Thread by @APTPaction

Comment from @RobeloDaniel, APTP member at City Council meeting today: "I’m calling to support Council President Bas’s budget and to reject the Taylor amendment to fund an unprecedented 5th cop academy with our covid relief money."

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"That’s money for Oaklanders struggling to survive the pandemic, feed their families & stay in their homes.
It’s appalling we’re even considering it & emblematic of everything that’s wrong in this town, which has become a dystopian police state w/growing shantytowns...

... crumbling infrastructure & rising violence. The Council President & her budget team have given us a chance to try something new & start to reimagine safety by funding violence prevention, jobs, housing, MACRO 24/7 crisis response,& more of what actually keeps us safe.

"It was disgusting to see OPD & OPA exploit tragedies like what happened on Juneteenth & LIE about city council members & the Defund Movement—even though nothing has been defunded & the chief himself admitted that no amount of police could prevent what went down on Juneteenth."

It’s so typical of the Oakland police. They lie all the time, through their teeth. And i think we forget that sometimes:

- They used the same lie in February about violence in Chinatown
- They lied about teargassing our youth last summer at the protests

- They lied about Josh Pawlik pointing a gun when they murdered him in his sleep
- They lied about the department-wide rape scandal 5 years ago.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. These are epic, brazen, spectacular lies — so why should we believe a word they say?

They’re lying when they say they need more cops to respond to violence when only 4% of OPD calls are for violent crime. Responding to violence is not even what they do.

The people of Oakland know better.

... The copaganda discourse we’re hearing today reminds me of the darkest days of the drug war, and we’ve had enough. The People of Oakland know better and we’re ready for something new."