Oakland citizens are terrorized by highest American crime rate
When compared to the national average, Citizens of Oakland under former Mayor Jerry Brown were:
More reasons to be afraid:
In a city of only 407,000 people (assuming 50% are women), 1 out of every 750 women in Oakland is raped each year. Over a 10 year period, that means 1 out of every 75 women will be raped. It is important to remember that rape is a crime that is under-reported, particularly when the crime is committed by a family member. When you control for under-reporting that number climbs to perhaps as high as 1 in 20. This is a staggering statistic considering this is only one crime to which the women of Oakland and their families are subjected.
Oakland Children experience neglect and abuse at disproportionate rates.
The real culprits? Lack of child protective services, lack of judicial oversight, lack of Mayoral and City Council involvement, lack of educational investment, lack of job training, zero job growth, liquor stores on every corner, drug addiction, poverty and hopelessness. But Jerry Brown seems to think that electronic cigarettes pose the biggest risk of all?
A child is abused every 10 seconds in Oakland
According to Child Protective Services of Alameda County in California (pop. 1.5 Million), children in homes of substance abusing caretakers are almost 300% more likely to be abused and more than 400% more likely to be neglected than children of parents who are not substance abusers. Interestingly, of all the cases that the Alameda Social Services Prevention Council saw, over 40% of the cases came from Oakland. A tragic but important point here is that Oakland has a population 1/3rd that of Alameda County yet accounted for nearly half of the cases they reported on in 1999.
More disturbing data:
The point we are making here is this: lack of education, lack of access to mental health care, lack of access to proper developmental nutrition sets the stage for addiction, abuse and neglect. Increasing police and social workers will not address what is, at its core, an institutional problem underwritten by inaction and inattention from Oakland City Council and the Oakland Mayor’s Office.
Why has the City Council granted more liquor stores licenses in Oakland than Beverly Hills?
Liquor Lining The State’s Pockets
Here’s a term that might be new to you, but certainly not to Jerry – it’s called Liquor-lining. In other words, this term pertains to the overconcentration of liquor stores in African-American neighborhoods, particularly within low-income African American neighborhoods. Aside from being exceptionally predatory, it forces out other non-addiction centric service businesses. Additionally, these stores tend to also double as convenience stores selling baby food, milk, diapers in addition to fortified beers, wines, cigarettes and pornography. Moreover, these stores are open late into the night which encourages and aggregates a host of criminal behaviors, the least of which is underage access to prohibited products and substances. Liberal Democratic Apologists will argue that Oakland has passed more strict zoning laws prohibiting the further concentration of these addiction dealerships as well as requiring them to not be within certain feet of schools, churches or other public welfare institutions. As always, the Devil is in the details and as they say, It’s All Details. These ordinances only restrict NEW liquor stores and only restrict those neighborhoods to where the crime rate is over 20% of the Oakland County average. You may be asking yourself, OVER 20% of the OAKLAND AVERAGE? Recall that Oakland has a murder rate of 500% that of the US national average. What the ordinance effectively says is that new liquor stores cannot be insinuated into those areas where the murder rate is higher than the already unbelievable and ghastly high per capita rape, arson, criminal assault averages? Frankly, this is simply irrelevant, feel-good do-nothing legislation designed for press releases and photo ops. This can be in NO WAY an answer to the plight of the urban poor. In our opinion, this sort of hand waving is precisely the sort of malevolent and disgraceful sleight of hand that could only be architected by a political machine bent on ensuring a lucrative alcohol, tobacco and pornography marketplace for their political donors from within Oakland’s Red-lined underclass.
The Taxman Cometh
My record speaks for itself.
Jerry, while no one likes taxes, using our tobacco tax revenue to right the wrongs of institutional poverty and racism inherent in our criminal justice system would be an investment worth making. Let us hope that your $3.00 tax increase will serve the poor and unrepresented better than the way you did as Oakland Mayor.
