Oakland Police Association Tells Occupy Oakland To Leave, Mayor Blasted On Twitter

In an amusing blog post (and for its pure hubris), The Oakland Police Association has stated in a new blog that it's time for Occupy Oakland to go. Frankly, releasing this blog post was one of the dumbest actions any Oakland public organization outside the Mayor could have made. It just shows how little respect the Oakland Police have for the Mayor of Oakland and the chain of command.

Here's the blog post:

November 11, 2011

On behalf of the 645 Oakland police officers we represent, this letter comes to you out of duty to protect the Oakland community and its citizens.

Oakland police officers are the 99% and we understand and sympathize with your message. We respect your right to peaceful protest.

We are also sworn to protect the citizens of Oakland. Right now, Oakland is in a state of emergency.

Our police officers are the 99% struggling in Oakland neighborhoods every day to contain the 1% who rob, steal, rape and murder our law-abiding citizens. The Occupy Oakland protest, now 30 days old, is taking our police officers out of Oakland neighborhoods and away from protecting the citizens of Oakland.

In an average city in California, this might not be of emergency proportions for its citizens. Oakland is not an “average” city – we have the highest violent crime rate in California. We are the 5th most violent city in the United States – with more shootings and homicides than any city west of the Mississippi.

Last night’s murder, right in the epicenter of Occupy Oakland, is unacceptable. So is the violence being promoted by “renegade” protesters who are lighting firebombs, destroying property and attacking police.

What is even more tragic is that homicides are a frequent occurrence in Oakland. This is the real emergency: Yesterday’s murder was Oakland’s 101st homicide of 2011. It is time for us to stop directing all of our efforts at policing the small enclave of “Occupy Oakland” and get back to our job of protecting the citizens of Oakland in the neighborhoods where our residents live.

The events of recent weeks have shown that many occupiers at Frank Ogawa Plaza are citizens of other communities with limited interest in preserving the greater good and safety of our City.

Please, we ask you: Leave Frank Ogawa Plaza peacefully and immediately so Oakland Police can get back to work fighting the devastating crime that’s occurring in our neighborhoods.

You have sent the world a strong message; now it is time to go home. Your leaving today, peacefully, of your own free will, on the 30th day, will send a message to Oakland that you care about our citizens and respect our city.

With last night’s homicide, in broad daylight, in the middle of rush hour, Frank Ogawa Plaza is no longer safe. Please leave peacefully, with your heads held high, so we can get police officers back to work fighting crime in Oakland neighborhoods.

Thank you.

The response to this on Twitter has been blistering, as have the tweets to Mayor Quan herself. Here's an example:

@traincandy Tim Trew
@jeanquan Oakland Police Association declared city "in state of emergency." Funny, I thought that's your decision #OWS #occupyoakland
10 minutes ago via web Favorite Retweet Reply

The tweets point to the emergence of a real live mess getting even messier by the day. Why this police blog post was issued, I have no idea. But one thing is certain: it shows complete disregard for any chain of command or protocol that involves the Mayor of Oakland.

It also points the way for possible violent police action. Or perhaps I should say more violent police action.

Stay tuned.

Related Blogs

Oakland Mayor Leads: Lionel Wilson Promotes Oakland

For the many who never knew Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson, who was Oakland's last three-term Mayor, and its first African American Mayor, serving from 1977 to 1991, when he lost to Elihu Harris. 

During his time, Mayor Wilson was a tireless promoter of Oakland.  The video below has Mayor Wilson making a video to announce the State Urban Economic Development Conference to help prospective developers and business owners build and relocate in Oakland.  In the video, Wilson presents different views of Oakland, showing everyone what a great city it really is.



By contrast, Oakland doesn't have such events in the present day.  Instead, we have meetings to present our public safety plans to residents.  It's all fear-based, not economics based, and at a time when Oakland needs to create more jobs.

Mayor Wilson died of cancer in 1990

Cal - Stanford Big Game Party Benefiting Jill's Legacy 11/18/2011

The Cal - Stanford Big Game is next week, and promises to be another memorable college football contest. As usual, there will be a number of parties, but there's one event that you really must come to: a benefit for Jill's Legacy.

Jill's Legacy is a non-profit organization based around Cal Crew Team Member Jill Costello, who lost her battle with lung cancer at the age of 22. The website describes the organization in this way:

Jill's Legacy is an Advisory Board to the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation made up of promising young professionals who have each been personally touched by Lung Cancer. The Board has been called Jill's Legacy in memory of 22-year-old college student and athlete at U.C. Berkeley, Jillian Costello, who lost her battle with Lung Cancer in June of 2010, just one year after being diagnosed.

