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I live in Oakland, the sharp rise in crime over the past 2 years is very real. Doesn’t excuse their lawsuit but huge numbers of businesses are being regularly broken into resulting in many closures.
Oakland has a crime problem, but Calavera is bad management pointing fingers.
We've deprived these people of resources, but I can't figure out why they keep stealing stuff. We probably need more police, more for-profit prisons, and more laws and regulations. That's always fixed it in the past.
It’s noble to work on addressing systemic inequities that lead to poverty and seeing crime as an option. At the same time, nobody who is an active criminal today is going to stop if you offer them a job at fedex.
Everyone from the Oakland NAACP to small business owners to individual victims (the majority of which are BIPOC) are calling on Oakland to get things under control. Enforcement is needed today, investment is needed for tomorrow. It’s not an either/or situation.
It’s also worth highlighting that not everyone who grows up disadvantaged turns to crime. In fact, the huge majority do not. These white guilt arguments are so pejorative and self centered.
That is also true in Portland and other cities. Methed out morons (or someone) break windows on restaurants to steal $200 or even bottles of liquor, and it costs the business $5k-10k to fix it. One establishment where I am now is closing after being broken into 7 times in the past year.
In Oakland there are lots of organized burglary and robbery gangs. It would almost be better if it was just crackheads as that feels easier to solve for in a sense, but here it’s definitely people with the sober intention to victimize others.
It's more random people than organized anything, from what I understand.