Oakland mayor put to test by vandalism
Businesses, leaders split over response to rampage
The stakes for Oakland’s new Mayor Libby Schaaf are high. She is courting new businesses to the city and has said that keeping it safe — a promise she made during the campaign last fall — is paramount. On Friday night, things fell apart. A May Day rally to decry allegations of police brutality in Baltimore and other cities devolved into chaos as dusk settled on Oakland. Vandals broke dozens of windows on cars and storefronts, set fires and spray painted buildings in what Police Chief Sean Whent called some of the worst mayhem he’s seen in years. About a dozen people were arrested for burglary, failure to disperse and vandalism. Police failed to anticipate such destruction, and did not call for help from other departments until after the vandalism began.
In Oakland, the way a mayor handles large
protests has become a critical test of leadership. And on Saturday, dozens of merchants and bank managers were left angry and frustrated, facing thousands of dollars in cleanup costs.
Some residents who saw the mayhem and its aftermath shook their heads and wondered who was in charge, and community leaders were sharply divided on how the mayor did.
Civil rights attorney James Chanin, who represents victims of police misconduct, said she did well.
“I believe she struck an appropriate balance between protecting the large number of protesters who were there with legitimate concerns, and (criticizing) the small minority who were there to destroy businesses and damage property.”
Attorney John Burris, who worked with Chanin to get a court monitor for the Oakland Police Department after a corruption scandal, said that denouncing violence and showing solidarity with people is a basic responsibility for all mayors.
“It’s not that tough,” Burris said. “These should not be competing interests.”
The previous mayor, Jean Quan, earned severe criticism and lost her seat in part because of her response to the city’s Occupy movement in recent years. For example, she left town just before police issued a massive crackdown on a thousand Occupy protesters in November 2011.
“I believe both mayors were trying their best,” said Carl Chan, chair of the Chinatown Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council. “But unfortunately, we’re expecting a lot more.”
Although Chinatown sustained little damage on Friday compared with Telegraph Avenue and Auto Row, the neighborhood has been sacked and trashed in the past.
Chan said senior citizens who live there are traumatized by the now-familiar sounds of police sirens and helicopters — and had hoped such problems would end under the new mayor.
On Saturday, Schaaf addressed reporters at City Hall and spoke bluntly about the violence that had rattled her city the night before.
“I was actually out with the operation last night on the street, and what I observed was a huge angry crowd,” Schaaf said. She said that while many demonstrators legitimately exercised their freedom of speech, small groups had split off to commit acts of violence, shielding themselves in darkness and playing cat-andmouse games with police.
“Generally these people strike and run,” Schaaf said.
The mayor had declared repeatedly that her administration would not tolerate violent protests in Oakland. Whent, the police chief, said the city sees about a hundred such demonstrations each year, many of them starting out peacefully and culminating with violence after dark.
Schaaf said she was out with the city’s cleanup crew at 2 a.m. Saturday to assess the damage.
The mayor flinched when a reporter asked how her strategy for handling protests differed from that of Quan.
After pausing a beat, she said: “I asked a lot of tough questions last night, I will continue to ask a lot of tough questions.”