Up with crime?

In what I'm sure will be hailed as an astounding discovery, the City of Oakland is learning that when police stop arresting criminals, crime goes up!

Armed robbers terrorized Oakland restaurants and small businesses in three separate crime sprees over the past year. The first wave targeted Asian eateries and struck during the 2007 holiday season. The second arrived last spring and was more indiscriminate. The third struck in July and August. All three made newspaper headlines and led television newscasts, shining a spotlight on the city's out-of-control crime problem and the Oakland Police Department's apparent inability to cope with it. In fact, the department's public response to the takeover robberies was both odd and illuminating.

The department's mantra for dealing with the city's crime spike has been: "We can't arrest our way out of this problem." Top brass has repeated this declaration in public meetings or whenever a reporter was within earshot, as if it were a common sense, widely accepted response to this sort of crisis. "Right now, it's pretty clear we are in a time of increased crime," said Deputy Police Chief Dave Kozicki, just before he summed up the department's official response to the Oakland City Council in April. "But the bottom line is we believe we cannot arrest our way out of these problems."

Read it all. It's as if Oakland has been transformed into a (failed) sociological experiment under the leadership of Mayor Ron Dellums.

Considering Oakland's history of official corruption and coddling of influential criminals, I can't say I'm surprised.

If the police are being told not to do their job, this leaves citizens with little recourse than to defend themselves.

However, if biased media reports like this are any indication, I guess the next step will be a crackdown on citizen self defense.

posted by Eric on 12.05.08 at 01:13 PM





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Comments

You can't "arrest" your way out of a crime problem? That's like saying you can't learn your way out of stupid. Or eat your way out of starvation. Good God these people should never be trusted with a public safety job.

Rhodium Heart   ·  December 5, 2008 01:47 PM

It's funny how many people just don't seem to believe in cause and effect.

Veeshir   ·  December 5, 2008 02:53 PM

I agree that you can't arrest your way out of a crime problem. But where they apparently think "instead of", a more reasonable person might think "in addition to".

tim maguire   ·  December 5, 2008 03:23 PM

Eric, if you're in the neighborhood,stop by Your Black Muslim Bakery and find out how the brothers roll on this one.

Anonymous   ·  December 5, 2008 05:50 PM

Greetings:

Back in the last '80s, I used to live in Alameda, CA, an island off the southern coast of Oakland. The waterway that separated the two cities was correctly referred to as the Estuary. The Alamedans called it "The Moat."

11B40   ·  December 5, 2008 06:40 PM

Given that Ron Dellums,the former US Representative and Berkeley city councilman(underground papers at the time called him "Ron Vote for Me Dellums"),is the mayor,why should we be surprised at such idiocy emanating from the organs of Oakland Police Department?

Gringo   ·  December 6, 2008 11:22 AM

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