Oakland is F--ing Dangerous
. . . and the Oakland Tribune thinks de-nial is a river in Egypt.
Last Sunday, Susan Gluss (AKA the public relations face of Boalt Hall) published an op-ed in the SF Chronicle about her personal decision to leave Oakland. Her motivation was personal security -- which is, of course, a politically handy euphemism for "bald fear." After the personal drama of her daily life repeatedly cast her into the role of Unwilling Crime Victim, she decided to move to Marin, and suffer the commute. The Chronicle backed up her piece with a simultaneously published staff article that creates factual support for Gluss' anecdotal story; the bottom line is that Oakland is freaking dangerous, and people are afraid to live there.
(Even if you do not read the article, you should peek at this incredibly disturbing google map of Oakland homicides in the last 12 months. It rattled me. Next to the map there is a scroll down list of hyperlinked victims' names that is beyond sobering -- think about it long enough and you'll want to cry.)
Apparently, the Gluss op-ed pissed off the Oakland Tribune. Yesterday they fired back with this article, which attempts to argue that Gluss' experience in Oakland is an anomaly, and the city is growing at a "jaw-dropping pace," "multi-faceted," and "thriving."
Wow. Just, wow.
I'm not sure if I find the Tribune funny or infuriating, but it is certainly a fine example of steadfast denial. Consider that this year Oakland was the 5th most dangerous city on a list of over 400 (down from 4th last year, whoop-dee-freaking-doo!), or that there have been so many armed robberies that the city can't even put them on a map -- instead they create safety "zones," which by definition of the crime rate are facially unsafe. If you prefer more concrete examples, consider the Chauncey Bailey shooting.
The truth is that over the last three years violent crime in Oakland is up while arrests are down (see this in-depth discussion), that bright and imaginative people like Gluss are leaving -- if they can be enticed to move to Oakland in the first place -- and word association with "Oakland" on any American street-corner probably conjures images including "gunshots," "weeping children," and "burning tires." Worse, as far as I can tell the city has nothing that even resembles a plan to address what is indisputably its biggest problem. True, the roots of urban crime are nebulous, and they touch upon poverty, race, class, and all kinds of other socio-economic undercurrents that no one fully understands. Even I understand, however, that ignoring those issues (as the Tribune and the Mayor seem wont to do) harms everyone. It harms victims by allowing crime to continue, and it harms perpetrators by tacitly maintaining the social forces that create them. Heck, it even harms the atmosphere by driving down the carbon balance in Gluss' commute.
So: boo, hiss, and shame upon the Tribune -- a good Op-Ed speaks the truth, it does not not spin it. You should have conceded that Oakland is dangerous, you should have lamented the loss of people like Gluss, and you should have asked what could be done. That would have earned credibility out the wa-zoo. Instead, your thin and unrealistic PR campaign smells like bullshit, and taints this reader's confidence in everything else you have to say.
Last Sunday, Susan Gluss (AKA the public relations face of Boalt Hall) published an op-ed in the SF Chronicle about her personal decision to leave Oakland. Her motivation was personal security -- which is, of course, a politically handy euphemism for "bald fear." After the personal drama of her daily life repeatedly cast her into the role of Unwilling Crime Victim, she decided to move to Marin, and suffer the commute. The Chronicle backed up her piece with a simultaneously published staff article that creates factual support for Gluss' anecdotal story; the bottom line is that Oakland is freaking dangerous, and people are afraid to live there.
(Even if you do not read the article, you should peek at this incredibly disturbing google map of Oakland homicides in the last 12 months. It rattled me. Next to the map there is a scroll down list of hyperlinked victims' names that is beyond sobering -- think about it long enough and you'll want to cry.)
Apparently, the Gluss op-ed pissed off the Oakland Tribune. Yesterday they fired back with this article, which attempts to argue that Gluss' experience in Oakland is an anomaly, and the city is growing at a "jaw-dropping pace," "multi-faceted," and "thriving."
Wow. Just, wow.
