Oakland NAACP: Declare State of Emergency After ‘Progressive Policies’ Like Defund the Police Cause ‘Public Safety Crisis’
‘It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime.’
The Oakland chapter of the NAACP penned an open letter condemning the city’s “intolerable public safety crisis.” The letter blames “the movement to defund the police,” the “District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people,” and “anti-police rhetoric” for “creat[ing] a heyday for Oakland criminals.”
We are in a crisis and elected leaders must declare a state of emergency and bring resources together from the city, the county, and the state to end the crisis. We are 500 police officers short of the number that experts say Oakland needs. Our 911 system does not work. Residents now know that help will not come when danger confronts them. Worse, criminals know that too.
“Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland,” according to the letter.
The letter calls on residents of all races “to speak out against crime and stop allowing themselves to be shamed into silence.”
“It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime,” the letter continues.
The letter warns that “[i]f there are no consequences for committing crime in Oakland, crime will continue to soar.” The “public safety crisis” has led “residents from all parts of the city [to] report that they do not feel safe”:
Women are targeted by young mobs and viciously beaten and robbed in downtown and uptown neighborhoods. Asians are assaulted in Chinatown. Street vendors are robbed in Fruitvale. News crews have their cameras stolen while they report on crime. PG&E workers are robbed and now require private security when they are out working. Everyone is in danger.
“People are moving out of Oakland in droves,” and residents “are afraid to venture out of their homes,” with devastating consequences for local businesses and the crime rate, according to the letter:
They are afraid to venture out of their homes to go to work, shop, or dine in Oakland and this is destroying economic activity. Businesses, small and large, struggle and close, tax revenues vanish, and we are creating the notorious doom-loop where life in our city continues to spiral downward. As economic pain increases, the conditions that help create crime and criminals are exacerbated by desperate people with no employment opportunities.
The letter calls for a state of emergency declaration, an “end [to] the proliferation of crime,” and “provid[ing] jobs, training, and mentorship so our youth have alternatives to crime.”
“Do it for the love of all Oakland residents. Each and every one of us has the right to live peacefully and safely,” the letter concludes.
UPDATE (7/28/23): The NAACP California Hawaii State Conference responded to Legal Insurrection‘s request for comment with an official statement attributed to the group’s president, Rick Callender:
The NAACP California Hawaii State Conference stands by and doubles down on NAACP Oakland Branch’s request for a call for a state of emergency in the city of Oakland. Our community members are in danger and elected officials are turning their heads away. Crime is at an all time high in Oakland and we are calling on the mayor to step up and work with the Oakland Branch to address this critical issue and call for a state of emergency. We cannot sit around and do nothing when people are in danger doing daily activities, trying to survive.
The NAACP California Hawaii State Conference declined to comment further on whether the defund the police movement, “anti-police rhetoric,” and the “District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people” were the root causes of high crime in Oakland.
The Oakland NAACP letter:
The NAACP California Hawaii State Conference’s official statement:
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Comments
Wait…you mean to tell me there’s a correlation between less policing and more crime? Whoda thunk it?
“It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime,” the letter continues.
SAURON CENTRAL (Arlington, VA): We’ve detected the notion of common sense surfacing in Section 134. Send Remediation Troopers stat!
‘It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime.’’
What??!! I restinctly heard a ‘progressive’ female on the Minneapolis city council address that issue saying ‘this need to be safe comes from a place of White Privelige’..
It’s racist to be anti crime. The vast majority of crime in Oakland is committed by blacks so anti crime means putting blacks in prison. This policy negatively effects blacks more than black which means it’s racist!
I noticed a deliberate effort to not name the likely crime committers. I await the day when it is announced that white people have better things to do than commit crimes against black people, and therefore the whites are racist and the “better things” is just another example of white priviledge.
Liberal Playbook: Never think past the knee-jerk.
Not entirely limited to the lefties but the knee jerk sort of fire, aim, ready reaction is absolutely more prevalent on the left.
“It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime.”
Except, that was the entire reasoning behind Black Lives Matter and “criminal justice reform”: That punishing black thugs and criminals is racist.
You reap what you sow, black fools, and you have reaped the whirlwind.
Black culture caterers to the lowest levels, kind of like Mohammadism. What Churchill had to say about Islam is very similar to what is going on in the black community. Lets hope that this new trend grows among blacks at an exponential rate.
Let it rip! Anything that hastens the day of reckoning is jake in my book. Continue to give them what they first demanded, and give it to them hard.
They bitch about whiteness and reject the traits which drive success, while people of many races embrace those traits and succeed’.
Monday headline: NAACP removes Oakland chapter from organization.
Sends it to Florida..
To be fair, the NAACP officially refused to endorse this movement. A number of articles from 2020-06-09 reported their president refusing to jump on the bandwagon.
(As opposed to the ACLU, who was all over it like stank on swine.)
So, government malfeasance causes a problem – and you expect government to fix that problem?
That sounds about stupid enough for leftists.
Yes, because the wrong people were in charge, obviously. FWIW, they have never explicitly defined who “the wrong people” are, I guess, because of a strong resemblence.
So defund the police. Then complain that you are not safe. Then sue in federal court. Then the Federal government takes over local policing. Bingo Bango Obama’s plan to have a federalized police is complete. Hurrah!
