Oakland learns that ‘criminal justice reform’ makes women easy targets
Zachary Faria
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Democratic-run cities always think it sounds good when a liberal prosecutor comes along and talks about ending “mass incarceration” and “criminal justice reform.” Then they get met with the reality of what that looks like in practice.
It is now Oakland, California’s turn to discover what happens when a prosecutor backed by Democratic megadonor George Soros gets to run the criminal justice system. Alameda County elected Pamela Price to serve as its district attorney in a 53%-47% vote in November 2022. Violent crime is up 7% now in Oakland compared to the same time period last year. Robberies are up 12%. North Oakland has received the worst of it, with increases of 18% in violent crime and 22% in robberies.
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Those are just statistics, though. What does it really look like in practice? One woman in her 70s was attacked outside of a police station. Another 63-year-old woman was beaten and robbed in broad daylight by a group of young people. She was struck in the head “at least ten times.” At a city meeting on crime, a North Oakland woman described the crime against her as follows: “Two kids beat the s*** of me in front of my house last Monday night. Down on the pavement. Punching me, kicking me, dragging me through the street.”
As you can imagine, when you aren’t willing to put criminals in jail, it goes very poorly for women, who are viewed as easy targets for thugs. You would think a city with a female mayor in a county with a female district attorney would be aware of this fact.
You would be wrong, though. Eight teenagers who were “recently arrested for a string of more than 35 robberies” in Oakland were let free on Wednesday (emphasis added). As we have seen in Chicago and Washington, D.C., liberal criminal justice reformers think teenagers should not be held responsible for being violent criminals. The same holds true in Oakland under Price’s stewardship.
In fact, what does Oakland think of the criminals that are assaulting residents and targeting women? Kentrell Killens, the interim chief of the Department of Violence Prevention, described the criminals as follows: “I see individuals who are hurting. I see individuals who are struggling.”
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When you refuse to prosecute teenagers regardless of their crimes just because they are teenagers, you embolden them to become more violent and more brazen in their crimes. When you refuse to prosecute criminals and protect residents, you make the most vulnerable residents more frequent targets of crimes. When you treat criminals as victims, you create more actual victims. This is basic common sense, but that is not something that is permitted in the criminal justice reform movement.
Pamela Price is making people unsafe in Oakland, just as George Gascon is doing in Los Angeles and Alvin Bragg is doing in New York City. Chesa Boudin did the same thing in San Francisco. Residents in Democratic-run cities have been fooled into thinking they were voting for “reforms” when they were actually voting for prosecutors who would rather do anything other than actually prosecute criminals.