I'm not sure if I find the Tribune funny or infuriating, but it is certainly a fine example of steadfast denial. Consider that this year Oakland was the 5th most dangerous city on a list of over 400 (down from 4th last year, whoop-dee-freaking-doo!), or that there have been so many armed robberies that the city can't even put them on a map -- instead they create safety "zones," which by definition of the crime rate are facially unsafe. If you prefer more concrete examples, consider the Chauncey Bailey shooting.
The truth is that over the last three years violent crime in Oakland is up while arrests are down (see this in-depth discussion), that bright and imaginative people like Gluss are leaving -- if they can be enticed to move to Oakland in the first place -- and word association with "Oakland" on any American street-corner probably conjures images including "gunshots," "weeping children," and "burning tires." Worse, as far as I can tell the city has nothing that even resembles a plan to address what is indisputably its biggest problem. True, the roots of urban crime are nebulous, and they touch upon poverty, race, class, and all kinds of other socio-economic undercurrents that no one fully understands. Even I understand, however, that ignoring those issues (as the Tribune and the Mayor seem wont to do) harms everyone. It harms victims by allowing crime to continue, and it harms perpetrators by tacitly maintaining the social forces that create them. Heck, it even harms the atmosphere by driving down the carbon balance in Gluss' commute.
So: boo, hiss, and shame upon the Tribune -- a good Op-Ed speaks the truth, it does not not spin it. You should have conceded that Oakland is dangerous, you should have lamented the loss of people like Gluss, and you should have asked what could be done. That would have earned credibility out the wa-zoo. Instead, your thin and unrealistic PR campaign smells like bullshit, and taints this reader's confidence in everything else you have to say.
-----------------------------------
posted by Patrick Bageant at 12:33 PM
42 Comments:
Great post!
Ugg... that gmap hash-up with the scroll down victim list made me sick to my stomach.
Great (though incredibly depressing) work!
You really can't speak of Oakland as if it's one homogeneous place, though. Don't see too many murders in Rockridge or Temescal.
Except that people don't say that they live in Oakland when they live in Rockridge. This is for a reason.
I'm pretty sure the article was making this subconscious distinction as well.
New Jersey probably* has some nice places as well.
*ok...probably not.
It seems to me that the Oakland Trib article is much more balanced than Patrick makes it out to be. Yes, it does try to put a gloss on Oakland by specifically only mentioning positive recent developments, but it also correctly points out that Johnson and Gluss did not cite any statistics to back up their argument that people are fleeing the city in droves. And, towards the end it does begin a conversation about what is wrong with the city by tagging poor urban planning as a primary culprit. In general I don't think its even close to bad journalism
no i don't buy it. unless i read her article wrong, gluss lived in piedmont, which is NOT oakland and is not as full of crime as she would have us believe. i don't think there's murders in piedmont. yes on little boy got shot by a random bullet at his piano lesson, but that does not equal danger for everyone. further, gluss's complaints include her purse being stolen when she left it in her car. that's asking for it. everywhere is dangerous. as noted, berkeley is dangerous. rockridge and temescal can be dangerous. you don't like it, live in the country. it's not dangerous there (except for the coyotes). otherwise, you live in a city, and it's dangerous. it's completely unfair to compare oakland to marin. of course it's safer in marin--everyone there is rich.
@3:39, I guess I felt like my post was already link-heavy (no one really clicks on them) but this East Bay Express article points out what the Tribune article did not: people are leaving Oakland. The population has dropped by about 30,000 from 2000 to 2006 -- a statistic the Tribune 'declined' to mention, even though it cherry-picked census stats for years that do suggest population growth.
I did read your (first four) links!
Thanks for the extra info. That is a really big drop in about a half a decade, especially at a time of general growth for the state. So she's clearly flubbing (never used "flubbing" before, but it somehow seems right) the stats, I still maintain she does bring up one really good point about the city's design flaws contributing to violence. Just a cursory glance at the homicide map you linked to suggests there is a really strong correlation between poor residential neighborhoods that lack stable businesses and homicides.
