via bostonglobe:
Now, two years later, amid shocking levels of mayhem and murder, the local NAACP president and the city’s foremost Black pastor are pleading with city officials to open their eyes.
“African Americans are disproportionately hit the hardest by crime in East Oakland and other parts of the city,” they write. They are under no illusions about where the blame lies. It isn’t systemic racism or white privilege or out-of-control cops that have made Oakland so unsafe. It is the political assault on common-sense policing — the replacement of tried-and-true law enforcement practices with an ideology from which even lifelong liberals like former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis have recoiled.
“Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life-threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals,” the NAACP letter declares. “If there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.”
The district attorney they referred to is Pamela Price, who ran for office on a progressive platform of ending “mass incarceration,” rooting out “racial, socioeconomic, and gender disparities,” and downplaying the conviction of criminals when evaluating prosecutors’ job performance. Her response to the open letter was to accuse its authors of promoting “a false narrative on such an important matter.” She had thought, she said peevishly, that she could “expect more from Bishop Bob Jackson and the Oakland Chapter of the NAACP.”
Maybe the people of Oakland will listen to the NAACP and ditch Price. If not, they’ll keep getting it gooder and harder.
h/t Stephen Green