Oakland Residents Upset Over New Traffic Light System: City Abandoning Us

This is how they want to “stop” crime?

Thefts targeting traffic lights have been on the rise in the Northern California city, primarily due to thieves coveting the copper contained within them.

Oakland’s answer to the problem at one intersection? No more traffic lights.

KPIX-TV, CBS News Bay Area, reported Saturday that Oakland recently removed traffic lights from an intersection, replacing them with four-way stop signs. The signs now hang where the traffic lights used to be, instead of at ground level, as they traditionally do.

The city did state that the stop signs are temporary, but provided no timeline on when traffic lights would be back up, KPIX reported.

Copper theft has been on the rise in recent years, causing the price of the metal to increase about 30 percent, according to the technology website Wired.

The rising prices, coupled with copper’s myriad electrical and mechanical uses, and the relatively low risk associated with its theft, make stealing the metal an attractive crime.

The idea behind the city’s strategy is that, if there’s no copper, there will be no theft. But residents think that this is a sign of the city waving the white flag to criminals.

“It’s just telling us that the city is giving up on us,” Tam Le, owner of Le’s Auto Body & Engine Repair, which is located at the corner of the intersection, told KPIX.

Despite the billions that Newsom claims are generated from tourism, there isn’t enough money to install traffic lights in Oakland.

Instead, they are being replaced with stop signs due to homeless encampments stealing from the city’s electrical boxes. pic.twitter.com/DYGonQXRfk

— 🇺🇸 InterStar Media 🇺🇸 (@InterStarMedia) May 20, 2024

Le also told the station that a homeless encampment near the intersection is contributing to local crime.

“If you really want to fix [the intersection], I think you really have to clean up this homeless encampment,” Le said.

Le remarked that he “will be gone” if the encampment moves onto the sidewalk in front of his business. Le has operated his store at the intersection for over 25 years.

Le and others who live in the area also told KPIX that the traffic lights were often broken, so there’s a silver lining at least that the stop signs will operate more consistently.

“We gotta stop just putting Band-Aids on things. Although, a Band-Aid is better than bleeding out,” local resident Mason Young told KPIX

Young is exactly right. Oakland needs to come up with real, long-term solutions if it wants to get its crime problem under control.

And it’s a crime problem that continues to get worse. According to year-end data released in December by the Oakland Police Department, violent crime went up by 22 percent in 2023 from 2022. Robbery also saw a jump, increasing 37 percent year-over-year.

And while the precise cause of these surges cannot be determined, President Joe Biden’s poor economy, police staffing issues, along with lax prosecutions by the notorious Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, surely contributed.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom even deployed 120 California Highway Patrol officers to Oakland in February to aid the city’s efforts to combat rampant crime, CNN reported.

To be fair, there’s only so much that the city of Oakland can do. It can’t magically fix the disaster of Bidenomics, for instance.

There are a few things, however, that can be done to take back the city from criminals.

Instead of trying to, as Young said, put a Band-Aid on the problem, the city needs to fully prosecute criminals. Wouldn’t putting criminals behind bars be more of a deterrent to crime than installing a stop sign?

Isn’t the latter indicating that the criminals hold all the power?

If criminals commit a crime, the justice system should prosecute them. The best way to deter crime is to demonstrate that there’s a consequence to committing one.

Yet, in order to be stricter on crime, Oakland needs to provide its police department with the necessary resources to do so. If funding is the issue, then funding should be increased. If manpower is the problem, Oakland should incentivize individuals to pursue a career in law enforcement, be it through pay, benefits, educational or child-care assistance, or whatever else will help those who serve.

(Having a different DA who cares about enforcing the law, as well as about law enforcement, would go a long way, too.)

It won’t be an overnight process. And given how much crime has gone up in Oakland, it could take a while.

Yet, if the city can stand up to criminals and support its police, Oakland will take a step toward becoming a great city once again.