THE WORD ON OAKLAND'S STREET SHRINES (PART II)

East Bay liberal-progressives pride themselves on the fact that they saw the errors of Iraq early-on and long before the rest of the country-the half-truths and misstatements by the nation's leaders, the faulty conclusions, the failure of the media to ask the tough questions and point out the inconsistencies.

Odd, then, isn't it, that Oakland-which sits in the heart of the East Bay-can't seem to recognize it when that very same type of policy-by-dissembling occurs within its own borders. [American Heritage Dictionary note: Dissemble. "To conceal the real nature or motives of."]

We're talking, again, about Oakland Police Chief Richard Word's decision last week-without bringing it before the City Council-to ban violence victim street shrines. As far as we can tell, the shrines-collections of stuffed animals and sympathy cards and flowers and candles and photos of the deceased-are generally spontaneous memorials put together by friends and families of the victims both to honor the memory of the victims and to provide either a public notice or public protest of the manner of their deaths.

But in the course of a couple of days last week, the shrines have come to be viewed by the general public as both dangerous and associated with the perpetrators of violence, rather than the victims and, thus, fair game for the chief's banning.

How did that happen so suddenly? Did the nature of the shrines change overnight, or did we misunderstand their true purpose all along?

The answer, I think, is that the shrines have not changed at all, but have become an easy scapegoat for politicians and police who are under intense pressure from Oakland residents to decrease the city's cycle of violence. [American Heritage Dictionary note: Scapegoat. "One bearing blame for others."]

For the sake of advancing this discussion, let's make one assumption and assume two facts.

The assumption is that Oakland public and police officials want to diminish Oakland's violence (we can leave off talking about why different officials want to diminish that violence for another day).

The first fact to be assumed is that most of the causes of the city's violence are well beyond the ability of the present city or police officials to affect. Still, they've got the job to do something about it, and when someone in Oakland gets shot, the public holds these city and police officials accountable.

The second fact to be assumed is that whether or not Oakland's total level of violence is lessening, the rate of murders in this city-which is the statistic which the public and the press generally use to conceive whether the level of the city's violence is rising or falling-has gone down from last year to this year. Because of that, violence in Oakland is less of a public issue than it was at this time last year.

But now comes a horrific event that vaults Oakland's violence back into the headlines and the top spot on the evening news. In mid-September, the Tribune reported two possibly-related East Oakland shootings within a dozen blocks of each other that left 10 people injured and two dead. The second shooting took place at the corner of 94th Avenue and A Street on the east side, at a street shrine memorial that had been set up for an earlier shooting victim. The shootings-which Oakland police believe are gang-related-were linked to earlier shootings at two separate funerals in Hayward, and caused an Oakland homicide investigator to say that it was "the most violence I've seen in such a short period of time since I've been an officer with the Oakland Police Department."

The string of shootings prompted shock and outrage across an Oakland that is, after all, not easily shocked and outraged. In response, Oakland's police chief could have done a couple of things. He could have issued a statement saying that while the September shoot-outs were bad, they were an aberration. Anti-violence efforts are working and Oakland violence is going down, the chief could have said (if that, indeed, was actually true), and the chief could have added that Oakland police were pursuing the perpetrators of these new shootings vigorously, and would have them arrested and brought to justice as soon as possible. In the alternative, if it were warranted, the chief might have made a decision to step up anti-gang efforts of the department. With the available evidence, we can't judge whether either of these courses were the correct one. But either course might have lessened the public pressure on the police department and allowed them to move forward with serious anti-violence measures.

Instead, Chief Word made the oddest of choices. He decided to attack the street shrines-rather than the shooters, the gangs, or other conditions-as the source of the September shoot-outs. But it's not just Word's choice of the shrines as a target that's the most interesting, it's the choice of words used by the chief and others in the Tribune that draw our attention. "The [shrines] seem to be a magnet for violence," Word is quoted as saying. "You can almost count on some sort of retaliatory violence while people are mourning at these shrines."

And later in the Trib's Sept. 17 story: "Word said bottles of liquor and drug paraphernalia, which are often a part of the shrines, will be thrown away. Many of the mourners have also begun spray-painting slogans of remembrance and gang graffiti around the shrines." And still later in the same story, the Trib quotes Fruitvale resident Svea O'Banion, a member of a group called Safety First, as saying that her neighborhood has been "held hostage by the shrines" adding that "the shrines have often become a focal point for drug dealing, littering and loitering."

But as far as I can see, the Tribune-Oakland's only daily newspaper-has not asked any tough questions on this issue or pointed out any inconsistencies in the statements of the people in favor of the chief's unilateral shrine ban. Have any of the Bay Area's other media outlets done any independent investigation? Not that I know of.

Are Oakland's street shrines actually a "magnet for violence," as the chief alleges? Can you "almost count on some sort of retaliatory violence" when they are set up? Do the shrines-all of them, most of them, or more than a few of them-contain drug paraphernalia and spray-painted gang signs? Do they "often" become the "focal point" for drug dealing and littering?

How did Oakland's shrines go so quickly from protests against violence to the actual causes of violence? Did that actually happen, or is that just somebody's spin? Were the street shrines made the target because it's easier to take down a stuffed bear and a pot of flowers than it is to break up a violent street gang? Did politics drive this decision? Have Oaklanders been played? Or has our desire for quick solutions to hard problems led to no solutions at all?

Questions. Questions. Questions. Clearly, my friends, there's more here to be talked about in order to get some answers.