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To a person of privilege who’s used to being ensconced in a protective bubble, it would.
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“Look thru my eyes,
see what I see
Do as I do, be what I be
Walk in my shoes, hurt your feet …”
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Considering the location this happened in and the involved people it is inherently tied to race. Even if this woman was just being an asshole just because, the police involvement and how the people grilling were treated, and the bias law enforcement has against people of color there’s just no way to say that this was not a racial issue. The second she got the police involved things got escalated to a predictable place, and the outcome supports it.
Had the cops been polite and understanding perhaps the pushback would be different but here we are, and with good reason.
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Maybe. But the woman was literally right, they were breaking the law. A very stupid and inconsequential law, but still. And I need to go in for a tuneup on my “protective bubble” because it has no effect on assholes like this woman who call the police on me for petty crap all the time.
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Oh, sure there is; enablers and apologists have utilized denial as a tool to keep the status quo in tact, since time out of mind.
And I’m sure the woman in question totally went around the entire lake (3 miles in circumference) policing everyone who wasn’t grilling in exactly the correct location, no matter what color their skin happened to be.
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The onus is on you, making this statement that they were breaking a law. There is a big difference between city ordinance and park rules. Is a park rule an arrestable offense? Is it a fine-able offense? What is the mechanism for redress? Are the police the correct authority to handle such issues? Or is it the parks services? In Oakland, specifically? In that neighborhood. What does CA statute say about local regs enforcement for small matters? Seriously, the onus is on you to prove they were breaking any actual laws by grilling in the gas area. You and every other rulemonger. Prove it, dammit. And if you can’t, then eat them. Tall claims need to be backed by big facts. Otherwise, stuff it.
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A commenter above cited the law in question, chapter and verse. There’s no charcoal bbqing in that area. Which I think is stupid. But still, that’s the law she’s complaining about.
And I definitely ain’t no “rule monger”, for the record. I’d be the one getting the police called on me for violating some stupid rule.
Oh, I saw it. So, I take it you are a lawyer and you know that what’s written on that flyer are actually laws? And you know the difference between park rules vs. city ordinance. And you know about how enforcement is divided and carried out in Oakland? I’m still calling BS on your statement that these are laws. They may be ticketable infractions. Maybe. Maybe, by some umbrella parks rule, like if you break any of these rules, you are subject to a $100 fine or something like that. And even in that case, I am still calling into question 1. the enforceability and 2. that it is the police who are solely responsible for carrying out the enforcement.
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It’s why I stopped going to my family reunions!
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There are some interesting questions here that i was trying to research the answers to but i am a by frustrated by my lack of proper google-fu. For city parks, and perhaps more specifically in Oakland, how are these rules enforceable? Are they ordinances or laws? What is the “punishment” for violating them?
I was trying to find direct answers to these to provide some background for the conversation but the best i could do was this page for Oakland but it’s not very specific, my hunch is this might require reaching out directly to the city or Parks & Rec
http://www2.oaklandnet.com/government/o/opr/s/Parks/index.htm
Personally I hope people just keep up the BBQ protests and either get this stupid rule changed, or at a minimum drive this woman crazy.
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I hope so, too. All I was doing was calling into question this idea of what the laws are, what the rules are.
I believe we mustn’t be so steadfast in our insistence that we know the laws and can invoke them on others. There is so much room for doubt and further exploration.
The kinds of racist assholes who call the cops on non-whites love to play hide and seek behind the regulations. They always have. Rulemongers concern troll the object of their hatred.
Remember the whole sit at the back of the bus/drink out of the negroes water fountain/swim in the negro pool? Rulemongering people to death. Those were bullshit laws designed to harass groups of people with no means to fight back. But we are concerned about safety. We are concerned about riots. We are concerned about germs and cleanliness. We are concerned that mixing races could cause problems for everyone.
Well, bullshit.
While I understand the grilling issues with coals being dumped into the lake, smoke disturbing other park users, etc etc., why wasn’t an ordinance saying grilling area X… to …X. Dump coals in the lake and face a $500 fine good enough? Why segregate gas from coals, and how in the fuck are you ever going to enforce that? It’s like Jim Crow of Park Use. Come on. If a piece of meat falls through my gas grill and ignites, am I now grilling with coals? If I like to place a couple sticks of mesquite on my gas grill, what is that? Is that now a coals grill or still a gas grill or an arrestable offense? Where does the law end and common sense begin?
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Apparently people regularly bring charcoal grills to that very spot, yet she decided that these guys were the ones that she needed to call the cops on. Funny that.
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hmmm. Maybe it has something to do with gas grills costing 60 dollars and up and not being realistic portable by a person on foot. An 8 pound bag of charcoal on the other hand starts around 6 dollars and can easily be packed in a back pack or carried. It sounds like a back handed ban on the poor or homeless.
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Yep, coming at this from the same angle.
In New York City, there are rules about this sort of thing, but actually ticketing any violations would be a matter left to the Parks Enforcement Patrol, which is part of the NYC Parks bureaucracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Parks_Enforcement_Patrol PEP officers have power of arrest and generally carry handcuffs and batons, but do not carry guns.
If you called someone in the NYPD command structure about inappropriate barbecueing, they’d tell you to blow it out your ear, scuzzbag.
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I live nearby, and though there’s plenty of flouting of the rules, there’s also plenty of people calling the police about every. little. thing. It’s beyond tedious.
And @rusty, it’s because charcoal is a lot stinkier than gas to cook with, as well as being harder to dispose of when you’re done. (Not that I’m in favor of the rule, but that’s the logic)
