Oakland Greens response to police contracting

Oakland Greens response to police contracting

The recent battle in Oakland over contracting with outside consultants has come to a head in the hiring of William Bratton, leading advocate of the stop and frisk policing used in New York. Bratton has built a reputation for using aggressive tactics while heading police departments in New York and Los Angeles. The stop and frisk policy, in which police officers have the authority to stop and search any individual they deem suspicious, has been heavily criticized for its substantial focus on youth of color. The consultant Bratton has controversially stated his firm beliefs that stop and frisk is an absolute requirement for good policing, and that any city which does not implement it is not serious about stopping crime.

 

Bratton is being called in to advise Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, and will be paid part of a $250,000 contract with Strategic Policy Partnership, a firm that signed an earlier $100,000 contract to advise the police force. The Strategic Policy Partnership chairman, Robert Wasserman, has worked with Bratton in the past. This use of the City of Oakland’s money on this contract is considered to be extravagant when the city’s current financial woes are taken into account. Wasserman's addition of Bratton to his consulting team has led many political advocacy groups to fear for the future of Oakland. The partnership between the Oakland police and Bratton is also troubling many residents, who do not want to see the drastic procedures he has used in the past come to Oakland. Civil rights attorney John Burris commented, "This is something I'm going to be extraordinarily watchful about…we will not accept stop and frisk here in Oakland, period." Many other groups, including the Oakland Green Party, believe the controversial tactic is too heavily associated with racial profiling to be of any good.

 

This divide between the political elite and young people, particularly youth of color, is especially troubling for the citizens of Oakland.  The political elite want to target our youth; gang injunctions, curfews, and now even more spurious stops leading to more murders. They call for more police, more militarization of the police, and ever more repressive measures. This has caused a negative backlash in the community, and a general call for elected officials to do the people’s work. By this, it is meant that political officials must change their viewpoint and work for the good of the people, not only the good of themselves. Though Wasserman himself has publicly stated, "We need to develop a plan by listening to people in the community," it is clear that the voice of the community is being drowned out in favor of a strictly conservative political agenda. These officials were elected to protect the will of the people and the rights of the people. Many of these doubts about Wasserman’s honesty and motives were voiced in a recent post on the Occupy Oakland blog, saying, "Wasserman also kept repeating the importance of community involvement and bringing the community together (and even seemed to take credit for the hundreds who came out to protest the Bratton contract), but neither in his time consulting with the OPD nor when he and the city announced a month ago that the Bratton hiring was a done deal (it wasn’t) did he ever bring the community in."

 

While these officials seem to believe that the only answer to crime and violence is repression, many are hoping for an alternative. There are those, including the Oakland Green Party, who have a different approach rooted in meeting human need, including the needs of those who have gotten off track. The Oakland Green Party favors an approach that is based on a vision of social solidarity, in which the entire community takes responsibility for the welfare of all the children.

 

The aim of the Oakland Green Party is to create schools that provide a good education for those going on to college, and a strong vocational program for those who do not want to go to college directly. We want schools to teach conflict resolution and civic engagement.  We want schools that are paying attention to the students who are having trouble learning, and to provide an entry point for health and social services if necessary. We want the schools to provide childcare before and after school, so that children are not going home to empty houses. We want our city to provide recreation and activities in a safe environment for all ages. For graduates, we want decent jobs at a living wage.

 

For those who have offended, we favor the concept of restorative justice that is when offenders make restitution to their victims as part of their rehabilitation. Restorative justice as an alternative to incarceration has the potential to offer a radical shift in the way youth who commit crime are perceived. The idea has arisen out of the frustration and pain experienced by those caught in the current dysfunctional criminal justice system. Many studies have found that the initiation of a restorative justice system results in significant declines of youth offenders having repeated contact with police, and an overall decline of youth crimes and violence. When offenders are released from jail, prison, or the Youth Authority, we should provide assistance to them in re-entering society, whether they need a job, a place to live, or health and social services. The widespread idea that Oakland does not have the financial resources to complete this task is a myth, when in truth it would be more financially responsible to incorporate this new system instead of fueling money into the current failing system.

 

Written & edited for the Oakland Greens by Michael Rubin & Amani Liggett