Feb 16, 2017 - East Bay Times
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/02/16/editorial-ghost-ship-fire-killed-36-but-its-not-their-department/
Thirty-six people died in Oakland’s infamous Ghost Ship fire. Police had seen and had been told almost two years earlier that people were living there illegally. Yet they did nothing.
Why? Because it’s not their department.
It would be merely a bureaucratic cliché if the outcome hadn’t been so tragic. Amazingly, Mayor Libby Schaaf endorses this shameful denial of responsibility. It’s political pandering at its worst.
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf speaks at a press conference regarding the deadly Ghost Ship warehouse fire at the Emergency Operations Center on Wednesday, Dec. 7,2016, in
“Our police officers are trained to identify criminal activity, they are not trained in code enforcement,” Schaaf told our reporters. Well, Madame Mayor, maybe it’s time to train them, like other cities do and Oakland has in the past.
We’re not talking about the intricacies of wiring for 240-volt outlets or the required dimensions of a landing outside a doorway. We’re talking about recognizing obvious hazards and showing enough initiative to alert experts in other city departments.
Newly released records, turned over only after this newspaper’s threat of litigation, reveal that police had visited the building and associated properties 35 times between mid-2014 and the Dec. 2 fire.
http://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/02/16/editorial-ghost-ship-fire-killed-36-but-its-not-their-department/
