Tweet
Wow. In these tough times, I can’t imagine what I’d think if I lived in a crime-ridden area and my elected officials opted for this decision. Oakland has the fifth highest crime rate in the nation. (Bloomberg News):
Oakland, California, the fifth-most crime ridden city in America, faced a $32 million budget deficit last year. It closed the gap by dismissing a fourth of its police force, more than 200 officers.
Untouched was the $17.3 million that the city pays to stage 10 games a season for the National Football League’s Oakland Raiders and to host Major League Baseball’s Athletics in the O.co Coliseum. The funds cover debt financing and operations and are supplemented by $13.3 million from surrounding Alameda County, based on data compiled by Bloomberg from public records.
Nearly every single NFL stadium was built with public money or benefits from public infrastructure built specifically nearby. This money, as many studies have shown, does not provide mucheconomic benefit to the surrounding community. It merely lines the pockets of the already wealthy owners of professional sports franchises.
Do you think the NRA would like those ethnically diverse Oakland residents to buy up firearms for protection? BTW, Oakland has the third-highest concentration of gays and lesbians among the 50 largest U.S. cities in America. Pink pistols, anyone?
24 Comments
Why should the city of Oakland waste money on public safety and providing employment for local workers when it can give much-needed funds to suffering gazillionaires? Come now, where are your priorities?
I see your Pink Pistol and raise to a Hello Kitty Assault Rifle.
Behind every cloud is a silver lining. Less cops = less police abuse.
SFGate
Millions of dollars to be saved!
Count me in. Pam is way off her rocker here. /s
Candidly. Why would the city, county or state want to give money to a business that is closed 355 days a year and only offers employment to a few hundred locals for 4-6 hours a day for only 10 days annually?
I say let’s pump taxpayers money into the poor, the helpless, exploited and underpaid topless dancers. Do I hear a second????
Perhaps Oakland is not a good example.
Sometimes all you can do is just shake your head in disbelief. You can’t fight ‘em all on every front. There’s just too many of the bastards.
We don;t have a problem with police abuse here in Houston.
Most of the time they are sleeping in their car under an overpass or working a second job on city time. See, every silver lining has a cloud.
Pink pistols comment, as is the number of gays and lesbians in Oakland are TOTALLY out of line.
What does the number of gays and lesbians in Oakland have to do with the gist of the story, which is laying off police officers while funding professional sports?
What a HORRIBLE piece.
news report: A Houston police officer shot and killed a schizophrenic, wheelchair-bound double amputee threatening people with a pen,
Let me say one thing, seriously, we had the local sports teams pay for half of the cost of their stadiums. Granted that still amounted to nearly $235 million for our football stadium for the Houston Texans and nearly $60 million for the soccer stadium for the Houston Dynamo.
That was a really BIG pen. And he was a really MEAN looking amputee.
Obviously this requires fewer police and the crime rates must be wrong. You know about statistics.
I guess if he’d been a quadruple amputee he might have been safe in Houston. But I don’t recommend the procedure. Easier to move to Dallas or San Antone.
WE, in Houston, have the second largest gay community behind San Francisco. I have several friends who are LGBT. All are pretty nice people.
Our pronblem, seriously, in Houton we have had lots of police/sheriffs officere shot and killed. I’m not defending this particular incident, it’s inexcusable. And for those interested, it DID happen like don said.
Yikes!
When I saw that stadium pic, the first “vision” I had was the ill fated trash incinerator in Harrisburg, PA. What a headline can do. . .
Misplaced priorities?
Oakland just had a gun buyback a couple of weeks ago. It was a huge success and quickly used the funds that had been allocated. Turns out that they were able to get the donor to double down from the original $50,000 when they realized the long lines meant their were plenty of people willing to take no-questions $200 per gun. $100,000 was donated to achieve this by the owner of one of Oakland’s four medical cannabis dispensaries- The Purple Heart. Just a little tidbit I thought I’d throw out there.
More thugs with badges = less crime? I dont think so, more thugs with badges just means more idiots with guns who can gun you down and get away with it. More cops = less crime is just an upper class liberal/right wing fantasy of folks that have never actually had to deal with these thugs. I bet Pam wats more “stop and frisk” as well.
With utmost respect, as an Oakland resident, I’d rather see that money wasted on the arena, and I do mean wasted, than spent to further the aims of the West Oakland Riders and their ilk. At least blowing it on football won’t get young black and brown men extra-judicially executed.
Pam,
Oakland Pink Pistols Facebook
Oakland Pink Pistols Website
Down, boy! Easy does it.
The author used the population stat as a stepping stone from an opportunity to hoist the NRA by its own petard, to a concluding line of humorous intent (re pink pistols). Pretty standard writing technique, no malice deployed.
“We don;t have a problem with police abuse here in Houston.”
I’m choking on my peanut butter, so donbacon @#10 got in the first shot. Having been saved form asphyxiation I’m too weak to improve on his post.
Sadly, this is far more the rule than the exception — one of George W. Bush’s few successes as a businessman was getting the taxpayer to build his baseball team a stadium.
And what adds insult to injury is this — how many of the residents of the communities subsidizing the zillionaires are ever able to go to a game?