To the Oakland City Council re its $250,000 corporate cop contract
by Ann Garrison
I wasn’t among the hundreds who spoke, because I ceded my time to West Oakland Bikes4Life bike shop owner and community builder Tony Coleman after the Council cut speaking time to one minute because of the crowd.
This is what I would have said if I’d had my own two minutes and what I’d still like to say, here in the Bay View:
My name is Ann Garrison. I’m a journalist and I live in West Oakland’s District 3.
According to Businessweek, William Bratton, in 2009, became chairman of Altegrity Risk International, a new division of Altegrity, a billion dollar company owned by the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners.
Altegrity Risk International was created to bid on highly lucrative State Department contracts to help train police forces in 14 “post-conflict” nations, including East Timor, Haiti and Afghanistan. Obviously U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to create and manipulate conflicts all over the planet and then to train “post-conflict police forces,” but William Bratton likened this to “the Peace Corps but better paying.”
Bratton went on to become the CEO of Kroll Associates, a similar business since acquired by Altegrity. He later stepped down as Kroll’s CEO but was retained as its senior advisor. He also serves as vice chair of the Advisory Council of the Homeland Security Department.
I hate to see Oakland become a market for this or any police mercenary corporation, whether traded on Wall Street or otherwise privately held.
And I think all of you know that the Bratton contract is a gimmick that might generate short term political capital but that it’s not going to work.
The City of Oakland doesn’t have the resources to do everything that needs done about the poverty, unemployment and despair that cause violent street crime, but that’s all the more reason not to throw another quarter million dollars away on a gimmick.
Oakland should turn instead to its own Bay Area neighbors in Richmond to see what they’re doing right and why their homicide and violent crime rates have so radically dropped. I imagine that Richmond’s crime fighting team would consult with Oakland’s at little or no cost, considering the mutual benefit of reducing crime in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Oakland writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, KPFA Evening News and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com. If you want to see Ann Garrison’s independent reporting continue, please contribute on her website at anngarrison.com.
“Alan Blueford” at Oakland Council Meeting – Oakland, California January 22, 2013 from Daniel Arauz on Vimeo.
Uncle Bobby at Oakland City Council Meeting – Oakland, California January 22, 2013 from Daniel Arauz on Vimeo.
I think this is not a huge amount of money and we do need more police presence on the streets to deter… We're getting something new here off Park Blvd, groups of young men knocking on doors to see if there's anyone home. This has me nervous enough to accept police tactics I would have previously considered bordering on the draconian.
What district is Park Blvd. in?
Top of Clinton, bottom of Bella Vista.
"The City of Oakland doesn’t have the resources to do everything that needs done about the poverty, unemployment and despair that cause violent street crime." I don't buy this. I've been to plenty of poor places in this country and around the world where there is no crime. The services available to people in Oakland are far better than the poor can expect almost anywhere else in the world.
You have to look no further than Tupak Shakur, a man convicted of rape, yet idolized as a prophet, to understand the culture of gangsterism that is pervasive in American cities like Oakland. Check out Cradle to Grave, listen to what he's talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h84fTFEajCY
Thug life has nothing to do with committing crimes out of need. This isn't about people stealing food to feed their families. It has everything to do with social status and misplaced pride. It's gold chains, SUVs and $200 shoes. You'll excuse society for not throwing more money at the problem.
So when we see these people, standing on the corners with their pants hanging off their asses, doing nothing, littering, being loud, fighting, intimidating people, and killing each other, we want to ended. And their families, who never bothered raising them, will come out and howl and tell us how good they were and how poverty is to blame. But we'll know it's a lie.
Hey Mr. Shakur was no different Patrick Henry, Paul Ravier or any other determined individuals:
Henry was encourage encroachment of Native Land and Ravier was staunch supporter of encroachment
Mr. Shakur was a staunch supporter of Civil Rights and self determination just like Malcolm X, which makes all these men rebels with real cause
Unlike Mulligan a no nothing, do nothing thinks he knows it all