Trouble Waiting To Happen

 Trouble came to town last Wednesday. 

After weeks of threats, ICE came to Oakland. I suppose that's how we know winter is on its way.

This particular morning the Oakland Police Department announced that an “outside law enforcement agency” had been carrying out an operation within city limits. This "operation" consisted of attempting to arrest the father or grandfather of a child being dropped off at school. In all the excitement and confusion, driver of the suspect vehicle later crashed into an uninvolved car. Which is pretty much how the Police Department got to find out about it. Before that, “OPD was not notified of any outside agency conducting investigative operations in that area of Oakland,” said a department spokesperson. 

So just a few days back I was writing here about homicides in Oakland. I was describing the relative dangers of living here in the big city, and the challenges city authorities and law enforcement face in getting Oaktown back on the straight and narrow. 

Throw into this mix an SUV full of armed and masked individuals operating without notifying the local police, using tactics that can only be described as haphazard. It seems like my suggestion that contacting the local police might have helped make the "operation" run more smoothly and might have resulted in less chaos, but I am not a trained officer of the law. 

I do know that the children at Hoover Elementary spent most of the day on lockdown, along with nearby Harriet Tubman Preschool as the neighborhood waited for calm to return. Even though I am not a trained officer of the law, I am a teacher of elementary school children and I can assure you that it will be some time before the images of camouflaged heavily armed masked men going door to door down the street from their houses leave their impressionable little brains. 

 How is this helping anyone?