The candidates should address the underlying causes of crime
Can’t we get a more sophisticated discussion of Oakland crime without Mayor Jean Quan’s opponents sending out dog whistles and playing to white fear, a local version of the Southern strategy?
One politician won a council seat merely by coasting to office on the claim that he’d been mugged. Another candidate has offered a “broken windows” philosophy of zero tolerance to minor crime. Aren’t black Oakland kids arrested enough for trivial offenses without adding more?
These candidates should ask themselves why someone would risk their lives or lengthy prison sentences participating in home invasions that might reap only a TV set worth $50? Might this have something to do with the tearing of the safety net?
Though the local media might make money by putting a black or Latino face on crime, is it possible that blacks are just the mule’s end of the operation while other minorities, including those whom the media stereotype as model minorities, are making the larger share of profits from Oakland crime? Blacks don’t own the motels where the prostitution trade is carried on. Nor do they own the liquor stores, the fronts of which drug gangs use as their outdoor offices.
Why aren’t absentee landlords cited as a
cause of Oakland crime? Every time I attend a neighborhood crime council meeting, I hear of a middle-class North Oakland neighborhood under siege by criminals because an absentee landlord didn’t screen tenants. It took my daughter, Tennessee, and I three years to get a crack house on our block torn down, because the city allowed an absentee landlord to flout citation after citation.
We need more police? Though the police knew about this operation and about others that plagued our neighborhood since 1989, it took Paul Brekke-Miesner, a neighborhood services coordinator, to deliver for us. He actually lives in Oakland. His job has been eliminated. Why aren’t Quan’s rivals asking that it be restored?
Are the mayor’s rivals exploring innovative ways of preventing Oakland crime? Have any of her rivals talked to former San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey about the success of his high school behind bars, the Five Keys Charter School, which is trying to reduce recidivism rates by giving inmates a chance to earn a high school diploma.
In my interview with former Black Panther David Hilliard, he said black inmates return from prison “illiterate” and “dangerous.” Instead of punishing them in prisons that are so bad that the federal government has threatened a takeover, why not give them a chance to further their education?
The police tell us that there is an uptick in crime during the summer. Why aren’t the mayoral candidates interviewing Mona Vaughn Scott of the Black Repertory Group Theater, who keeps 100 kids busy rehearsing for a performance for 10 weeks and feeds them lunch for a budget that doesn’t exceed $50,000.
Voters should decide whether some of Quan’s rivals are seriously concerned about lowering the Oakland crime rate or whether they’re just into a lot of Dirty Harry blustering and posturing.