Chip Johnson: Same old message to Oakland mayor - hire more cops

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 12/21/7 | Chip Johnson

[SmithL]

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums may have thought his contribution to curbing the city's high crime and homicide rates would be to implement his trademark social programs, but now he needs a Plan B.

Dellums' desire to hire qualified ex-felons for city jobs and to send intervention workers into the street to connect with parolees died soon after journalist Chauncey Bailey was killed by a shotgun blast on a downtown street in August.

The execution-style slaying of a newspaper editor brought the city national attention it didn't want and raised the local conversation on crime a few notches overnight.

The investigation into Bailey's death also revealed a pattern of political favors bestowed on the operators of Your Black Muslim Bakery, the group whose members were arrested in his death. The bakery has been nothing more than a front, investigators say, for a criminal enterprise.

When media reported that Dellums and other local politicians had issued letters of endorsement to bakery operators to help stave off a bankruptcy proceeding, the tenor of the public conversation took on a sour note.

Residents at a town hall meeting in West Oakland in September could not be swayed by the trademark 1960s rhetoric that had served their native son for so long as a U.S. congressman. Like citizens in other neighborhoods in Oakland, they were demanding more police services - and quickly.

Later that month, in his first interview with The Chronicle since taking office, he said he didn't think Oakland residents wanted more officers than the 804 prescribed by police department officials.

That turned out to be a tactical mistake, and hundreds of citizens contacted the mayor's office to set him straight.

From then on, Dellums' focus has shifted from social solutions to more concrete plans such as escalating his call to reorganize...

[ClearCase_guy]

They better start blaming President Bush pretty quick. I think that’s the only solution.

[Slapshot68]

60 years of throwing money at the inner cities, hoping they’ll turn around when in fact they’ve continued their deterioration.

A rational person would surmise that welfare programs aren’t working.

[libs_kma]

"60 years of throwing money at the inner cities, hoping they’ll turn around when in fact they’ve continued their deterioration.

A rational person would surmise that welfare programs aren’t working."

The dims are always talking about quagmire, and that the war is lost. Maybe what they're talikng about is the war on poverty and the war on crime.

[Beckwith]

Oakland can start by getting rid of its lifelong communist mayor, Ron Dellums.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Later that month, in his first interview with The Chronicle since taking office, he said he didn't think Oakland residents wanted more officers than the 804 prescribed by police department officials.

Dellums' friends and supporters don't want more officers - they've got criminal enterprises to run. ;)