No. of Recommendations: 2
This isn't really funny, it's more sad:
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/oakland-...Reviewing calls for service from Alameda's 13 marinas, Police Chief Nishant Joshi found a slight decrease in calls for service from Aug. 23, 2022, to the same date this year.This is the factoid that some will race towards and pretend they've got something. But alas, crime stats often don't tell the tale...
Alameda maintains a part-time maritime unit to patrol the waterways, though its officers are assigned to other duties. Oakland has one full-time maritime patrol officer, Kaleo Albino, who said he's observed thefts spiking in the estuary over the past six weeks and has organized night patrols to help quell it. However, he's had to contend with limited staffing and the vastness of a bay 'where it's easy to hide' and quickly dismantle a boat engine, he said.
'They're just taking advantage of our response times,' Albino said, referring to the difficulty of tracking down perpetrators.And what happens when you don't control crime by locking up criminals?
Now, the harbors are losing business, with slips left vacant as people become reluctant to store boats at known burglary hot spots. Encampments sprawl along the shoreline, consisting of battered dinghies, inflatable rafts, and even a former U.S. Navy vessel that appeared to house several people before it sank in December. DeLong and others say they've become desperate.Oh, yeah. They move in and take over! When the camps spring up, crime that fuels their drug use soon follows. This is life along the west coast nowadays.
Local residents aren't taking this sitting down:
Last week thieves struck the Outboard Motor Shop, a repair facility near the Park Street Bridge. Under cover of night, owner Craig Jacobsen said, they loaded stolen life rafts, tool bags and other goods onto a 15-foot section of dock before towing the whole structure to an encampment at Oakland's Union Point Park.
That's right. They took the entire dock.
When Jacobsen called 911 to report the stolen dock, he said Oakland police initially told him that all officers were tied up addressing violent crime. Reluctantly, the staff of Outboard Motor went to Union Point Park to confront the alleged perpetrators themselves, where Jacobsen called 911 again. He said four officers showed up, arresting one man for possession of stolen property.
These homeless camps in blue cities are fortunate they're not pulling this stuff in redder areas, where even if there were no cops the Rule of FAFO still applies. In more passive blue cities, however... 