California Governor Gavin Newsom’s letter to Oakland city leaders last month urging them to change the city’s policy on police vehicle chases seemed out of the ordinary: a governor weighing in forcefully on a somewhat-obscure element of local policing, the Associated Press reports. But it is part of a larger, slowly unfolding effort to exert state influence on law enforcement in Oakland and other California cities as crime concerns rise during an election year. In the past six months, Newsom has deployed California Highway Patrol officers to Oakland, then quadrupled their shifts; sent National Guard prosecutors to help the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office with drug cases, then chastised District Attorney Pamela Price for not accepting the assistance quickly enough. The state intervention — which includes extra deployments of California Highway Patrol officers, National Guard lawyers, or both in Oakland, San Francisco, Bakersfield and Riverside — plays well with some worried residents and business owners. And it may help fend off right-wing critiques of California as a liberal dystopia. But it has drawn criticism from police accountability groups and privacy experts concerned about the effect on residents, especially communities of color.
As California’s political pendulum swings back toward tough-on-crime policies, the governor has tasked highway patrol officers with cracking down on auto, retail and cargo theft in Bakersfield, and fentanyl dealing in San Francisco. Oakland, however, has drawn the bulk of the state attention. The city’s scandal-plagued police department already has operated under the oversight of a federal monitor for the past two decades. Violent crime rose by more than 20% in 2023, before dropping again in the first half of 2024, according to data from the police department and the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Gentrification has brought new waves of residents with different expectations about safety and policing. Newsom has called the California Highway Patrol “the Swiss Army knife of law enforcement in the state,” and said the agency’s job in Oakland is “not to substitute, but to support” the work of city officials. He’s said the surge is temporary and will last into November. Since the highway patrol began surge operations in Oakland in February, the agency — tasked with helping patrol the city’s crime and traffic accident hotspots — said it has made 747 arrests, recovered more than 1,500 stolen vehicles and seized 74 guns as of Friday. Some police watchdogs expressed skepticism about those numbers; CalMatters requested documentation of the arrests and seizures but did not receive it by press time.
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