For the most part, arguments about policing are based on statistics of crime rising or waning, punctuated by stories of horrific police abuse or horrific crimes. But the view from 30 thousand feet often bears little relation to the view from street level. Statistics don’t change the sense of fear on the street that crime is pervasive, or the loathing on the streets of cops treating human beings like scum. While progressive and conservative views have largely moved in tribal circles, the Oakland NAACP has broken from the fold in an open letter with a plea. They want the cops to protect them.
Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities. Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis.
African Americans are disproportionately hit the hardest by crime in East Oakland and other parts of the city. But residents from all parts of the city report that they do not feel safe. Women are targeted by young mobs and viciously beaten and robbed in downtown and uptown neighborhoods. Asians are assaulted in Chinatown. Street vendors are robbed in Fruitvale. News crews have their cameras stolen while they report on crime. PG&E workers are robbed and now require private security when they are out working. Everyone is in danger.
This open letter has, as expected, drawn harsh criticism from its putative progressive allies, as it stands in stunning contrast to the dual claims that crime is down and the reforms of reducing (if not eliminating) police are working, ending prosecution of a laundry list of offenses is working and eliminating bail is working. And Oakland is not arguing whether it’s working in San Francisco or anywhere else, but that it’s not working in Oakland.
But not everyone agrees that more policing is the solution to Oakland’s issues.
Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said she believes the people behind the NAACP and Acts Full letter are from an older generation who are “completely detached from what’s actually happening.”
“I take personal offense at them blaming Defund [the Police],” Brooks said. “It never happened in the city of Oakland. Not even once.”
She believes that the spike in crime is caused by socioeconomic problems that were exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.
“We lost social services, human services, housing services, people lost their jobs,” Brooks said. “If we want to pay for those things, we need to stop giving the Oakland PD half of our budget!”
In the letter, Oakland NAACP president Cynthia Adams makes her point plain.
We are in crisis and elected leaders must declare a state of emergency and bring resources together from the city, the county, and the state to end the crisis. We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs. Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too.
Calls for love and unity are nice, but aren’t making the mean streets of Oakland any safer for the primary victims of crime, African Americans. She doesn’t want sweet words. She wants cops on the street, manning the 911 switchboard and responding to calls of crimes.
There is nothing inconsistent about wanting better cops, who treat citizens respectfully, don’t violate their constitutional rights and don’t resort to needless violence, and wanting police to do the job of protecting citizens. Nobody wants to be wrongfully beaten by a cop. Nobody wants to be beaten by a vicious criminal either. Nobody wants people who are inclined to commit crimes, whether because economic circumstances aren’t as wonderful as Bidenomics tells them or just because committing crimes is a quicker path to getting what they want than working for it, to believe they can do so with impunity.
Sure, we want to believe that people are inherently good, and if we give them the opportunity to succeed lawfully, they won’t choose instead to do so criminally. But the harsh reality is that while opportunity will dissuade some from doing bad things to others, it won’t stop all crime.
The secondary argument in Adams’ letter is that more cops means more crime prevention, which is itself a dubious proposition. As many have pointed out, real cops aren’t like TV cops. If they don’t trip over a crime, or create it themselves, their ability to investigate and find the perpetrator is slim at best. Cops are pretty poor at “solving” crime, even when they’re inclined to try.
But this neglects the reality that cops on the street have an impact on crime, even though it’s impossible to quantify what that impact is. Consider the cop on the street corner where some kids see a car ripe for jacking. Will they do it in front of the cop? Probably not, even if they aren’t particularly concerned that the cop will catch them. The point is why take the chance that the crime will go south and the cop will do his job. So they decide not to jack the car and move on. That’s one crime that didn’t happen, but it will never be shown in any statistic because nobody would know that there would have been a carjacking but for that cop on the corner.
When people on the street live in fear of crime, their lives are miserable and their participation in society limited. They don’t want to live that way, and the Oakland NAACP has stood up to speak for its constituency. This doesn’t make them cop lovers or reform haters, but human beings trying to survive together. Cops are part of that survival, and to accept this does not mean that cops can’t, and shouldn’t, do a whole lot better than they have in the past.