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On 21 Mar 2022, tom cotton <conjobjoe@gmail.com> posted some news:t1a3cc$2t8kh$72@news.freedyn.de:

You fools voted these incompetent progressive pieces of shit into
office! What's the problem now?

As Sheng Thao starts her second year in office, some of her staunchest
critics say they are pursuing a recall campaign.

Last weekend, a group led by retired Alameda County Superior Court Judge
and former member of the Police Commission Brenda Harbin-Forte,
announced it had mailed the paperwork to officially start the recall
process after collecting 250 signatures for an official notice. In a
note explaining their concerns, the organizers accused Thao of creating
a public safety crisis in Oakland by “systematically dismantling” OPD,
firing former police chief LeRonne Armstrong, and failing to appoint a
new police chief, among other complaints.

“Lives have been lost, property destroyed, businesses have shut down,
and fear and collective trauma are daily occurrences for Oaklanders,”
the recall organizers wrote in their notice.

In response to an interview request from The Oaklandside, Harbin-Forte
said all press statements must go through her media coordinator, Seneca
Scott. After The Oaklandside sent Scott an email requesting an
interview, Scott, without directly responding to us, accused The
Oaklandside on Twitter of trying to discredit recall supporters by
reporting about the campaign.

Thao’s chief of staff, Leigh Hanson, said the recall effort is “led by
losers.”

“I know for a fact that if Mayor Thao had lost the election, she would
have conceded gracefully and found a legitimate job that contributed to
moving our community forward,” Hanson said. “I have faith that
Oaklanders are smarter than this, and will resist the urge to be
distracted by a desperate attempt for relevance.”

Thao said in a statement she has “the best job in the world” because she
gets to fight to make Oakland safer, more affordable, and more
prosperous.

“I ask all Oaklanders to help me achieve that vision with hope and collaboration and push aside fear and division,” Thao said.

There are many steps supporters of a recall have to undertake before it
is put to voters during a scheduled election. One major step is the
recall organizers must collect signatures from at least 10% of the
population, according to state rules that govern recalls in Oakland.
According to Alameda County data, there are over 240,000 voters in the
city, which means the recall supporters must collect roughly 24,600
signatures.

The recall organizers’ main focus: crime
At the beginning of 2023, a group of people upset with District Attorney
Pamela Price’s new policies around prosecuting crime launched a recall
campaign against her, arguing that her progressive stances on issues
like not charging juveniles as adults and not seeking enhancements and
maximum prison sentences in all cases has contributed to worse crime in Oakland. The organizers of the Thao recall are making similar claims
about the mayor. They accuse Thao of “systematically dismantling” the
police department, “unjustly” terminating the former police chief, and
failing to uphold her promise to hire a new chief.

Last year was a bad year for crime in Oakland. There were 17,256
burglaries in 2023—a 23% increase over 2022. Commercial burglaries were
up 9% compared to 2022, fueling growing discontent among business
owners, some of whom have dealt with multiple break-ins. Vehicle thefts
were up 45% compared to 2022, and robberies were up 38%.

Many crime trends started worsening before Thao took office as mayor.
For example, in 2019, Oakland ended the year with 75 murders. In 2020,
murders shot up to 102. In 2021, LeRonne Armstrong’s first year as
chief, murders further increased to 123—the highest in 15 years. Murders
appear to have plateaued at higher levels in 2022 and 2023, at 120 each
year, according to OPD’s most recent annual crime report.

The city’s violent crime index—which tracks serious crimes, including
homicide, aggravated assault, rape, and robbery—peaked at 7,984 total
incidents in 2013, according to OPD data for 2009 through 2019. Then,
violent crime dropped for six years. When the pandemic hit, violent
crime shot up again.

The recall organizers have accused Thao of worsening public safety by
tearing down OPD, but the department hasn’t seen any layoffs or major
cuts in recent years, even after city leaders, including Thao, expressed
an interest in diverting funds to police alternatives after the George
Floyd protests in 2020. In June 2023, Thao’s first year as mayor, she
and the Oakland City Council approved a city spending plan that
increased OPD’s budget by roughly $40 million over what it received in
the last cycle, growing it from $683 million to $722 million. Oakland
leaders also funded six police academies.

However, because of rising costs due to inflation and other factors, the
$40 million increase in OPD’s budget hasn’t been enough to maintain
prior levels of police services. And the city’s $360 million shortfall
in its general fund forced Thao and City Council to make cuts across the
board to services. OPD agreed to cut its overtime budget by 15% and
reduce the number of budgeted sworn officers from 726 to 710. The city
also froze hiring for vacant OPD positions that it couldn’t afford to
fill. OPD, like other departments, avoided layoffs. The department is
currently projected to overspend its budget by $32.32 million in fiscal
year 2023-2024.

