A Matter of Conscience: Officer Down OPD

I felt compelled to write something about last week’s shooting of the (4) police officers, in Oakland,California. If you look in the papers, media, community activists and alike are sharing their views on why this happened. The victim has been portrayed as a monster, and a number of other things that really do not matter at this point. He is dead, and so are the 4 police officers. Living in Oakland at times is infectious; however, you are always cautious when you step out of your home, house, or apartment due to the nature of the climate in Oakland. Almost on a regular basis you pick up the newspaper, see it online, or hear it on television about some type of violence happening in the City of Oakland. Some revelers under the guise of being community activists have compared these events to the "Oscar Grant tragedy" that happened earlier in the year. Shame on you for that! These are two different circumstances.  The genesis of this goes back further than today. Our state has the largest prison population in the United States. Unfortunately, incarceration of people is part of the fabric of our economic system in this state. Locking people up, not only is good for society, and keeps us from criminals, it also makes money for the state. Not to say, people are being locked up for the dollars. If you do the crime then you should do the crime, as the old saying would say. “One of the main contributors to the state's parole numbers is a 1976 law, the Determinate Sentencing Law, that mandated parole for all state inmates after they serve a set number of years in prison. Unlike other states, which allow a parole board to decide if an inmate is ready to return to society, California's law says all inmates, except those serving life sentences, must be paroled after serving their time.” ~ Mercury News ~ Therefore, a person who has been sent to prison knows that when he or she completes the number of years of the sentence, they will get out eventually. Once on the outside, there are no incentives for the prisoner to change unless they want to. The parole systems are so over burdened, that the average parole officer cannot keep up with their case load. Therefore, parolees will slip through the system until the system catches up with them. In most states, prisoners, are not released unless a parole board determines they are ready to be released back to society, either by their exemplary behavior in prison, participation in prison reform programs, etc. We do not have that in California, due to the Legislative laziness, are just an unwillingness to fix the system. As a result we have tragedies that occurred in Oakland, last week. The gun control issue must be addressed in Oakland immediately; it is very disturbing to me when the criminals outgun the Police. How do you expect for Police Officers to do their jobs when the criminals outgun them 2 to 1. So many issues come before the City council, that affects the residents of Oakland, but the main issue is the citizens of this city need to be protected against the violence. We can talk all day long about how flawed the system is. About how flawed the system is will not bring back those brave police officers and the alleged gunman. Let this tragedy, galvanize the community and leaders to enact laws to prevent this from happening again. Traditionally, there have always been blurred lines of communication between the police and the community, particularly the African-American community in Oakland. Write your legislature, your assemblyperson, your congressman and enlist their help in fixing this problem in our state and community.