Defund lawmakers will spike attention.  It was a sunny day in the East Bay and there had already been multiple armed carjackings, two armed robberies, a handful of armed assaults and a fatal hit-and-run, and it was just after noon. For West Oakland, California, resident Seneca Scott, it was just another Wednesday morning. 

     "So the reason that Oakland is not safe and livable is because of the failed policies of our neo-progressives who have come to dominate our local government," Scott, founder of the nonprofit Neighbors Together Oakland, told Fox News. "The defund movement was a dismal failure."  "No one feels safe to go outside, businesses are failing, and we created a dangerous doom loop," the safe neighborhood advocate continued. "The luxury politics of our elite who don't live with the consequences of their policy is absolutely destroying our city."

     There were nearly 500 homicides in Oakland from 2018 to 2022, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, making the town the most dangerous city in the Bay Area. From July 6 to 12, Oakland police reported 251 larceny cases, 146 motor vehicle thefts, 43 robberies, 94 assaults and 50 burglaries, according to city data. 
     
      "It's been a long-standing issue that Oakland doesn't have enough 911 dispatchers and there's a lot of turnover and attrition in that position," Scott said. "We don't have enough dispatchers and people are waiting upwards of 20 minutes to get someone on the phone."  The Oakland 911 dispatch system has failed twice.

     The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services’ standards mandate 90% of 911 calls should be answered in 15 seconds or less. Oakland police, in the first three months of 2023, answered only 55% of calls in 15 seconds or less.   Oakland police's 911 average answer time during June was the worst in the state, taking callers over a minute to reach emergency dispatchers, an NBC Bay Area investigation found. "The 20-year-old system is waiting to fail catastrophically," a recent Alameda County Grand Jury report found regarding Oakland's 911 system.