The last time we checked in with Mayor Sheng Thao of Oakland, things were not going very well. In mid-June a recall election was approved and then the very next day her home was raided by the FBI. 

For several days, the mayor seemed to be MIA. Then she gave a defiant press conference during which she said she'd done nothing wrong. She even suggested the timing of the raid, a day after the recall was approved, was suspicious.

Apparently her lawyer and her spokesman weren't on board with those comments because they both quit. It felt at the time as if Thao might give in to the pressure and resign but she held on. Not much has happened over the past month except that there have been some indications that her partner, Andre Jones, is also part of the FBI investigation.

After a month of relative quiet, today the Oakland Police Union weighed in, demanding that Thao resign immediately or else.

“I respectfully ask that the mayor resign immediately,” Oakland Police Officers Association President Huy Nguyen said. If Thao doesn’t step down, he said OPOA would support the recall campaign which has placed a measure on the November ballot that will let voters decide whether to keep or remove Thao...

Thao told The Oaklandside she is “absolutely not” going to resign and called the OPOA’s press conference a distraction from recent positive developments in the city, including the announcement of sales terms with a private developer to purchase Oakland’s stake in the Coliseum for $105 million.

“This is playing politics again,” Thao said. 

I'm not sure what prompted the union to take this stance today as opposed to, say, last week. But it's clear that the police are under a lot of pressure because the crime situation in Oakland has been awful. Crime is trending down this year compared to last year, but just last weekend there were 9 people shot including one tragic case involving a father of two who was hit by a stray bullet.

A fundraiser for Run Hua Kuang said he was taking a nap Thursday afternoon after finishing his shift as a delivery truck driver. While he was sleeping, a bullet penetrated the headboard, going through his head and coming out of his left eye in his East Oakland home.

Now, Kuang is on life support in the ICU after undergoing a seven-hour surgery.

He was the sole breadwinner for his family; his wife of seven years, 7-year-old daughter, and 3-month-old daughter, the fundraiser said.

When you have stories like this in the news, it's no surprise that people don't feel safe regardless of what the crime stats show. 

And because the city is also facing a $200 million deficit over the next two years, the police union believes more cuts are likely coming. They are already moving toward fewer than 700 officers which is not a lot for a city of 430,000 people. So, again, I'm not sure why this happened today, but clearly the police aren't happy with the city's leadership or the position they find themselves in.

Mayor Thao can brush that off as "playing politics" but I'd bet a lot of the citizens of Oakland agree with the police union about not wanting to see more cuts to public safety right now. But to be fair, the budget isn't the only problem here. 

OPD hasn’t been able to fill its academies, which is the only way the department can hire new recruits. And lots of police academies graduate only a few officers. Meanwhile, officers are constantly retiring or leaving OPD for other reasons.

I can't prove it but I'd be willing to be real money that this hiring problem goes back to the summer of 2020 when the BLM riots and the response to them by many local officials made it clear to rank and file police officers that they were neither respected nor appreciated. Many cities that jumped on the defund the police bandwagon at the time (Portland comes to mind) have had problems recruiting officers ever since. Let's face it, if you were thinking about becoming a police officer, would Oakland be your first choice? It sure wouldn't be mine.

Here's the full letter in which union president Nguyen spelled out his reasons for asking Thao to resign. It's several pages but the gist is that things are bad and there doesn't seem to be a plan for them to improve. It concludes: "Every day you are in office, Oakland is less safe. Your administration has turned Oakland into an international embarrassment. When, as the East Bay Insider reported this week, 73% of Oaklanders believe Oakland is on the wrong track, it's time to pack your bag and leave city hall."

Oakland Police Officers Association have called on Sheng to resign.

It is hard to read when they describe the reality of what residents are faced with in Oakland and yet there were missed opportunities to make it better.

"Every day you are in office, Oakland is less safe." pic.twitter.com/jHIf08zLQO

— Trishala Vinnakota (@trishala) August 6, 2024