of Supervisor races have been decided in similar fashion. It's certainly preferable to the former system when the run-off was held in December when it was usually raining, no one realized there was an election (didn't we just vote in November??), and turn-out was infinitesimally small.

(btw, if you are wondering how a wild-eyed conservative manages to rank his three favorite progressive politicians, well, he doesn't. I always vote for the same person on all three choices, since it's hard enough to find an acceptable "right wing" San Francisco politician. The voting machine never fails to be baffled by this.)

They're still counting votes in Oakland, so Quan hasn't quite won out, but she's definitely the best positioned to win. Politically, I don't know how big a difference this would make. Quan is as much a left-wing Democrat as anyone else you could imagine. But, she would obviously be quite a change from the progressive lions who have been sitting in the mayor's office for the last 12 years.