-3:39
That correlation in neighborhoods was another thing that bothered me about the Tribune article. The author cites development downtown as evidence that the Chronicle article overstate the problem. But (as you wisely point out) those aren't the neighborhoods where the problems are!
Anyway, I'm sort of waiting for someone to point out that the Chronicle Op-Ed's aren't exactly neutral either . . .
;)
Yes, 3:43, you did read the article wrong. She lived on Piedmont AVENUE, which is not in Piedmont. It's in Oakland. In fact, it's a nicer part of Oakland, which is why the shooting of the boy because of the robbery of the gas station across the street was such a shock.
There are actually many nice and ridiculously safe places in New Jersey. It's a pretty large state.
Also, I lived in Temescal/near Rockridge and thought it was fairly safe all things considered.. then found out people were mugged right outside my apartment. I guess I got lucky, but I'm probably not moving back there anytime soon.
Albany is not much safer either. Those of us living in University Village were treated to a wonderful e-mail this afternoon about how many burglaries there have been in the area. A TOTAl surprise considering just Tuesday, a person was robbed while at home in the village.
why does sf have to hate on oakland?
true, population is down by 0.6% (only by 3K, not 30K) in OAK from 2000-2006. but the same statistics show sf's population down by 4.2%, walnut creek's down by 1.2%, and daly city down by 2.5%. are we to then also assume that people are fleeing those cities because of rampant crime?
now, i'm not trying to dispel the fact that oakland may be dangerous, but this just seems to be another shoddy attempt at journalism on the part of the chron. there is no such "flight" from oakland. moreover, correlation is not causation. c'mon folks.
damn! 3k it is. that's what I get for not fact-checking my sources.
the drop in population might also have to do with poor folks getting priced out of oakland and leaving for stockton or some other more affordable town in the boonies, rather than people voluntarily leaving because of violence.
anyway, i <3 the town.
I lived in Oakland for three years, and never had a problem. I lived in an apartment complex where I knew everyone, and when I started taking the bus, I got to know the neighbors on my walk to the bus stop. Sure, I might have been the victim of some random crime, but as other commenters have pointed out, that could happen in Berkeley, or Albany, or pretty much anywhere else.
People always try to make Oakland sound like a bad, scary, dangerous city when it's really a very nice place to live. There's great restaurants in a bunch of neighborhoods, lots of public events, performing arts...
Yes, there's a lot of crime. But be smart at night and don't hang around in the wrong neighborhoods, and chances are you'll never see it.
Its funny that a bunch of kids with a ridiculous amount of privilege are sitting around lamenting the crime that they'll never have to face because they actually have the ability to choose where they want to live. Maybe if we all focused a bit more on why Oakland has become such a center of crime, disparities in wealth, and how to improve the situation for people living there, instead of poo-pooing what you've never even had to deal with, this article would have an actual purpose.
Thank you 8:04, as it's been awhile since Boalties have been chastised for their privilege. Time to hold another all-day forum.
Shame on all of us. What were you thinking Patrick? :)
Why is this news? Oakland had more murders in 2006 than in 2007 or 2008. Is it just that a boalt person decided to leave piedmont ave (honestly, one of the safest, most affluent parts of oakland) because her shit got stolen? If so, wtf does that say about our awareness at boalt? How ridiculous is it that we think the proper response to crime in oakland is to chastise oakland for being dangerous? Patrick, I normally respect and appreciate your posts, but this post makes me ashamed to be a boaltie.
It is also absurd that we are lumping together discussions of property crimes and murder rates. If you live on piedmont ave, you may have to worry about getting your shit stolen (so maybe don't leave your purse in the car!), but you don't have to worry about getting murdered. That is why everyone freaked out so much when that kid got killed at the piano shop at the top of piedmont ave. That was the first killing in that part of oakland in a really long time. Since then, there has been a much higher police presence in the affluent parts of oakland (rockridge, temescal, and piedmont ave.). They don't react the same way when somebody gets killed in deep east oakland.
