The conversation & news articles should be about the fact that there is an abundance of crime in Oakland (see photo of crime statistics from 1/28 - 4/25/12). Why with so much crime of a very similar nature, is this one case so highly publicized? The best way to answer this is by referring to the enormous amounts of police misconduct complaints beginning with the inception of Occupy Oakland. So many that the Oakland Police Department has been under threat of federal receivership because of a lack of an ability to adhere to their own policies regarding crowd control, selective enforcement, journalist attacks and much more.
The slander campaign unleashed upon the affectionately named Ice Cream 3 (#IC3) by the police department makes it seem like Occupy and the IC3 are the new personal pet project of OPD. After all, there aren't several press conferences about the shooting on April 2, 2012 where 10 were shot and 7 died. The police failed to mention how they let the suspect escape, hide the gun and turn himself in to the Alameda Police Department after OPD had arrested the wrong person. There also is very little coverage about the shooting yesterday in West Oakland where the police have yet to find a suspect
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_20468813/man-injured-west-oakland-shooting
These instances aren't advertised as much as an accusation of a hate crime & robbery when the accused are associated with Occupy Oakland... yes just an accusation. As a citizen of Oakland and a journalist, I'm both concerned by this and confused about why so much effort can go into branding people guilty when there is supposed to be a presumption of innocence in this country, and yet so many things go undone by this very same police department. In 2010 then police chief Anthony Batts claimed funding was the reason for lack of services in this NBC Bay Area article http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Suffer-These-Crimes-in-Oakland-Dont-Call-the-Cops-98266509.html This has resulted in millions of dollars worth of funding to OPD over the past two years. Unfortunately it seems that unless it's Occupy related that those funds aren't being used to serve the community.
Many calls to the police department as well as online reports & Internal Affairs investigations go unanswered by police in Oakland regardless of the amount of funding the police department receives from the City Council. According to this report by CBS San Francisco on April 8, 2012 http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/04/08/oakland-police-inundated-with-calls-unable-to-respond-to-all/ OPD still has trouble responding to calls and it's gotten so bad that some are even considering moving from Oakland.
When is it that there are always enough police? When there is an Occupy Oakland event you can assuredly find many police officers; often times armed with teargas, smoke grenades, riot helmets, several types of surveillance equipment and zip ties. All of which is very expensive and all provided by the same tax payers that are falling for the highly publicized, politically motivated misinformation served up by various public faces of the department. There seems to be no motivation to spare expenses when monitoring, arresting and launching attacks against those who passionately support the growing global movement.
This should make everyone question the real meaning of this case. Inherently OPD would not pursue a crime like this so aggressively, so the political motivation to silence the dissenting voices of the West Coast hub of Occupy Wall Street is obvious. There is a dangerous precedent that OPD, the Alameda County District Attorneys Office & Jean Quan (plus others) are attempting to set here, and that is basically punishing people for a thought at best. How is this possible? Well Cincinnati is the one being seriously targeted with robbery charges as Nneka & TearDrops names barely came up during testimony in earlier court proceedings. However, it seems as if the "dyke bitch" (or similar) phraseology allegedly used by others that compounds the charges and gives ground for them to be co-defendants.
Disturbingly enough this is basically stating that the goal is to hold any one person responsible for what someone else says or does. Here is where we see the fascist state rear it's ugly head. Since appeasement to try and devalue issues detrimental to society and violent police attacks have failed to keep Occupy Oaklanders from protesting for social/economic justice and equality; attacks against the movement have advanced. Now the fight is in a court room with a DA who seems to only hold citizens accountable for [allegedly] breaking the law while letting those who are hired to uphold the law truly hide behind the "exempt" license plates that protect the officers from more than just a traffic camera.
In debate, I would argue that this is ground explosion and thus abusive. Basically, the DA is trying to provide a broader definition of hate crimes so that it garners the advantage of prosecuting people who have not actually committed crimes. For example if I say I'm having breakfast, there are certain foods categorized and so most would guess typical breakfast foods. However, if I exploded the ground and said that all food is breakfast because you can eat anything in the morning. That can be deemed an abusive interpretation of the word to fit my preferred definition. Now while hate crimes and breakfast are not one in the same, the abusive interpretation of hate crime legislation used to target these 3 individuals is developed using the same type of ground explosion. Consider this scenario: one person is being accused of robbery & because someone else shouts angrily now everyone standing in the area are arrested of a hate crime. That's where this is heading.
The political big brother fascist attitude is that the current establishment doesn't like to hear the whistle blower like arguments against very prevalent current issues that come out of Occupy concerning the lack of schools and social programming, or the abundance of corporate money in politics, money for policing Occupy, tax dollars being used to save the same banks responsible for predatory home loans and using the very police who are supposed to protect & serve the community (and coincidently are paid by the people) to throw people out of their homes when they can't pay the loans and the banks refuse to do a modification {I just did my best to sum up this form of legalized robbery & oppression in a run on sentence *smile*}. This socially accepted attitude in mainstream society is the reason why when one person throws an empty plastic water bottle that bounces harmlessly off the bulletproof riot masks & vests worn by OPD; the entire crowd of hundreds will be teargassed and shot at with metal bullets covered in rubber & "bean bag" projectiles filled with metal. For those of you who are wondering, it's actions like these that have justified a million FTP marches in advance.
As a people we should all be concerned about this and do our best to fight against this exact type of systematic injustice. Not only is it riddled with political bias and financial motivations, precedent like what is being worked towards in the IC3 case is what provides State and Federal governments the loopholes necessary to circumvent Constitutionally protected rights. Clearly there are many of these types of laws in existence. For example, there only need be 3 people assembled peaceably for a redress of grievances with government and the police can declare an "unlawful" assembly. Couple that with various local penal codes like CA penal code 148 (a)(1) that states it is illegal to "resist, delay or obstruct" an officer regardless of the legality of the actions of that officer, or the civic duty of citizens to hold their government and law enforcement agencies accountable for their actions. The lack of an ability to assemble or even travel freely has been established as a readily acceptable way to handle the frustrated cries of Occupiers regardless of the fact that these are supposed to be among certain unalienable rights regardless of a persons job/class status.
For those who are motivated to stand against systematic oppression by way of the district attorneys office in the form of stay away orders (which is another blog all by itself) and enforcement & employment of unconstitutional laws feel free to contact the DA Office http://www.alcoda.org/about_us/contact_us or join Occupy Oakland in many creative forms of protest. You can find out about different events and committees by visiting http://www.OccupyOakland.org
The National Lawyers Guild has been working diligently on behalf of Occupy Oakland in a number of ways from training legal observers to obtaining legal council for those subjected to arrest during political protests. If anyone would like to donate to the IC3 bail & legal defense fund you can do so using wepay https://www.wepay.com/donations/103907