OPD graduated a new academy class at the end of 2023, which should
increase the number of officers to 725. For perspective, OPD staffing
was at a recent high of 750 in 2019. That number plummeted during the
pandemic, hitting a low of 690 in 2022, before Thao was elected mayor.

The recall organizers have also criticized Thao for firing Police Chief
LeRonne Armstrong, and for not yet hiring a replacement.

In January 2023, Thao placed Armstrong on administrative leave after an
outside investigation faulted him for “systemic failures” in how OPD
handled two misconduct cases for an OPD sergeant. She fired Armstrong
the following month after he went to the press and called OPD’s federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, corrupt.

The Police Commission opened a search for a new chief, but the mayor
criticized the commission after an internal power struggle spilled into
public, and she promised to declare a state of emergency if the
commission didn’t send her candidates before the end of the year. In
September, a neutral hearing officer opined that Armstrong had not been negligent in his duties as chief, but stopped short of saying he should
be reinstated. This report was seized on by Armstrong and his
supporters, including members of the Oakland Police Commission, who
advanced him as a finalist for the OPD chief job. Thao said she has lost
trust in Armstrong and rejected him and two other candidates in
December. The commission reopened the search and is expected to send new candidates to the mayor in March. In the meantime, an interim chief is
running OPD, one of many times in the department’s recent history when
the chief’s role has been filled by a lower-ranking officer or outsider.

Paula Hawthorn, chair of Oakland’s Public Safety and Services Violence Prevention Oversight Commission, spoke in her personal capacity with The Oaklandside about the recall. Hawthorn was deeply opposed to the mayor’s decision to fire Armstrong, calling him the best chief the city has had
for a long time. But she believes the recall is a mistake.

“She was elected honestly,” Hawthorn said. “I regret that she was
because I was very much for Loren Taylor. But that’s democracy, that’s
where we are, that’s what we do. We allow people to serve out their
terms.”

Hawthorn also dismissed the idea that OPD has been dismantled under
Thao. She said that Darren Allison, who has been running the department
since January 2023, is a “perfectly good” interim chief.

“The department is running along as well as it can and trying to figure
out what to do with this horrible crime spell, which nobody understands
why it’s happening or how to fix it, and that’s the bottom line,”
Hawthorn said.

Who are the recall organizers?
Brenda Harbin-Forte served as an Alameda County Superior Court judge
from 1998 until her retirement in 2019. In 2020, Oakland Mayor Libby
Schaaf appointed her for a roughly two-year term to the Police
Commission, an independent board with hiring and firing power over the
city’s police chief.

Harbin-Forte’s term expired in October 2022 but she continued to serve
on the commission and Thao didn’t remove her until June 2023. This
followed infighting on the commission, partly over the commission’s
leadership. At the time of her removal, Harbin-Forte accused the mayor
of trying to ensure that OPD remains under the control of the federal
monitor, Robert Warshaw, who has been overseeing the department’s reform efforts. Harbin-Forte was an ally of the former commission chair,
Tyfahra Milele, who clashed with Thao over the timeline for the police
chief search. In a recent SFGATE interview, Harbin-Forte said the recall campaign against Thao isn’t “petty revenge.”

Seneca Scott is a local activist who founded the group Neighbors
Together, which describes its mission as holding elected officials
accountable and checking the interests of special interest groups like
labor unions and nonprofits. He unsuccessfully ran against Thao and nine
other candidates in the 2022 mayoral election. He received 3,740 votes,
coming in seventh place. During the campaign, Scott repeatedly accused
Thao and her supporters of wrongdoing, including by publicizing ethics complaints made by a former staffer in Thao’s City Council office and by alleging that another Thao staffer was running a secret Twitter account
while on the job.

Scott has a history of making inflammatory statements, including last
summer when he accused an LGBTQ member of Thao’s staff of being a
pedophile.

After the 2022 election, Scott and the NAACP pushed for a recount in
hopes of overturning Thao’s win. Scott telegraphed his interest in
pursuing recalls against Oakland officials he disagrees with in a June
2022 op-ed about San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, where he
hinted that a similar campaign could happen in Oakland. In an August
2022 Twitter post responding to Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas,
Scott said “The SF recalls were only the beginning.”

https://oaklandside.org/2024/01/09/oakland-mayor-sheng-thao-recall-campai
gn/

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