If you disagree with me, just go look at the intersection of MLK and Stanford in South Berkeley. Ask yourself if you think the "T" should be moved. If you're happy with where it is, then don't talk shit about oakland because you don't understand where its coming from.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Okay, 10:28, that was mean of me. May I take back the first two sentences? I'm cranky this morning -- my landlord has been sanding and sawing on the side of my building for the last three days, and it's louder at home than it is at Boalt Hall. I should be snarking at him, not you.
Still. I'm surprised by the tenor of these comments. Someone above thinks that when the moneyed people talk about the problems of the poor, they are exhibiting privilege, and that the proper response is presumably silent demurer. 10:28 thinks a discussion of about one newspaper's shady PR editorial is somehow chastising the subject of that editorial.
People, people, people. You cant ignore a problem away, you shouldn't censor yourself because you are guilty about privilege, and you can't assume every criticism is chastising. Boalties, who are a smart, motivated, sensitive, and socially aware bunch, should be talking about this stuff more than anyone.
Well, except for the Tribune. With them, chastise away.
Mike I agree with Patrick...WTF?
Just because it has some areas with lakes and parks doesn't change my opinion that Oakland is one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. I may be privileged, but I can still say that.
And who said south/west (i.e., near Oakland) parts of Berkeley are better?
"Ashamed to be a Boaltie"? Why don't you transfer to Chicago then, if we don't care enough. Holier than Thou people really piss me off in this type of situation.
Also, the kid who got "killed" was actually paralyzed. Not that that makes it better, just saying...
I have a strange affinity for Oakland. My favorite movie theaters are the Parkway and Grand Lake. I also love the Piedmont Ave stuff. Yeah, ok, clearly I mostly hang out in the gentrified neighborhoods.
But I also worked at the Alameda DA this semester. The kinds of crime I saw were pretty depressing, and most of the juries I watched at trial just looked tired. They had seen even more than I had.
I have mixed feelings about the article. I recognize Oakland's many problems, and I agree that not enough is being done about them. However, I also don't think fleeing the city is the best solution. Susan Gluss is of course entitled to do whatever she likes, and I respect her decision to leave. But I worry that if we allow crime to "scare us away," things will never get any better.
A more constructive solution might be to get involved in the community. See what you can do to help. Maybe that's naive, but I do think these problems have solutions. They just need committed people to work for them.
This has been rambling, but I guess I'll close by saying we all know the real problem with Oakland and most of America's more dangerous cities: drugs. While we can certainly place some of the blame for Oakland's dangerous state at the feet of Dellums or the OPD, the real culprit is the Federal Government and its repeated failure to come up with anything even approaching a real solution to America's drug problem. I'm not advocating a "war on drugs," since that merely exacerbates the crime problem. Some form of legalization with a comprehensive treatment plan is the only workable solution. We need to cure addictions, not turn the addicts into criminals.
Susan Gluss's stuff got stolen. Do any of us wonder what the money was used for?
Perhaps I am overly sensitive because I've lived and worked in Oakland for a long time. I did not mean to imply that it is wrong to discuss the crime rate in Oakland or to criticize the arguably biased viewpoint of the Tribune.
Still, I take issue with the tone of the post, perhaps best encapsulated in the title, "Oakland if F--ing Dangerous." I don't think that is true for people who are financially capable of choosing where they want to live, such as Susan Gluss. Such people could live in the Oakland hills, Rockridge, Temescal, or even Piedmont Ave (which imho is still a rather safe area of Oakland despite Ms. Gluss's op-ed).
When I said that the post makes me ashamed to be a boaltie, I was referring to its writing off of an entire city with a rather superficial analysis of the underlying factual dispute: Is Oakland safe for people like Susan Gluss? I think that's a complicated question which we can't accurately address by discussing murder rates and citing crime rankings (which give overwhelming weight to violent crimes like murder, forcible rape, and assault). Both of the articles you cite to overwhelmingly rely on just that data.
