San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Police alone can’t quell Oakland’s violence
At a policeorganized rally last weekend, I watched Black Oaklanders talk about the lives of loved ones cut short by gun violence. But their stories were briefly interrupted when a group of antipolice counterprotesters crashed the event at Lake Merritt and began shouting the names of people killed by law enforcement.
One of those names was Oscar Grant, the 22yearold father killed by BART police in
Oakland in 2009.
I don’t think the protesters realized Grant’s mom, Wanda Johnson, was standing nearby. The longtime police reform activist was taking part in the policesponsored rally to lend emotional support and hear what the police planned to do to prevent more casualties to the city’s escalating violence.
“We know the police aren’t going anywhere,” Johnson told me a few days later. “I don’t agree with everything the police do. I also don’t have a problem separating the two issues of police violence and community violence.”
These are strange, scary times in Oakland. With the number of homicides steadily increasing to levels we haven’t seen in years, everyone is grasping for immediate solutions. The situation is even forcing some of
the city’s leading critics of police brutality into an unusual position: pleading for peace alongside a Police Department they don’t trust.
Or as longtime East Oakland activist John Jones put it: “It’s better to go with the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
The problem is that this “devil” isn’t good at its job, statistically speaking.
From 2011 to 2020, the
Oakland Police Department’s clearance rate for homicides — meaning how often arrests were made following a murder — was 50% or better in only four years, according to California Department of Justice data. The statewide average over those years is close to 60%, which still isn’t great.
While struggling to solve crimes, Oakland’s police force also hasn’t been good at preventing them. Between 2011 and 2020, there were only three years when the city had fewer than 80 homicides, according to state justice data. This year, we’re on track for the most homicides since 2012, when there were 126.
A much larger city, San Francisco, never had more than 60 homicides a year during that same stretch.
This data is scattered across years when the
Oakland Police Department had robust staffing and budgets, meaning the defund debate does not apply.
Crime rates are influenced by a number of social and economic factors — including a massively destabilizing pandemic that attacked neglected communities more forcefully than privileged ones — but we have a system that says only one institution can respond to them. And the cold, hard numeric fact is that institution can’t do it on its own.
Daryle Allums knows this. The director of Adamika Village, a violenceintervention nonprofit, spoke at the “Stand Up for a Safe Oakland” rally that the Police Department put on. He purposely avoided taking the stage with police officers but told the crowd “We need all hands on deck” and that he didn’t care “who we have to partner with” if it meant stopping violence in the Black community.
On the flip side of that message, Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong told the crowd that the public should work more closely with his department and local violence prevention groups to combat gun violence.
Pausing our distrust of police so we can see them as allies isn’t a comfortable choice. It also shouldn’t be the only choice.
But Allums, Jones and Johnson are putting their own credibility, their own pain, on the line because of how unprecedented this moment feels.
“We’re doing our part in our neighborhoods by showing up and showing love. That’s how we’re addressing violence in our communities,” Allums said a few days later. “I’ve been busting the police for a long time about them doing their jobs better.”
I get the sense of desperation. As a Black man living in Oakland, I hear about a new shooting, a new funeral, a new mourning family seemingly every week. I don’t see any quick solutions that could stop these homicides tomorrow or a week from now. This isn’t a situation the city can legislate its way out of before another person is killed by gunfire.
But something has to give — doesn’t it?
When that shouting match broke out last week, I recognized a couple of the people who were involved. I went over to pull one out of the commotion because police officers were nearby. At an event sponsored by cops, I didn’t want them to come over and escalate the situation.
It took me a second to realize where my head was at. In a tense moment, I didn’t look to the police for help. I considered them a potential threat.
Police haven’t shown us that they can consistently solve or stop violent crime in Oakland. But last weekend they asked for help from the only people who can — us.