With its oldest member just 24, this Board of empowered young adults is largely made up of Jill's closest friends and loved ones. The group's mission is simple: to be the driving force in significantly increasing the stagnant 15.5% survival rate of the world's number one cancer killer- Lung Cancer.

Many people don't know that Lung Cancer is the biggest cancer killer but still the least funded. It kills more people than breast, colon, liver, melanoma and kidney cancers combined. And, for every $9 spent on Breast Cancer research, $1 is spent on Lung Cancer in the U.S. Much of this is due to the stigma associated with Lung Cancer that it is a smokers disease. This is not the case! In fact, 60% of newly diagnosed Lung Cancer patients either never smoked or quit smoking decades ago.

Jill's Legacy is out to BEAT Lung Cancer big time! All money raised through the groups fundraising campaigns is going directly to young researchers and Lung Cancer awareness movements.

I first became aware of Jill Costello and Jill's Legacy via a table setup at a Cal game last year. There were women wearing "Jog For Jill" t-shirts later at the game, so I asked if they will tell my viewers about Jill. This is what they said:

This year, the party benefiting Jill's Legacy will be held Friday night November 18th at The Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell Street (At Van Ness) in San Francisco, CA, from 8:30 PM to 2 AM. It features DJ Allan Flo and costs just $10 to attend.

Get tickets for the party here: http://biggamepreparty.eventbrite.com/

Occupy Oakland: Shooting Death Not Related To OO, Mayor Poised To Attack

Occupy Oakland has revealed one thing: just how basically ignorant so many people can be at once.  There are many examples here, but the latest one is the shooting and death of a person at 14th and Broadway, and all over a "bag of weed." 

That's Oakland for ya. 

There's way too much media around Occupy Oakland, which is a good thing because offers just enough information to be able to make a sound determination of what actually was going on out there.  First, because the shooting happened at 14th and Broadway, which is next to the encampment at Frank Ogawa Plaza, conservative blogs like Big Government by Andrew Brietbart and also HotAir, have jumped all over the incident as evidence that the occupation needs to end.  That's even though many say it had nothing to do with the movement at all.  See this AP Video:



The sad fact is that 14th and Broadway has long been a place where you could run into drug dealers and vagrants, and possibly be robbed by them.  Occupy Oakland, sadly, doesn't change that fact too much, even though it does provide a ready set of people who act as a deterrent to such crimes.   Still, even with that, there was this shooting at the BART station entrance.

That place might be next to Occupy Oakland, but the fact is it's an easement that the public uses to get to and from 14th Street BART.  Thus, anyone could be doing anything in front of that place, endangering those staying at the Occupy Oakland home. 

Still, that's all Oakland Mayor Jean Quan needs to fire up what will be the latest action that will get her recalled - an announcement that the encampment should be moved.  It will get Mayor Quan recalled because that's not going to happen without more violence. 

I understand the Oakland City Council's upset that some alleged Occupy Oakland protestors showed up to a community gathering and as the City Of Oakland's press release said...

This afternoon, dozens of community leaders, faith-based leaders, business leaders, non-profit leaders and representatives of a broad array of Oakland-based organizations joined City Council President Larry Reid, Vice Mayor Desley Brooks, and Councilmembers Ignacio De La Fuente, Pat Kernighan and Libby Schaaf in a news conference in Lakeside Park to express their frustration regarding the significant, negative impact of the Occupy Oakland encampments in Frank Ogawa Plaza. Their purpose was to express a first-hand account of how the ongoing public health and safety issues associated with the encampment are affecting surrounding businesses and Oakland’s neighborhoods, draining scarce resources from other much-needed City services.

Instead, about two dozen individuals representing Occupy Oakland shouted down the speakers, drowning out their voices with shrill chants and loud shouting.

These community leaders who have been directly affected by the impacts of the protests wanted to share their perspectives and practice their free speech rights. Protecting the freedom of speech is one of Oakland’s core values, and facilitating free expression has been one of the City’s central objectives throughout the course of the Occupy Oakland demonstrations. Yet these protesters denied the community leaders the same rights which have been extended to them on so many occasions.

The level of hostility of the disruptive crowd and the complete disregard for the community leaders who had gathered in good faith to improve conditions for the city as a whole further impedes the productive dialogue that the City has been seeking to constructively address the untenable conditions in Frank Ogawa Plaza.

So the City Council's already upset with OO, and held a closed-session meeting on Monday to talk about Occupy Oakland and "pending litigation."  But not all of the Council wants the encampment moved, even with the all the bitching about being interrupted. 

Still, the media (and today that includes a lot of other people) are almost neurotically on the lookout for some kind of movement by the Mayor and Oakland Police.  So much so that, last night, an email went out saying that Quan was going to have the encampment closed by 2 AM.  It was a false report, but indicative of the kind of crisis of facts that has come to define the Occupy Oakland story.