homeless people

fertieg97

Published on Sunday, October 17, 2010
Last updated on 06:51AM, Monday,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], October 18, 2010
I am trying to HOLD both my affection and respect for John Russo, as a thinking person, and my disappointment in what I see as another person implementing policies that speak more to their political aspirations than what’s best for Oakland. The decision to expand the gang injunction frustrates me tremendously.
Chief Batts is doing the same thing here that he did in Long Beach in regards to the gang injunction issue: he is acquiescing, not seeing any great need for it, particularly if his officers have to get involved in some – in their eyes - bureaucratic process to put somebody on the list. I was told in the Chief's office that OPD intends to do nothing different with the gang injunctions in place than they are doing now.
From a law enforcement perspective, naming only the gang’s name was what makes an injunction such an important tool. The power to name the person rests with the street officers. That is the way it was "sold" to the Oakland Police Department, before Batts was chief. Now Batts is just going along.
Russo has simply routed hundreds of thousands of dollars of his budget toward paying some police officers overtime, thus inflating their salaries. The officers in a defined area are paid to speculate about what is going on with crime there. They are paid to write those speculations out as testimony for a civil court, and then to testify at the hearings. Unlike criminal courts, civil court requires simply the preponderance of the accepted evidence. If the police officers had any real evidence, there would then be the beyond-reasonable-daunt standard of a criminal court accusing this collection of persons of being a criminal enterprise. The opportunity to present an alternate assessment of the source and solution for community disruption and violence is inadmissible. Any contrary view as to what is really happening as far as crime in those areas is essentially shut out.
Many of us in Oakland, like many other communities, have succumbed to a fear based world view. We believe many falsehoods about crime; and watch as our elected officials use our money to further that way of thinking. We end up supporting things that are not in our best interest and CERTAINLY NOT in the interest of the greater good

It is generally known within the law enforcement community that the best program dealing with gang violence reduction and crime reduction is the Ceasefire program that has been so successful in Chicago. The Executive Summary of a evaluation of that program states that the program's success stems from the holistic, comprehensive approach to the problem. Gang Injunctions are - any way you construct them - a one dimensional approach based on the failed assumption that the threat of incarceration and forced behavior restrictions will change behavior and will solve the crime and violence problem in our communities. A complex problem needs a complex approach.

I sent both Russo and Batts’ office a copy of an article in the Yale Law School Journal that traces the roots of this gang injunction approach to Jim Crow. As Michelle Alexander points out more extensively in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Era of Colorblindness, mass incarceration, gang injunctions, and such suppression tactics predominantly are just the evolutionary next step of slavery and Jim Crow. They do not solve the problem.
Chief Batts and Russo will claim that Oakland has a Ceasefire program. But what they are doing is not linked to the prevention and outreach elements that are even more important than the suppression aspects. Prevention programs are grossly under-resourced and would benefit from greater coordination among them.
And, get this; Oakland is part of the California National League of Cities task-force on gangs. That task-force also emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach. California’s success story is Salinas - the State headquarters of the Nortenos (the Fruitvale gang that the new gang injunction has targeted) - there has been huge success there in turning around hard-core, top leaders of the Nortenos.

A piece that I submitted to the Tribune at the time of the public hearings that were needed to legally qualify the North Oakland gang injunction explains why North Oakland was chosen. North Oakland tends to be more culturally disposed to believe that police officers are consistently working to protect your rights. The lens on the issue, through which poor and people-of-color look, reveals that police have a nasty underbelly just like most institutions rooted in a history and practice of criminalizing young people, homeless people, poor people and people of color.
Finally, I would join those who say that Bush and his militaristic if-all-you’ve-got-is-a-hammer,- you-treat-everything-like-a-nail bunch, high-jacked the term terrorist. By their definition the ANC in South Africa would be terrorists and the US would be sending drones to bomb them. As MLK said, it is poverty, militarism, and racism that we must fight. Do not let these people high-jack the term gang! Gangs are a well studied social psychological phenomenon where oppressed people gather together for mutual support and benefit. Given the right information, options, and opportunities gangs are very important, powerful, positive forces in our human communities. The militaristic suppression of gangs started with the immigrant populations in New York in the early part of the last century and this tactic has never worked!
Wilson

You should roam in places that are your own,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], that arise in accordance with your own true nature. And what is the place that is your own? It's the pasture of ardent clearness and mindfulness,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], where discontent and greed are put aside for the sake of the world. That is your own place, your natural range.

- Samyutta Nikaya