A letter co-authored by the president of the Oakland NAACP urges elected leaders to pull the city out of a “doom loop” of rising crime, depopulation and economic stagnation by rejecting a “no-consequences” approach to public safety and “defund the police” rhetoric.
The July 27 letter by Cynthia Adams, the NAACP branch president, and Bishop Bob Jackson of the Acts Full Gospel Church said city residents – especially Black residents of East Oakland – are suffering through a blitz of violent crimes, including murders, shootings, armed robberies, break-ins and automotive stunts called sideshows.
In contrast to moves in California in recent years to decriminalize criminal activity and aim to reduce the prison population, the letter takes a more traditionalist approach to fight crime, calling for the declaration of a state of emergency to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens against violence.
Cynthia Adams, president of the Oakland NAACP
| Linkedin
“People are moving out of Oakland in droves,” the letter states. “They are afraid to venture out of their homes to go to work, shop or dine in Oakland, and this is destroying economic activity. Businesses, small and large, struggle and close, tax revenues vanish, and we are creating the notorious doom loop where life in our city continues to spiral downward.”
The letter urges city officials to assemble resources to make the 911 system work as it should, to add 500 police officers to the city force and to provide youths with alternatives to crime, including education, mentorship and blue-collar job opportunities.
“Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our district attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life-threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals,” Adams and Jackson said in the letter.
Black residents must demand that city officials address the crime issue, they say, but others in the city need to be equally vocal.
“We also encourage Oakland’s White, Asian and Latino communities to speak out against crime and stop allowing themselves to be shamed into silence,” the letter says. “There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city.”
Steve Smith, a senior fellow in urban studies at the Pacific Research Institute, authored an examination of California crime trends between 2011 and 2021. That study, titled “Paradise Lost: Crime in the Golden State,” concludes that far-reaching criminal-justice changes have led to “mass victimization,” with homicides rising by nearly a third over the decade, aggravated assaults increasing 34.6% and fatal drug overdoses jumping more than seven-fold.
“The Oakland NAACP has it right, as their members are living the tragic reality of California’s public safety policy mistakes every day,” Smith told the Northern California Record. “Consider that in 2022, Oakland was the most dangerous city in the Bay Area, with a homicide rate of 27.2 per 100,000 people. Oakland’s 911 system is overwhelmed – answering calls at a rate four times slower than the state standard – and the Oakland PD is understaffed and experiences high turnover.”
He also put some of the blame on Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who has minimized the District Attorney’s Office’s impact on crime.
“By refusing to hold dangerous criminals accountable, a district attorney like Pamela Price can actually have a very profound impact on crime - by causing it to rise,” Smith said. “To end this nightmare for Oakland residents living in fear in their own homes and community, we need to end the local and state policy mistakes that are putting serious and repeat felons back out onto the streets and that are contributing to a mass victimization across California.”
Social justice reformers have neglected to recognize how deterrence and the threat of incarceration can serve to modify criminal behaviors in the state, according to the “Paradise Lost” study.
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, herself a survivor of violence, declined to comment directly on the NAACP chapter’s letter, but she did provide a summary of what her administration had done to address public safety concerns. The city has attempted to address what the mayor calls the "root causes" of crime by focusing on barriers to housing, education and jobs, Thao said in an email to the Record.
She said her administration’s public safety efforts include a more rapid-fire approach to investigating robberies, coordination with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department to shut down illegal sideshows and a move to “civilianize” some Police Department functions so that more officers can concentrate on battling violent crimes.
The city is also investing millions of dollars on violence intervention and prevention efforts in schools, according to Thao.
Oakland’s efforts, however, stand in contrast to the more traditional approach advocated by the NAACP branch.
“We know we need to do more,” Thao said. “We have to be collaborative, and we have to be innovative. This is not an either/or issue: We are not going to have true and lasting safety if we only focus on services, or only on accountability—or any one solution.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom's office declined to comment directly on the Oakland NAACP letter and call for a state of emergency in Oakland, and perhaps elsewhere in other communities plagued by crime in California, particularly since 2020.
However, the administration noted that statewide, public safety funding is at an all-time high, and Newsom’s administration has emphasized efforts to retain police officers, reduce gun violence and reduce the incidence of crime. The latest state budget includes $800 million in funding for fighting such problems as retail theft and fentanyl abuse, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars for local law enforcement grants.
California's total state spending stands at $224 billion for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, meaning $800 million amounts to 0.35% - less than 1% - of the state's total budget.