Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf speaks at a news conference. | Jeff Chiu/AP Photo
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf on Thursday called for more investment in addressing what she said are the root causes of violent crime that has spiked in big cities across the nation.
But Schaaf stopped short of echoing calls from activists to defund the police, arguing that the push “went too far and got convoluted.”
“It’s been particularly heart wrenching in Oakland because we had just made national headlines for cutting gun violence in half and sustaining those lower rates for five years,” Schaaf said in an interview with TheTeCHyWorLD for The Fifty: America’s Mayors summit. Schaaf added that “when we saw this surge come up during the pandemic, and let’s also be honest, after George Floyd, after this country just saw its faith in government justice compromised, we were just heartbroken.”
2021 was one of the deadliest years in Oakland in the past decade. Nationwide, the murder rate rose by 30 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, the biggest increase in the last century. Schaaf said Thursday that investments in housing, public health and behavioral health would drive down crime rates. And while she distanced herself from calls to defund the police, a movement to divest police funding into other crime prevention services that gained national momentum after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020, she said conversations about reforming the criminal justice system are important.