The Clueless Leading the Fearful
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Police found a replacement worker from the now settled Oakland garbage strike who was staying at La Quinta Inn on Enterprise Way in Oakland. The man was gravely wounded from a gunshot apparently received when someone tried to rob him. He didn’t make it.
An unidentified man was found on a sidewalk 49th Avenue, in Oakland, dead from gunshot wound.
Three men were shot on 54th Street, Oakland. One died.
(a) intimidation;
(b) assault;
(c) homicide.
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Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com
Please contact Jay B. Gaskill, attorney at law, via e mail at law@jaygaskill.com
The Clueless Leading the Fearful
Oakland is hemorrhaging again and this time a courageous newspaperman is among the bullet riddled dead.
The corruption investigation by newspaper editor Chauncey Bailey was interrupted by his assassination in broad daylight on Thursday, August 2, by a masked man in black wielding a shotgun. The target of the corruption investigation, Oakland’s “Your Black Muslim Bakery” (owned by the Bey family - the business now in bankruptcy), was raided by police Friday, and several arrests were made. The Bey family has been well connected politically in Oakland (having given and received support to and from a number of prominent black leaders) but a number of the family members have been involved in thuggish activity (some Bey family members and friends are charged with kidnapping and torture). In one of Friday’s police raids, a 19 year old bakery employee, Devaughndre Broussard, was caught after tossing a shotgun out of a window. Reportedly, it was the murder weapon and Broussard has admitted the killing. He and two others associated with the bakery have been charged with murder.
Yong Broussard was on probation for robbery at the time (out of San Francisco, where readers will recall that Kamela Harris is the DA).
A DUBIOUS RECORD
There were several other recent Oakland murders, not connected, but amounting to a sort of homicide record for the city – in contrast with, say, Barry Bonds’ record setting homerun last night in San Francisco:
FRIDAY, AUGUST 3
1:45 AM: Two men were killed by gunshots outside a downtown Oakland nightclub.
11:06 PM: 8th Street, Oakland. A 40 year old woman died in a hail of gunfire.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 4
ABOUT 1:00 AM:
Police found a replacement worker from the now settled Oakland garbage strike who was staying at La Quinta Inn on Enterprise Way in Oakland. The man was gravely wounded from a gunshot apparently received when someone tried to rob him. He didn’t make it.
4:40 AM:
An unidentified man was found on a sidewalk 49th Avenue, in Oakland, dead from gunshot wound.
11:23 PM:
Three men were shot on 54th Street, Oakland. One died.
SUNDAY, 3:18 AM:
A young man was shot on 13th Avenue, Oakland. He was DOA at Highland Hostpial emergency – Highland gunshot central in the medical community.
"It troubles us - this is outright lawlessness," said Assistant Police Chief Howard Jordan.
No kidding.
The problem presented doesn’t require a degree in aerospace ballistics or neuroscience.
“Thugology” is not rocket surgery.
The taming and control of violence prone males (thugs for short) requires only the firm and persistent application of ancient wisdom. The relevant corpus of knowledge is not arcane, except to the clueless.
Here are the clues:
A group of thugs is called a gang. Without meaningful exception these are criminal gangs. Their intramural disputes and find raising activities are conducted according to a brutal street code for which no real court is available; their struggles are Darwinian. On the streets, the tools for conflict resolution are but three:
(a) intimidation;
(b) assault;
(c) homicide.
Organized civil society has these tools, too, if truth be told, although they are called warning, arrest-incarceration and execution after trial.
When these three elements of coercion are well integrated with a family moral infrastructure, with clear laws, and a robust justice system supported by a well staffed professional law enforcement arm, the thugs always lose: Crime loses its footholds; violence is suppressed; and the peaceful among us are empowered.
OPD is understaffed and outgunned. The city gutted its budget, closed down its Police Academy (without objection from then congressman Ron Dellums, now Mayor) and has been slow to repair the damage. Due to a building maintenance issue homicide detectives are reportedly still working in a conference room with a single phone line while their former headquarters (once used as a set in the “Dirty Harry” movies) is waterlogged.
Rising murder rates on both coasts (worrisome in Newark, New Jersey and exploding in Oakland, California) have led to calls for “leadership”. In the former, a young, idealistic mayor (Cory A. Booker, who campaigned to reduce crime) seems overwhelmed, and in the latter, ex-Congressman, Mayor Ron Dellums, seems puzzled.
In a crisis of this magnitude, leadership is immediately recognized by its clarity, realism and relevance. Its absence is always painfully obvious. When the clueless try to lead the fearful against the thugs, the outcome will not be pretty. The stakes for Oakland are high. People have been voting with their feet for the last three years. Only the collapse in real estate prices has slowed the exodus. New business investment in Oakland, however, is in immediate peril.
The Sisyphusean task of repairing Oakland’s broken moral and familial infrastructure within the seed population from which the current crop of thugs was harvested is a 30 year project. Yes it is a worthy, even essential task, but its future accomplishment will be too late to save the city from a devastating decline, unless short term solutions can be fashioned to restore the peace. Yesterday.
One clear sign of cluelessness: when leaders reflexively choose to address an immediate existential threat with a 30 year utopian plan. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the dawn of the Age of Aquarius in Oaktown. After the great exodus of peaceful, productive and law abiding families has hollowed out this one promising city, the thirty year plan may become a sixty year one.
But I am not (yet) a pessimist. However unreasonably, I believe in the possibility of an epiphany, even among old leaders. Even for a Congressman who is trying out an executive position for the first time in a long career. Maybe especially for him, since surely he now appreciates the social costs involved: parents need all the available tools and allies to prevent their sons from falling into the thug orbit.
Here is my advice for Mayor Dellums:
1. Do several incognito ride-alongs with OPD patrol officers. Get the feel of the police work and of Oakland’s streets. Pay attention. Be not critical.
2. Have a tutorial with the region’s senior law enforcement official, retired Sheriff Charles (Charlie) Plummer. Ask questions. Pay attention. Take notes. You are the student. Charlie is the real deal.
3. Make community connections with the realists. I’d start with Mr. Vernon Foster of The Charles P. Foster Foundation. [ http://www.cpffoundation.org/index.html] A link to Vernon Foster’s brave and wise Oakland Tribune Op Ed about the default of Oakland fathers is a archived on The Policy Think Site at http://www.jaygaskill.com/fatherless.htm .
4. Study the Giuliani NYC model closely. Note the deployed police officer to population staffing ratios, the performance metrics and the get tough ethos. ps -- William J. Bratton was Mayor Guiliani's Police Commissioner; he now is the Chief of LAPD. Spend some time with him -- if he is willing. You could do worse.
5. Lead. Lead. Lead.
While Mr. Dellums is still puzzling, the California Governator has dispatched state police (detached CHP officers) to help cover the streets of Oaktown. Three cheers: our own surge….
JBG
