Quan: Listen to Me, Not Your Neighbors

Residents of the Maxwell Park district were shocked by a neighbor's report:

"This evening my neighbors were expecting friends. They arrived around 8 p.m. An armed robber came from a car parked in front of them and held a gun to the woman's head. She was holding a child and her purse. She surrendered her purse." (Email to neighborhood list, Dec. 21, 2010)

Anger swelled on the neighborhood list. The robbers are getting bolder and more heartless; we hear too many reports like this; police admit to us they must concentrate on areas with even more crime. The talk was enough to get the attention of mayor-elect Quan. She replied:

"Robberies always go up during the holidays but the number of police assigned on the streets for 911 have been about the same despite the layoffs, but the media doesn't make this clear. On Jan 8 the beat officers will be back." (Email to neighborhood list, Dec. 23, 2010)

The reply is a typical example of Quan's disjointed denials:

• "Robberies always go up during the holidays." The mayor-elect is sending a message: get used to it.

• "The number of police on the streets have been about the same." If the department had enough police, it could temporarily move some investigative personnel to holiday street duty. That was the practice in past years, but Quan and the rest of the council laid off 80 officers last summer. Now she admits in the most backhanded way that the police cannot deploy as needed for the holidays. Oakland has half a police department, although plenty of money still flows to Quan's beloved feel-good attraction, Chabot Observatory in the hills.

  Mayor-elect Quan, concerned about the perception of crime not the reality, lays off police and convenes publicity consultants to spiff up Oakland's national reputation.

• "The beat officers will be back." Quan refers to problem-solving officers, who are supposed to concentrate on issues in a neighborood instead of responding to 911 calls. Quan does not mention that the police department got no new staff; chief Batts must simply take officers out of patrol and other functions, assigning them to PSO slots. More than a decade of history suggests that the department will routinely pull PSOs away for several weeks at a time on urgent assignments, such as dealing with gang wars.

• "The media doesn't make this clear." Not even sworn in as mayor, Quan already resorts to the number one excuse of failed officials: the press is to blame; they don't stick to my spin. It is no surprise that one of Quan's top priorities, according to an aide, is a publicity campaign that would try to counter Oakland's national reputation:

  "Quan wants a City Hall meeting with PR consultants to see what can be done about the city's reputation for being Crime Capital, U.S.A." (Matier and Ross, San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 20, 2010)

It's nothing new when Quan denies the public safety crisis in Oakland. In 2005 she said Dimond residents were imagining a crime wave. Quan has not learned. Earlier this month she told a reporter that new upscale businesses had brought safety to the Dimond. The truth is that Peet's Coffee, La Farine bakery, and Farmer Joe's market are a gourmet ghetto tucked in one corner. Robberies at ATMs and on the street remain a serious problem in the rest of the district. In fact, a thug snatched Quan's purse three months ago in the Dimond Safeway parking lot.

Quan's theme for her mayoral inauguration is identity politics, celebrating herself as the first Asian woman mayor of Oakland. The real problem is that lowlifes have beaten Asian grandmothers on the street for the fun of it; robbers have murdered Asian men on the sidewalk; and home invasion gangs have held Asian families at gunpoint in their own homes – just as robbers, burglars, auto thieves, vandals, boom-car drivers, and gang taggers have attacked Black, Latino, and white residents of the fifth most dangerous city in the country.

It does not matter to Quan. In addition to the police layoffs last summer, the current budget appropriates no money for training academies during the next two years. That means a further reduction by attrition of about 100 officers. Soon Oakland will have only one-third of a police department compared with most major cities. As councilmember and now mayor-elect, Quan is leading City Hall on an experiment:

How much can you shrink a metropolitan police department before life becomes totally unlivable?