Guards maybe, but no “angels”
OVER THE summer, the city of Oakland has witnessed a spate of crimes at its trendy Grand and Lakeshore neighborhood businesses. Small restaurants and their employees have been robbed--and, as a result, are shaken and angered by the experience.
The mainstream press has taken these stories and plastered the newspapers, radio, and TV. Reporter Phil Matier recognized this journalistic trend and admitted in an interview that these crimes were the "flavor of the month" for the press.
Although the crime rate in Oakland has stayed steady over the past few years, the uptick in crime in these middle-class neighborhoods over the last couple months has prompted Mayor Ron Dellums to take action and address the problem in those neighborhoods, while virtually ignoring the day-to-day problems in poor Black and brown neighborhoods.
Dellums' first reaction was to say that the Oakland police needed 100 more officers out on the streets with the knee-jerk logic of "more cops equals less criminals." But if you were to look at a city like Washington, D.C., that has more police per square foot than any city in the world, but still has one of the highest murder rates in the country, you would see that this argument holds no substance.
Oakland has also been mired over the last year with several high-profile police shootings and, if Dellums were to add 100 cops, it would only raise the specter of this happening again that much more.
Dellums' next-best solution is to call on the Guardian Angels for some old-school vigilantism. "Bringing in the Guardian Angels is part of the city's comprehensive plan to provide additional security for Oakland's business corridors," Dellums told reporters. His plan is to allow the beret-baring "Angels" to roam the streets of Oakland to intimidate "suspicious-looking" groups.
For a city with a history of racial profiling, allowing a right-wing group to terrorize and intimidate the large Black community of Oakland smells of something sour.
The Guardian Angels, known for their red berets and white shirts, have been around as an anti-crime organization since 1979. Curtis Sliwa founded the group and has been featured on several right-wing media outlets over the past several years. Recently, his "Curtis Cast" Web site feature has had him making arguments in favor of water-boarding as an interrogation tactic that police should use to solve crimes.
But because the Guardian Angels have more diversity than Oakland schools (a district that Amnesty International has said is as segregated now as in the 1960s), they come across as a group "for the people." In reality, they are the volunteer wing of the police department, and they come with the exact same discriminatory policies the police do, except with even less oversight.
Cristina Fernandez, the Guardian Angels' Oakland chapter president, made it clear that the Angels and the Oakland Police have "100 percent" cooperation and support for each other. She has mentioned a confidential phone line between the police and the Angels in interviews with the press.
She also mentioned how "honored" she feels about being asked to patrol the city by the mayor. She herself, however, has said that the recent robberies stem from the economic downturn--but feels the best way to challenge this is through the "activism" of patrolling the streets.
All of this is happening in the context of a huge slump in the economy, where poor neighborhoods are being devastated in the housing crisis. What's more, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged to gut the school budgets.
In Oakland, this is making a dire situation that much worse. By not investing in the neighborhoods and schools, and creating more jobs and after school programs for youth, city officials are the ones to blame for the crisis in Oakland.
The Guardian Angels are simply doing the dirty work for the city, while placing the blame for the increase in crime on the victims of an economic tragedy.
John Gallagher, Oakland, Calif.
