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SEQUENCE:18831310
CREATED:20130111T190200Z
DESCRIPTION:Join the JAB Coalition and allies on Tuesday 1/15 to tell City Council that 
 we reject Bill Bratton and his racist, fascist policies. Meet up at 5:00 
 for a rally with the meeting at 5:30. Make sure to fill out speaker cards 
 online beforehand or at City Hall (official agenda).\n\nAs some of you may 
 have heard, OPD has a new strategy to reduce crime in Oakland. This plan is 
 to ask City Council for an additional $250,000 to hire Bill Bratton as a 
 consultant for one year. They have happily announced that they are bringing 
 in the man responsible for NYC's dramatic drop in crime and the man who 
 helped the LAPD work through their own federal difficulties after the 
 Ramparts case.\n\nHere's what they're not telling you about Bratton's 
 multi-pronged approach to crime reduction:\n\n1) Bratton takes credit for 
 implementing NY's broken window policy. On the surface, the policy sounds 
 great - if you repair minor damage then you don't send the message that an 
 area is worthless and thus raise civic pride and prevent crime. But Oakland 
 has already instituted a new policy along these lines that exposes a key 
 flaw. It is not the city that pays for this damage but home owners and 
 business owners. Businesses and homes that fail to remove graffiti promptly 
 can be fined. So it is the homeowner who is punished for the police's 
 ineptitude at preventing vandalism in the first place. Moreover, one can no 
 longer simply leave the graffiti up and appreciate the art because the city 
 sees it as counter-economic to have graffiti anywhere. Ultimately, broken 
 windows forces civilians to take on police roles they already pay others to 
 do regardless of whether they personally believe in the laws or not.\n\n2) 
 Bratton believes in a zero tolerance policy for all crime. This means 
 harsher punishment and more policing of minor infractions (including public 
 protest, public disturbance, vagrancy, public intoxication, smoking 
 marijuana, etc). This sort of strategy takes a way a cop's (meager) 
 rationality and forces them to further criminalize the public. For those 
 police who already have no problem seeing Oakland residents as criminals, 
 zero tolerance encourages them to punish as harshly as they can to deter 
 crime.\n\n3) In a recent interview, Bratton talked up the importance of 
 stop and frisk and compared it to chemotherapy 
 (http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20120322/manhattan/former-nypd-chief-bill-brat 
 ton-compares-stop-and-frisks-chemotherapy). That's right. Bratton thinks 
 the people being stopped are like a cancer, and the rest of the city (the 
 innocent ones) simply need to endure the poison (in this case the unlawful 
 stops and searches) in order to make the city healthy again. There is no 
 doubt that bringing a de jure Stop and Frisk policy (to replace the already 
 existent de facto policy) will only encourage police racism and police 
 violence. Moreover, with recent comments by Fruitvale's new City 
 Councilmember Noel Gallo in which he proclaimed his own desire for a 
 "search and frisk" policy, there is no doubt that the Council will be 
 moving in this direction.\n\n4) Bratton has also been vocal in his disgust 
 with cities that havetolerated Occupy camps. In regard to NYC, he 
 reportedly almost ran formayor because he was so angry at how tepidly 
 Bloomberg had responded to theZuccotti Park Camp. Bratton despises the 
 tents for the same reason as thebroken windows and encourages harsh 
 response to populist movements topreserve the status quo.\n\nSo what's 
 really going on here? The last two consultants, Frazier (who they chose) 
 and Warshaw (who was forced on them by Judge Henderson), both wrote 
 scathing reports of OPD that Deanna Santana tried to cover up and edit. So 
 now they found someone to say exactly what she wants to hear. They're not 
 out of control, they're too controlled. They're not too violent, they're 
 not violent enough. Also, with the new Federal Compliance Director coming 
 in with a clear mandate to stop Stop and Frisk as it already exists off the 
 books in Oakland and to work against racial profiling, the Police and City 
 Officials want to make it harder to change their backwards, racist 
 policies. Oakland has become the epicenter of anti-brutality campaigns, so 
 those who want the brutality to continue are bringing in their big guns. 
 They know that in the wake of Oakland's crime and murder spike, that the 
 people of Oakland will be much easier to bully into whatever program they 
 recommend.\n\nWe say no.\nNo to zero tolerance!\nNo to "broken windows" 
 policies!\nNo to Stop and Frisk!\nNo to racial profiling!\nNo to Bill 
 Bratton!!\n\nCome out and tell the Public Safety Committee that we want 
 none of this and that we will be heard. Get a speaker card, bring a banner, 
 get rowdy.\n\nRemind City Council whose city this is.\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/01/11/18729951.php
SUMMARY:Justice for Alan Blueford Coalition to Reject Bill Bratton at Oakland Council Meeting
LOCATION:City Council Public Safety Committee\nSgt. Mark Dunakin Room - 1st Floor, 
 Oakland City Hall\nOscar Grant Plaza, 14th and Broadway
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/01/11/18729951.php
DTSTART:20130116T010000Z
DTEND:20130116T040000Z
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