The Oakland chapter of the NAACP blasted city leaders and called for a state of emergency over the city’s crime “crisis” in a statement on Thursday.
The liberal California city’s chapter of the NAACP, a black civil rights organization that tends to lean Left, blamed the “defund the police” movement specifically as part of the reason for the crime spike.
“Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life-threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals,” Oakland NAACP President Cynthia Adams, along with Bishop Bob Jackson of the Acts Full Gospel Church, said in their statement.
“Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities,” the statement continued. “Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland.”
The group called on elected leaders to declare a state of emergency and deploy “massive” resources to address the public safety crisis.
They also noted that people are moving out of Oakland “in droves” and are afraid to leave their homes, sending the city’s economy into a tailspin.
“As economic pain increases, the conditions that help create crime and criminals are exacerbated by desperate people with no employment opportunities,” the local NAACP chapter said.
The group argued that Oakland needs 500 more police officers than it currently has, meaning the 911 system does not work, and criminals know this, they said.
“There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city,” the NAACP chapter said.
Violent crime in Oakland is up 11% so far this year, according to police data. The city has experienced more than 3,300 incidents of violent crime so far in 2023.
Robberies are up 14% to more than 1,500 robberies, and rapes are up 16% to more than 90 rapes. More than 470 robberies were strong-arm robberies, and just under 600 robberies involved a firearm.
Car thefts are also up 33% to more than 6,200, an increase of more than 1,500 compared to this time last year.
Oakland residents have been sounding off about spiking violent crime for months.
In May, hundreds of angry residents of liberal Oakland, California, showed up to a town hall meeting on crime.
One woman in her 50s said two teenagers “beat the s*** out of me” in front of her North Oakland home last month. At first, she thought the kids needed help, she said, but then a teen boy body-slammed her, and a teen girl joined in on the attack.
In Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood, considered one of the city’s safer areas, a 63-year-old woman was attacked in broad daylight outside a bustling indoor shopping mall in May. The attackers were part of a group of nine teens and pre-teens, police said.
Business owner Adam Stemmler, who owns a pizza shop in Oakland, said his staff had been held up at gunpoint four times over the last six years, and his shop has been broken into multiple times.
Stemmler accused the city of “encouraging this type of behavior” by refusing to address it.
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