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Mayor Quan Compelled to Distort
Her Public Safety Record
Before the disastrous events of last Tuesday, Oct. 25, in downtown Oakland, a group of people filed a notice of intent to circulate petitions to recall Oakland mayor Jean Quan. The county registrar has verified that the notice contains 56 valid signatures, sufficient to allow the procedures for circulating recall petitions to go forward.
The law gave mayor Quan the option of submitting a written response within seven days. Most officials in this situation ignore the notice, but mayor Quan felt compelled to reply, especially about her record on public safety.
Here are the three points she scraped from the bottom of the barrel.
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Quan's claim
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The facts
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Balanced the budget and negotiated pension reforms, "so I could rehire 36 police officers," and secured a federal grant for 25 more.
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Quan laid off 80 police while running for mayor in summer 2010. The federal grant overlaps an existing grant that expires next year, and the new grant is for fewer officers than the previous one. Quan "balanced" the budget with a smoke-and-mirrors accounting trick; what would she do the next three years?
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Held eight town hall meetings that drew 3,000 residents and a "neighborhood safety summit" with over 1,000 participants.
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This is an accomplishment of substance? Incidentally, the summit had perhaps 700 attendees and that was the City's first claimed number, but mayor Quan's publicity machine routinely inflates attendance figures. The City spent more than $20,000 on the event, about $28 per attendee.
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Developed a coordinated crime reduction plan with the county, district attorney, school, probation, and community partners to focus on the 100 most-violent blocks in the city.
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Most commentators graded Quan's one-page "plan" an F for lack of anything specific, except the announced intention to focus on 100 blocks, about two percent of the city. The other 98 percent will get even less police presence while robberies, home burglaries, open drug dealing and prostitution, and boom cars assault the innocent residents of Oakland.
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Mayor Quan was silent in her response about driving out popular police chief Anthony Batts. She was silent about the horribly botched attack on Occupy Oakland, her claim that she did not know what was coming, and her subsequent acceptance of a reborn tent city on the very ground that City Hall previously insisted must be cleared every night at 10 p.m.
Three more years of the failed leadership of mayor Quan would be a disaster for Oakland. A broad, experienced, widely-connected group of civic-minded Oakland residents have launched the drive to recall mayor Quan. Already, the response is a torrent of Oakland residents asking, "Where do I sign?"
Mayor Quan must go!
– Oct. 31, 2011; updated Nov. 15
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