In recent days anger about assaults and disruptions throughout Oakland – and about City Hall's failure to make peaceful neighborhoods the top priority – has spilled over. Here are two public statements, a letter by an Adams Point resident followed by a statement from Patrick McCullough, a hero of north Oakland who refused to let thugs drive him and his family out of their home.

Resident Indicts Mayor, Calls for Resignation

Dear Mr. Mayor,

My co-worker was mugged last night in downtown Oakland last night as we were talking on the phone about commuting to work in the morning. She lives a couple blocks from the area that prosecutors call the Axis of Evil because so many crimes occur there.

Do you know where the Axis of Evil is? It is right outside your City Hall office.

A sex offender across the street from me is suspected of participating in the kidnapping and repeated rape of a 15-year-old girl last month – but our two child endangerment investigators are each carrying a load of more than 200 active cases; they don't have time to look into these "allegations."

I don't blame the police investigators. They came back from a tour duty in Iraq and immediately started trying to save the children of Oakland. A frightening number of their active cases include children who were abused yesterday, are being abused today, and will be abused tomorrow, thanks to your lack of action.

I don't blame the police. But I do blame you and every other member of the city council for repeatedly lying about the situation to me and other residents of our city.

You have allowed the daughter of the city administrator to continue to be carried on police payroll though she has proved unfit for police work. Meanwhile, you have stopped paying two officers because their deployment in Iraq was extended. You support a 12-hour day for police officers when you yourself decline to work overtime for the residents of Oakland.

You encourage patronage and punish commitment.

You are a disgrace. Please resign so that we can make our city safe again.

A few weeks ago, my neighbor, a disabled woman, was attacked by a 14-year-old drug-dealing crackhead because she asked him to stop throwing trash in her yard. It took more than three weeks of lobbying of top commanders at the police department to get an investigator on the case. They still haven't made an arrest, though we know exactly who is responsible. Indeed, a second man who participated in the attack was recently arrested on a traffic violation and is being held in the Santa Rita county jail. He was on probation for another crime committed earlier this year in Solano County. How is it possible that the city lacks the resources to charge these cases?

It is possible because you have deliberately misrepresented Oakland's crisis.

A year ago, the boys in my neighborhood murdered one of their friends – an 18-year-old retarded boy who made the mistake of having a romance with the girlfriend of a 19-year-old drug dealer. We know who ordered the killing, but no cell phone analysis was ever done to track down the killer – because our police department does not have those kind of resources; because you and other city officials, including former officials like the current attorney general, have done their best to cripple law enforcement.

You might think I live in a bad area. I don't. I live near Lake Merritt, and I pay $900 a month in property taxes. If this is happening in my neighborhood, I can only imagine the horror that residents are experiencing in Fruitvale, Dogtown and other areas where people traditionally have suffered in silence.

These people deserve a mayor who cares enough to tell the truth. You were once known as a civil rights advocate. Civil rights includes the freedom to be safe from attacks by thugs who are actively supported by city officials. African Americans and Latinos live in fear in Oakland because of your lies. Middle-class residents working two jobs live in fear because of your lies. Nurses, teachers and social workers live in fear because of your lies.

OPD does not submit fingerprints for testing because it does not have resources. It does not enter ballistic information into databases shared by law enforcement because there is only one technician who, quite simply, has no time. This affects victims of crime all over the country.

Alameda County is the fourth richest county in California, yet you plead poverty. I voted for you hoping you would be as effective as Mayor Anthony Williams was in the District of Columbia. To my dismay, I have since discovered that I helped elect a man who had no qualms about publicly declaring his support for a criminal organization that had terrorized members of his own community. That's what the Black Muslim Bakery did, and you knew it when you signed a letter in support of them that was submitted to the bankruptcy court.

You are not effective, you are not honest, you have no integrity, and you should step aside.

