Becoming Calcutta: Oakland’s homeless crime crisis compels the city to remove traffic lights from busy intersections

Is this story out of Oakland, California a tragic tale of unintended consequences, or a tale of political promises made, political promises kept?

Here are the details, from a Fox News report published yesterday:

A California city removed the traffic lights from a four-way intersection as the city grapples with thefts attributed to a massive homeless encampment nearby.

Oakland has been experiencing high crime and theft, including people stealing copper wires and the city's infrastructure, according to locals who spoke to CBS News. The city attempted to thwart criminals tampering with its electrical boxes by placing cement barriers over them – to no avail. Now, the city has taken to removing the traffic lights at a busy intersection and replacing them with stop signs.

I mean, working traffic lights at busy intersections is basically the bare minimum for a state government that has the highest tax rates in the nation, but apparently that’s too much to ask—and, the copper wire thefts have hit the electric vehicle charging stations across California too. Of the traffic light removal, a local business owner said it was like the city “is giving up” on its people.

Now, Oakland is in Alameda county, which is under the jurisdiction of Soros DA Pamela Price—an organization called Voting While Black said this of its endorsement of her:

Pamela Price is a civil rights attorney who supports ending money bail, expanding alternatives to incarceration, and protecting immigrants from the Trump administration’s racist immigration policies.

Yet, Price is facing a recall vote this November for her “disastrous” policies; from a report at the New York Post a little over a week ago:

Two woke prosecutors who gained office with the help of lefty megadonor George Soros could soon be ousted in recall efforts led by locals furious about their disastrous, soft-on-crime philosophies.

‘I’ve stood in the courtroom with families where the killer of their child walked out the door the same time they walked out the door — no probation, no ankle monitor, no nothing,’ Brenda Grisham, who organized the Price recall effort, told The Post.

What a gem releasing child-killers back onto the street because she’s just that much of an pro-crime Marxist.

This is why Oakland, and any other Democrat stronghold, can’t have nice things. Funny enough, California Democrats—Maxine Waters, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Nancy Pelosi are the first that come to mind—are typically some of the first to lecture conservative voters on how to vote.

A city so consumed by homelessness that it can’t even adequately function? Sounds like a Democrat problem to me, which is why I’d argue that this is actually a stellar example of promises made, promises kept, because the Democrat voters are getting exactly what the Democrat politicians and officials promised them: high crime, lawlessness, and societal dysfunction. Sure, the people running for office and government positions didn’t word it quite like that, but they did run on platforms of “equitable” justice, cashless bail, and no-borders “sanctuary” attitudes.

Can we all agree, it’s time to stop voting Democrat?

Free image, Pixabay license

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.

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