Police in Oakland, California, aren’t getting enough money to keep up with rising crime and struggling businesses, so the city has become a “ghost town,” according to a local safety supporter who thinks the city’s decline will last until 2024.
“We’re in a doom loop,” Seneca Scott told Fox News. Scott is the founder of the safety-focused organization Neighbors Together Oakland. “The doom loop means businesses leave because of the crime and problems, there’s less money to hire more police to solve the problem, and down you tumble.”
“Unfortunately, things will keep going the way they are,” he said, adding that Oakland would become “less livable and less safe.”
According to the most current police data, violent crime in Oakland went up 22% this year. Commercial burglary also went up almost 10%. Over 200 store owners shut down in September to protest how the government was treating public safety while crime was going up. A few days before the protest, city officials admitted they missed a deadline to ask the state for money to fight store theft.
Community Advocate Warns About ‘doom Loop’ in 2024
In the same month, Oakland’s city leaders started a grant program to help small business owners hold events like workout classes, musical acts, and movie nights to bring more people into shops that have lost customers because of crime.
“Community safety is one of my administration’s top priorities, and this program will boost foot traffic and help our City create safe, welcoming, inclusive, and thriving communities,” Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao stated.
Even so, Scott told Fox News that Oakland is not doing very well. “Oakland is now a ghost town, and people are scared to go outside,” he stated. “So we’re hunkering down, and we’re sheltering in place due to the escalating violence and unsafety in our city.”
The Oakland Police Department hasn’t had a leader since February, when Thao fired LeRonne Armstrong as chief after an outside review found that he messed up a probe into police misconduct. Thao turned down the police commission’s whole list of possible replacements on Wednesday, which meant that the months-long process had to start over.
And the effort to cut funding to the police made Oakland’s crime rate go up, Scott told Fox News before. Over 14,500 car thefts have been reported in Oakland, according to police records. Many times every hour, about two cars are stolen in the city.
Scott also said that loose rules against prostitution have led to “open-air sex trades and drug markets that would shock people.” Outside of a Catholic school earlier this year, sex workers were caught on camera at work.