I'm also irritated by what I perceive to be rather NIMBY-esque media coverage and public opinion. When the Oakland murder rate was at an all-time high in 2006, I didn't notice nearly as much coverage or concern as there was after a 2008 robbery at a Pasta Pomodoro in Rockridge. To me, that smacks of acceptance of crime in certain neighborhoods. I regrettably took too much of this irritation out on Patrick. Sorry.
I think that people make rather simplistic decisions about where they will live. When a city is labeled as f--ing dangerous, I think people will choose not to live there even if it is not really dangerous for them. Indeed, a large portion of the criticism with crime rankings deals with exactly this problem. See, e.g., http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/18/dangerous.cities.ap/.
I fear that titles such as this one may exacerbate the problem. To address this crime problem, Oakland needs more police officers. That requires funding, but recent bond measures were defeated. If people are going to flee Oakland or never move here in the first place out of fear for crime, then the funding situation will not improve and the crime problem will worsen. Unfortunately, the people who will really be hurt by this are those without the means to leave Oakland.
As you can see, a lot of my feelings about this issue aren't externally supported. As such, I could be entirely wrong, Oakland could be really dangerous for people like Susan Gluss, and I could be a jerk for dumping on Patrick's attempt to discuss a real problem. But I've lived in Oakland for a long time, and I haven't seen much support for Susan Gluss' claims. Of course even if I'm right, I could still be a jerk.
You're in good company. I'm sort of a jerk, too.
"To address this crime problem, Oakland needs more police officers."
Not that I disagree, but I think police officers treat a symptom. The disease is drug addiction, and not nearly enough is being done to address that problem. The reason the ballot measures were defeated, I think, is because Californians have seen time and again how "tough on crime" measures and increased police presence don't actually do much to stop crime.
It's time for a new angle, and may I suggest legalizing drugs and treating the addicts?
Dan, I agree that police officers are not the ideal solution. I also agree with you that drug laws are a huge part of the problem, but they can't be changed locally. Perhaps even a bigger problem is the no-snitching culture which makes it virtually impossible to solve gang-related crimes. Nonetheless, the only workable local solution that I can think of is adding police officers to have a larger presence in high crime areas.
I worked in the USAO in SF in the anti-gang unit, so I'll toss in a counter to Dan re: federal involvement.
Over the last few years, there has been a huge step-up in federal prosecution of gangs and their leaders. The ATF and FBI have both been fairly successful in many smaller cities in convicting gang leadership on various RICO offenses.
The larger cities, Oakland included, are harder because taking out the leaders is less effective. But they have been stepping up the gun control enforcement.
So it really isn't just a failure of the feds here---they are doing quite a bit, given their restrictive jurisdictions.
There is a great article on this in the lastest U.S. News & WR.
-C
Yeah, my criticism was less against Federal law enforcement, and more about policy. I think Congress and, traditionally, the executive branch have basically not had a clue about how to solve the drug problem, in the rare instances where they even try.
Still, I hear Barack is a fan of "The Wire," so maybe he gets it.
Well no one knows how to stop the drugs. They are easy to hide, easy to smuggle (relatively) and use is nearly impossible to detect. Compare to metal objects that make very loud noises when used.
The feds have chosen to go after the guns instead, and it has been much more successful than the war on drugs was. They basically just tack on extra years for drugs now, but the guns are the way to nail the suckers.
Mike spoke his points a lot more eloquently than I did, and I agree with most of what he said.
I think its incredibly important to talk about problems faced in different communities, but having constructive conversation is a lot different than a sensationalized rant. What is productive in that? I'm pretty sure those who are actually affected by the violence in Oakland don't need the SF Chronicle's article to remind them or drive more people out (of the lucky few who have that choice), and Boalties don't need their limited understanding of Oakland further reduced to understanding the entire city to be 'f--ing dangerous'. I've lived in Oakland for several years, and there are parts of the city that are quite dangerous, but there are also parts that are thriving and safe. When blogs like this get posted, they only play into the over-simplification and stereotyping that keeps people from getting involved in making those dangerous parts of Oakland safer.
