Another disturbing headline about the shooting in Oakland comes from the ABC7 I-Team, law enforcement sources tell us school officials have sent text messages to shooting victims, instructing them not to cooperate with police.

We’re hearing it’s a pattern, and some parents at the school are worried that a lack of action by school officials after previous incidents may have led to this escalation in violence.

Law enforcement sources tell the I-Team, Oakland police investigators have obtained text messages from the shooting victims’ phones in which Rudsdale school officials tell them not to cooperate with police.

…

The I-Team’s law enforcement sources tell us this is part of a disturbing pattern by officials at that school – a lack of cooperation with police, especially after one troubling incident just weeks ago.

“A kid was stabbed. He was bleeding. He was pistol-whipped. A gun was discovered at school. And yet the school district did nothing about it,” said BayTech parent Mario Juarez.

Now, I get that there’s some distrust of police in Oakland. After all, this was one of the cities that defunded their police department in the wake of the whole George Floyd thing. I get that they don’t like the police there.

However, when six people are shot, you kind of need to put that animosity aside.

Oh, it would be one thing if the school somehow had a way to make sure justice was served, but they don’t. This isn’t some revenge film where the teacher who cares about his students but was actually a Navy SEAL before he became an educator goes on a tirade through Oakland’s gang community.

I’d watch the hell out of that movie, now that I think about it, but it’s not remotely real life.

So what the schools are basically doing is telling the victims of the shooting to just suck it up and not help the police catch the person who shot them; that they shouldn’t hope for justice to be served.

That’s a huge problem.

For one thing, it’s not the school’s place to tell victims any such thing. Even if officials don’t trust the police, it seems to me that the very least they should do is remain neutral. If officials don’t want to cooperate with law enforcement, that’s their decision.

Yet here those officials are telling victims what to do.

Let’s remember that two of the victims are students, the rest are staff. In other words, every soul there is in a position to have to be concerned about whether or not they’ll receive retribution if they dismiss the text messages sent to them. Whoever sent those texts is someone in authority over a good chunk of their lives.

Students, of course, ignore administrators all the time, but staff may feel as if they don’t have a choice. If they cooperate with the police, they could face repercussions at work, including potentially losing their jobs.

No, it won’t be because they cooperate with police. It’s never that straightforward.

Instead, it’ll be nitpicky stuff or outright fabrications.

Or, conversely, those officials will make work such a living hell that the staff members eventually quit.

Either way, it’ll be the result of cooperating with police.

That’s apparently life in Oakland, folks. Get shot while on school property and not only did the school do nothing to prevent it–they’d previously kicked uniformed officers off school campuses–but also be told not to cooperate with the police to help catch the turdnugget who shot you.