Oakland just had “race riots” where what can clearly be identified as college aged communists and Black Bloc cells were terrorizing entire neighborhoods. Meanwhile the city continues to be run by people who simply can’t comprehend the situation they are in:
Oakland’s police force will keep shrinking, with voters having rejected two out of three revenue-raising measures on the ballot this week, City Administrator Dan Lindheim said Thursday.
The force now has 673 officers, but Lindheim said the city’s 2010-11 budget and money the city will receive under Measure BB – the initiative that voters did approve Tuesday – provide enough for just 637 officers through June.
Oakland laid off 80 officers in July to help balance its budget, but the additional reductions will come through attrition, Lindheim said.
“We probably won’t have to do additional layoffs,” the city administrator said at a news conference with City Council President Jane Brunner.
Former state Sen. Don Perata, who has a significant lead in the mayor’s race with ranked-choice votes yet to be distributed, has vowed to rehire the 80 laid-off officers if he is elected.
But Brunner, who endorsed Perata, questioned whether the city will have the money to do that.
“Somebody is going to have to be very creative,” Brunner said.
Although they approved Measure BB, enabling the city to keep collecting revenue from a $90-a-year parcel tax that pays for police services, voters rejected two additional revenue-raising measures Tuesday. One, Measure X, would have imposed a $360-a-year parcel tax to provide more money to police, and the other would have taxed telephone lines.
The passage of Measure BB gives the city $20 million a year. But the terms of the original 2004 parcel tax mean the Police Department will have to pull 57 officers and six sergeants from various units and assign them to community policing positions known as problem-solving officers.
Officers will be removed from specialized units to fill those spots, including investigations, traffic and street-level narcotics teams, said Officer Jeff Thomason, a department spokesman.
There’s so much wrong in the above report I don’t know where to begin. The idea that people making six figure salaries are arguing about how to raise money for police in a town as dangerous as Oakland is incredible, that the only thing they can think of to pay for cops is tax the poor residents of Oakland is criminal.
Pensions, benefits, salaries for civil servants – these are the things that need to be cut. And yeah, during a financial crisis you may have to move some narcs to regular patrols but those new patrols can still help keep a lid on crime if the leaders keep morale up by taking the hits themselves. Instead the “leaders” of Oakland (and California) are eating caviar while giving out bonuses to special interest groups as police service is whittled to the bone.
And Oakland is just part of California’s problems. There liberal attitudes toward crime and punishment has created a problem they have no resources to deal with. A new report released by the California Department of Corrections (.pdf) claims felons released from their prison system have a 75% recidivism rate and of those most are arrested within three years of release. The report says sex offenders have a lower recidivism rate then other felons – at “only” 67% after three years!
California has bred not just financially irresponsible politicians but armies of morally bankrupt lowlifes who think nothing of doing time when caught. This is a recipe for disaster. Leave California, now.
h/t Police One