You complained that columnist Chip Johnson's articles had a "personal tone." Mr. Mayor, my friend held up at gun point is personal. The teenager who was repeatedly raped around the corner from me is personal. The woman attacked across the street is personal. And yes, I took your statements to Chip Johnson in his Sept. 21 article very personally.

This is between you and me and all the residents of Oakland. If you lack the stomach to truthfully represent us, you need to step aside.

You Couldn't Pay Me Enough

If I were a cop in Oakland, I'd be planning to leave for a better job. I'd be taking the advice of friends and family who ask, "Why do you risk your life for a city whose political leaders (with the exception of one or two) hide behind the hypocritical cop-hating fringe of their endangered constituency?" I'd be leaving behind – to stew in their own juices – the people putting idiotic questions and law-suit threats who would make me think the job isn't worth it.

Just in the past week, we've seen our messiah/mayor tell of the need to increase community policing and his refusal to substantially increase the numbers needed to do it. We've seen our courageous city council leadership fixate on anti-tobacco smoking ordinances while the decent residents continue to get smoked daily. We've seen yet another "good boy straightening out his life" illegally carrying a gun and being excused by people who could have become his victim. Ending the week, we find another news reporters exclaiming bafflement of witnesses that the police officer didn't shoot him in a less-lethal body area like they do in the movies. And this week in Oakland was not much different than any other.

Yes, there are members of the community who will lament the criminal's passing and get personal satisfaction by decrying the brutal beasts in blue. It's obvious to me that there, for some time, will persist this element in our community who blame the product of their failed social programs on the police and people they consider more racist than themselves. Some people will make their reputations, fortunes, or political careers in this way. They will continue to overlook and excuse away the criminals among us, and in their families, who make investment and life here riskier than should be accepted. But, to hell with them.

I want police officers – like Sergeant Pat Gonzales – protecting us from criminals; when the criminal threatens the officer's or innocent citizen's life, I want our police officers to use the necessary force to prevent harm of the law-abiding. Sergeant Gonzales first tried verbal command. The criminal ignored that. Then Sergeant Gonzales tried to use his hands to restrain him. The criminal resisted. Then Sergeant Gonzales used the taser. The criminal resisted that. Then the criminal ran clutching the gun that could have ended the sergeant's or an innocent bystander's or cop-hating witnesses' life. I don't countenance those who, having tied one hand of the police behind their back with overly generous settlements from our treasury and consent decrees, would fill the other with fliers for hyphy dances and sideshows.

So, before the shrill cries and dull leadership drive even more fine police officers, concerned citizens, financial investments, and hope away from Oakland, please consider taking positive steps to remove the useless politicians from office. You know who they are. Awaken the silent majority who appreciate the extremely difficult/nearly impossible job Oakland police officers face and the "clear and present danger" all of us face when we venture to the gas station. Chastise the laggard politicians for their ineptitude, fence straddling, short-sightedness, and cowardice. They all have had plenty of time to do what is needed and show us the progress we so urgently need. Instead, they've shown us that they just aren't up to the task. Replace them with new faces deserving our support and tax dollars, before it is too late.

Reader's Comment

Residents of Oakland need to create their own neighborhood blogs to inform, to protest, to eradicate the thug infestation. I am going to start a Laird Ave blog. I have lived on this street for 19 years. I could write a book as to the way this block has slowly transformed from a quiet, residential street to a drug dealing thug insurgency. We are no longer "residents" of Oakland, we are victims of Oakland.

I do not lay all the blame on Mr. Dellums. What did Jerry Brown do to stem the tide? And the mayors who came before him? Not much of anything. Mr. Brown focused on the downtown waterfront area around Jack London Square. Did you see him come out to East Oakland, walk the streets, talk to the people? I never did. Mr. Dellums has an inheritance of neglect to overcome. He has to stop seeing things in "black and white" and look at the issues locally and what is being done nationally to curb crime and violence. It seems to me these politicians are more interested in getting buildings named after them than in leaving any lasting real legacy benefiting the people they supposedly serve.