Legalizing drugs won't solve anything. The people who commit crimes to get the money to buy more drugs won't be deterred from committing those crimes just because drugs are no longer illegal.
Legalization may cut down on violent disputes during drug deals, but that's only if legalization of drugs gets rid of dealers.
Legalization of drugs won't alleviate any of the fears of people like Gluss because the need for money to buy drugs is what causes those crimes.
The best solution is drug treatment.
And it seems to me that the only people drawing a line between the have and have-nots are the people talking down about Gluss for having lived on Piedmont Ave. To say that residents of Rockridge are not allowed to say Oakland is dangerous because they don't face the same problems as residents of West Oakland is absurd.
Consider: Most agree Obama won in a landslide because the results of Republican rule over the last 8 years were so plainly, hideously awful. E.g., you can only screw up so much as a political party before the electorate (rightly) wises up and tosses you out.
But if that's the case, what does that say about 30 years of Democratic big-city-machine politics in Oakland?
True, Oakland had Jerry Brown. But he was stymied from the beginning by entrenched union and "community leader" interests, and didn't do much save a little downtown redevelopment.
In SF, by contrast, which is generally doing a lot better, they've had 15 years of center-left mayoral leadership, and the Board of Supes has been pretty well split between mods and rads.
So I'm kinda wondering how much longer voters (and commentators) are going to watch Oakland spiral into disaster before asking if machine-run, Democratic politics-as-usual is the way to go. (E.g., everything Ron Dellums represents).
Or am I missing something?
I keep having this image of Escape From LA in my head during this conversation.
The discussion here has rightly turned to drugs being a likely problem. But, if that's the case, I'd like to see stats on the murders as related to drug crimes. That is, I'd like to see how many of these murders were drug-on-drug, and how many of them were actually on presumably innocent bystanders.
Drugs are a dangerous business, and a high murder rate could be demonstrative of an unsettled and competitive drug market.
You can't really get stats. People don't report gang related crimes very often, and when they do, they certainly don't come out and say it was a gang crime.
People won't testify, they won't point fingers, and they certainly aren't going to tell the police or census bureau what happened.
Besides, whether drugs were involved in a particular crime isn't the issue. The drugs fund the gang operations, so they are really behind most of the violence in a more general sense.
I get that, but still: somebody's gotta know. Certainly the Oakland police can tell a dead guy who was in a gang from a dead guy who lives in Rockridge. How much research do we really need to do on somebody to figure this out?
Not politically correct, I admit, but it's an important distinction in terms of figuring out what the problem really is. If these are almost all drug-on-drug crimes, then we have one problem; if there are a lot of "innocent" deaths (from home invasions, muggings, or rapes) then we probably have a different problem.
6:53,
You'd be right if we were just talking about legalizing drugs in the sense that they'd sell them at malls or grocery stores instead of street corners, but I think the better solution would combine legalization with a well-regulated treatment program. For example, the government could set up outposts in inner cities, where they distribute free, safe (or at least as safe as possible) drugs, in carefully managed doses to addicts without fear of prosecution. At the same outposts, health services, AA groups, etc would be on hand to distribute their material and services to the addicts. Sure, some people would stay addicted, but they wouldn't commit crimes to get money, and their wouldn't go to fund violent gangs. Moreover, many many many addicts would be cured, drying up the gang money all the quicker. The drug "industry" would dry up pretty quickly.
Of course, you'd need something to take its place, but that's another issue.
My favorite thing about Oakland is that all the whiney scared douche bags are afraid to live there. I'm glad that lady left Oakland. I hope she enjoys wasting her life away in traffic.
No matter where you live, if leave your purse on your dashboard then you might get robbed.
If you retain uploading well crafted content just like this particular i then may maintain coming back again here we are at your website. Really good substance.
EmployeeshuttleSan Francisco
Oakland school bus
Oakland and Berkeley are pretty much the same because those thugs can commute to berkeley easily within short distance or using ac transit. But Berkeley still has a lot of people at night because it's a college town, but Oakland's street is pretty empty after 7.
Post a Comment
<< Home