Oakland crime issue goes far deeper than racial profiling

It's easier to discredit the Oakland Police Department than it is to take a hard, sobering look at the crime that drives a police officer's actions in the field.

The department's recent report on the race and ethnicity of the people who get pulled over or stopped by Oakland police officers showed that 62 percent of the stops involved African American people.

In a city where black citizens comprise 28 percent of the population, some say the data supports community concerns about racial profiling by police. But if you look at what crime victims and witnesses say about the race of the perpetrators in Oakland - a different picture emerges.

African Americans comprised 83 percent of the 12,161 suspects in last year's homicides, attempted homicides, robberies, assaults with firearms and assaults with weapons other than firearms, according to crime suspect data provided to me by the Oakland Police Department. This data is based on descriptions provided by crime victims and witnesses.

For the same period, African Americans made up 26 percent of the 9,175 victims of crimes in those same categories last year.

If Oakland wants to have a serious discussion about crime, perhaps this is where it needs to start.

-- 8,228 of the 9,491 robbery suspects last year were described as African American.

-- 844 of the 1,091 firearms assault suspects were described as African American.

-- 1,034 of 1,439 people suspected in assaults with weapons other than firearms were said to be African American.

-- 27 of the 32 suspects arrested last year for homicides were African American.

-- 41 of 79 suspects in unsolved homicides last year were described as African American. Thirty were listed as "unknown" race or ethnicity.

African Americans also accounted for 67 of the city's 90 homicide victims last year and were most likely to be the victims in attempted homicide and assaults with firearms or other deadly weapons. Hispanics and whites were the top two groups most likely to be victims of robberies.

The data scream out for a community conversation that is whole lot larger than just the Police Department or the sidebar topic of racial profiling.

Unfortunately, in today's politically correct world - and especially in the Bay Area - no one is supposed to say or do anything that might offend anyone else, and never a member of a disadvantaged group of people.

Difficult discussion

As a result, it's difficult to near impossible to hold a rational discussion of the problems that face the city and the decent, but disenfranchised citizens suffer for the lack of such a forum.

When a Chronicle reporter asked Oakland Mayor Jean Quan this week how she would present the stop data to the public, her reply said it all: "I was hoping you (the media) would."

Don't blame Quan. She is not the only person who feels uncomfortable talking about this. I'm uncomfortable talking about it. The very crux of the issue is that, as a society, we can't have a straight-forward discussion about race that doesn't end in finger-pointing, accusations, hurt feelings and anger.

Addressing crime as a root problem in the African American community, in Oakland or in any other large American city, is a taboo subject that's often hovered around, but never directly addressed for fear of being accused of blaming the victims of the nation's social practices.

It's much easier and considered politically progressive to promote alternative strategies to those involved in street violence - and blame police for the rest.

We go at it piecemeal, from youth centers to high school achievement programs for African American males to the city's Operation Ceasefire program. Each week, clergy and a flock of volunteers hit the streets tossing lifelines to young toughs hangin' in the hood.

Avoiding conversation

Oakland, it seems, is willing to do just about anything, pay any amount, to avoid a direct conversation about the misconduct and behavior of some of its most misguided citizens.

Oakland city leaders' inability to lead discussions on behavior with the same zeal they pursue their own agendas may be one of the reasons law-abiding African Americans are stopped by police.

The Oakland Police Department is nobody's church choir - or without some blame.

There's an uneasy history between Oakland police and African American residents and activists - and suspicions remain to this day.

One of the things that could help remedy the issue - recruiting, training and hiring homegrown Oakland residents as police officers - is just starting to gain traction. It's something that should have been done decades ago.

The police have their own problems with federal oversight, management, morale, deployment issues, equipment failures, legal debacles, training and field performance, and those are just the high points.

In the last decade, Oakland police have been disgraced by the Riders scandal - in which four rogue officers abused citizens - and last week their unauthorized acts during the 2011 Occupy Oakland demonstrations resulted in a $4.5 million settlement in a lawsuit brought by Scott Olsen, the protester whose skull was fractured when he was struck with a bean bag round fired by police.

There is plenty to lay at the feet of the Oakland Police Department, but blaming them for traffic stops in a community where crime has hindered and delayed personal growth and long-term civic progress for decades - that's a cop out.