Sadly, this is exactly what we’re seeing
The ‘fundamental transformation’ continues apace
I have it on good authority from our senile child molester in chief that the greatest threat to America is wHiTe SuPrEmAcY, so obviously, this story out of Oakland is fake news.
“It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime,”
Yes it is. It’s WHITE SUPREMACY!!!!!
You got what you asked for. Now, embrace the suck.
Burn it down. Burn it to the ground! Was the motto and MO of BLM. Looks like Blacks Lives (BLM) trumped Colored People (NAACP). Yet some of you clowns will make this racist.
I need to know how the Oakland NAACP voted before I care.
“It is not racist or unkind for Black people to want to be safe from crime.”
There. FTFY.
Because as we all know, when White people want to be safe from crime, that “comes from a place of White Supremacy.” When White people want to be safe from crime, it means they want more Black men in prison.
OTOH, when Black people want to be safe from crime, it’s because they just want to be safe from crime.
Only White people have ulterior motives and Super Secret Code Words that always translate to hating “People of Color.”
The shocking thing is that a black advocacy organization is not only capable of seeing what (part of) the problem is, but had the intestinal fortitude to call it out.
Does that mean they’ll be voting for conservatives in the next election?
Somehow I doubt it, which places this situation firmly in the category of “a people tends to get the government it deserves”.
We are living in a world gone mad! No cash bail, BLM, reparations, affirmative action, defunding the police, exercise is racist, blacks cannot be racists, equity, equal outcome, obesity is not unhealthy, etc. This has all come about because of weak people in positions of power, not out of justice or merit. The group that is the smallest causes the most crime, how can that be ignored?
NAACP just hates that they’ve become ignored and irrelevant since BLM.
There is more than a bit of truth to that. Though BLM seems to be losing steam at least from my perspective. No BLM chapter around here for a comparison of then and now.
The mansion is bought. The organization has outlived its usefulness.
Good point. Though will one or two properties be enough? Gonna have to share them if they don’t trap some additional properties…. and the Marxists don’t ever seem to want to live their Marxist principles in the West.
You can’t lie your way out of reality.
Open crimes will lead to open warfare someday, society can’t stand civil with a criminal class running amok
That’s wishful thinking …
This goes under a very old saying: “Be careful what you wish for.”
Oakland’s crime is overwhelmingly black on black. The same is true in the central areas of a dozen or more other cities. Anyone who happens to mosey into the posting about electric cars will see that I am a Certified Numbers Nerd by inclination, education, and experience. I am forever looking at the numbers, and they apply here — on steroids.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, for every non-Hispanic white man shot to death in any given year, between 15 and 20 non-Hispanic black men are shot to death. According to the Dept of Justice, 90% of murders are committed within racial groups.
Last time I looked, blacks comprise 13% of the U.S. population but commit more than 60% of the murders. Look at the other crime categories, and the black percentage becomes more disproportionate as the catgories become more violent.
Yet, to point out the obvious is “racist.” Oh well. We choose to live in the countryside, and in our neck of the woods there are hardly any black people. Our county is one of the 57% of American counties with no murders in any given year. Imagine that.
This latest news and admission that things aren’t working as intended mirrors a ten step program? even if the mirror distorts.
The Oakland city locals are two or thee baby steps away from rejecting their own deconstructive policies. They just need to publicly acknowledge their error. Contrition? I don’t know the precise structure of ten steps, but dang, they’ve started the process.
Hope is kindled.
Very true. The overwhelming majority of crime is committed in a few dozen zip codes out of some 42,000 zip codes across the Nation. Those zip codes are predominantly located in blue cities with a log history of d/prog control and implementing d/prog policies.
You got really close Chief but you just couldn’t say it. Anywhere there is a large black population, crime is rampant. Of course, all big cities have such a population and as whites flee, the proportion of black to white will get much worse as will the tax base for public services. This includes cops and emergency services. Things will spiral downward until the national guard has to step in. What is the solution? Unless we can take back DC with both houses there isn’t much we or anyone else can do. Whatever, it will take a strong person who isn’t fazed by public opinion or the msm.
IMO, race doesn’t really move.the needle nearly so much as the d/prog policies. Within Red cities with significant % of ‘black’ residents the crime rates are far lower than in blue enclaves. It’s the culture of the community and the policies of it’s leadership that’s the true driver of the crime rate; in permissive areas crime is high, in less permissive areas crime is low.
If you or I were to be appointed Dictator of Chicago with full authority to take all necessary measures to eliminate crime there would be a sea change in how criminals were treated and laws enforced v how the d/prog have been doing things for decades. Crime would plummet within weeks.
They should be happy. They got exactly what they voted for.
The Oakland NAACP is irrelevant while it’s vote and the votes of it’s members are not up for grabs (which they aren’t).
True, but they are up for bid.
The NAACP is irrelevant.
Is it to harsh for me to reply, eat shit and die, Oakland NAACP?
The letter calls on residents of all races “to speak out against crime and stop allowing themselves to be shamed into silence.”
Okay, we called you racists when you reported crimes and said negative things about the city, but you shouldn’t have listen to us and moved your businesses and families away!
My advice to the NAACP: Keep voting Dem. They’ll get it right one of these times!
We need to revive that letter “allegedly” sent to an NAACP leader who was defending the NFL player engaged in dog fighting and saying that he was no worse than white people who go hunting on the weekend.
To me this letter ranks right up there in the “not well thought out” category as Varner’s email to the Oberlin Alumni about that “stupid” jury.