Oakland’s Democratic mayor now claims the city’s push to defund the police “went too far.” Who could have possibly seen that coming?
Mayor Libby Schaaf said the defund movement “went too far and got too convoluted,” which was apparent to sensible people at the time it was happening. “It’s been particularly heart-wrenching in Oakland because we had just made national headlines for cutting gun violence in half and sustaining those lower rates for five years,” Schaaf said. Oakland then saw 134 homicides in 2021, its deadliest year since 2006.
The writing was on the wall, but Oakland went ahead with budget cuts anyway. In 2020, the city “reallocated” $14.3 million away from the police department. The city finished 2020 with its highest homicide rate in eight years. Then, in June 2021, the city took $18.5 million from a proposed $27 million increase to use elsewhere. City council members signaled support for more future cuts, with Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas saying “there could be more redistribution.”
In 2020, Bas and the rest of the Oakland City Council unanimously agreed to form a task force with the goal of cutting the police department’s budget by 50% in two years. They never followed through on it, but, much like Minneapolis leaders committing to abolishing the city’s police department, Oakland city leaders let the defund fervor wash over them. The results were entirely predictable.
Schaaf wants to reverse planned cuts to the department and hire more police officers, a sensible decision. The city has already seen 16 homicides in 2022 through Feb. 24, a pace that would once again take the city above 100 homicides this year. But a reversal should never have been necessary. The push to defund police departments was obviously ill-timed and was being pushed by anti-police activists, with the biggest supporters being those who have their own private security.
It will be nice if the rest of Oakland’s city leaders join Schaaf in reality and acknowledge that “criminal justice reform” doesn’t need to include hamstringing your own police department as homicides surge. The fact that they weren’t there already is embarrassing enough.
