Councilmembers Don't Care About Prosecuting Crime

Refusing to fund stepped-up prosecution of vandalism, disorderly conduct and other misdemeanors, the Oakland city council showed that it has a double standard: we give the county money for misguided social programs, but we will not pay for crime prosecution.

The council removed four jobs costing just under $600,000 – two attorneys and two support staff – from the new budget that begins July 1.

Today, county district attorneys are responsible for criminal prosecutions. The new program would have begun City involvement. Councilmember Quan said, "If the county wants us to do it, give us the funding to do it," Quan said. "We're not being paid enough to do it." (Montclarion, June 29, 2007)

What hypocrisy, considering that Quan is a major supporter of the council's 2006 grant of $1.5 million over five years to Youth UpRising, a largely county-funded agency headed by an official from the county, Olis Simmons. In addition to a five-year blank check, Oakland makes additional grants every year to Youth UpRising for its so-called violence prevention activities. Among its activities, Youth UpRising brings in gutter rappers like Too Short and Mistah F.A.B. as honored advisors to youth, placed youth in gutter rapper E-40's music video glorifying sideshows, and offered up youth for a magazine photo shoot celebrating reckless driving.

YU director Simmons and sideshow rapper E40, blessed by Quan

The city council wants Oakland residents to fund major social change, or rather the laughable parody of such change known as violence prevention programs. Quan and colleagues sold voters on Measure Y taxes in 2004, insisting the money be divided between police – a clear City responsibility – and programs like Youth UpRising. The agencies get their grants, but Oakland has fewer police today than when Measure Y passed.

"It's an issue of equity," Quan said. "District Attorney Tom Orloff does it for other cities, why not for Oakland?" Only when it comes to fighting crime does Quan suddenly see a tall border around City funds. For example, the councilmember is a great fan of the Chabot Space center up in the hills, constantly demanding City money for it. However, a major percentage of visitors to Chabot come from outside Oakland, even from Contra Costa County. That does not matter to Quan. She has a political game going there, and she wants it to get City money, even while the council has yet to build a promised branch library at 81st Avenue and Rudsdale for the children of deep east Oakland.

Mayor Dellums, joined by police chief Tucker, had promoted the prosecution effort at a recent community meeting about crime in the Rockridge district. However, Dellums was either unable or unwilling to push the item through the city council. As with so many City promises to residents, this one proved to be vaporware.

While the council poses as a tight-fisted guardian of City funds by refusing to fund the four prosecutorial jobs, it gave itself four additional staff just six months ago. The number of bureaucrats grows, while public safety and basic services decline.

Even as the council rejected the crime-fighting effort, it funded a new position of assistant police chief sandwiched between the chief and three sworn deputy chiefs – instead of simply voting no confidence in police chief Wayne Tucker. In addition, not long ago the council created a new civilian deputy chief position.

There may be good reasons for the City Attorney's office not to prosecute misdemeanors. After all, city attorney John Russo has handed out lucrative settlements to anyone who gets arrested in Oakland. Just show up with shakedown attorney John Burris and cry brutality. Russo is well known for giving in to such demands without a fight – while he vigorously defended misuse of Measure Y money in court.

Public safety is the real issue. The city council refuses to spend the money for at least 1,100 police, the minimum we need instead of the inadequate 700-some today. Do that, and re-open the city jail that the council closed (dumping inmates on the county). Then the city could definitely press the county to prosecute criminals and exercise real supervision over probationers and parolees.

The current councilmembers, however, are determined to spend the budget on a raft of little projects designed to burnish their careerist resumes, designed to cement political alliances with nonprofit agencies, and designed to show proper obedience to favored developers who wallow in huge City subsidies. Meanwhile, thugs and the culture of disrespect rule the streets of Oakland.

Councilmember Comments

Councilmember Larry Reid sent an email (to a third party, not to ORPN) in reply to the above report. He wrote, in full:

The library will in fact
Be builded and youth
Uprising gives our young people a sense of hope and will save
Lives.

If councilmember Reid will recall the City's 2004 application that won a multimillion dollar State grant to build the branch library at 81st Avenue and Rudsdale (in Reid's council district), he will see that the City promised construction would be finished this month. Let's hope a miracle gets done in the remaining day of June 2007, because the lot is vacant at this moment.

The council delayed this branch library by more than two years in a cynical political maneuver to promote Measure N.

As for Youth UpRising, it seems from councilmember Reid's reply that we have not explained our criticism well. Youth UpRising helps gutter rappers spread their message of disruption and disrespect by placing youth members in E40's music video glorifying sideshows.

Youth UpRising thus contributes to the disarray on our streets, to encouraging punks who might never hear of Youth UpRising, hey, go out and make life miserable for thousands of Oakland residents with your boom cars, spinning donuts and massing for horrific sideshows. We at Youth UpRising will also help with a magazine photo shoot making such behavior look cool.

That's not an acceptable price for the residents of Oakland to endure while Youth UpRising supposedly helps its youth members. However, we must question the alleged positive effect of Youth UpRising on its young members, too. What does it say to youth when the executive director brings in gutter rappers who produce CDs filled with woman-demeaning filth? What does it say when the agency presents them as models because they made a commercial success out of peddling hate and self-hate? What does it say when YU brings in gutter rappers who are known outside Oakland as modern minstrel-show clowns (to be blunt, that's what we read and hear, not what we at ORPN say), peddling a disgusting image of what can and should be a proud people?

You'll have to do better than that in order to justify the unsupervised giveaways of millions of dollars, councilmember Reid.

City Attorney Replies

City Attorney John Russo received the above story from a resident (not directly from ORPN) and sent a private reply. He cited his annual report for 2005-06, which shows claims received against the police department falling from 210 in 2001-02 to 121 in 2005-06. Looks good, doesn't it?

Yet, "reviewing police conduct/use of force and wrongful death lawsuits alone, more than half (51%) was resolved for no payment of money." (p. 8) So John Burris still has a 50 percent success rate at shaking the money tree.

Moreover, the annual report offers a revealing explanation for the decline in claims: "Claims brought against the Police Department began declining at the same time the reforms detailed in the Negotiated Settlement Agreement (NSA) were implemented. The NSA has been effective in limiting claims, thereby benefiting our officers and our City's residents and taxpayers." (p. 7)

According to Russo, it's all praise to the NSA! In fact, the NSA has so tied up the police department in paperwork, internal tension, Monday morning quarterbacking. and damage to officer morale that arrests have fallen drastically. Claims dropped as arrests dropped. Duh!

Meanwhile, violent crimes against Oakland residents and merchants have increased to intolerable levels. But the bureaucrat city attorney cannot see the street reality, only the happy statistics.

The more City Hall officials talk, the clearer it becomes, they do not care about public safety.