Oakland's Mayor Promotes a Lock-Picking Class

Entrepreneurialism, Oakland-style

One skill that appears all too common in Oakland these days is the ability to pick a lock. Burglaries jumped more than 40 percent last year, and not all of them involved window smashes.

So it came as quite a surprise to residents that Mayor Jean Quan's most recent newsletter included a plug for a class on how to pick locks.

The class is geared toward people who misplace their keys, but that didn't keep Quan's write-up about it from going over about as well with readers as a ransacked living room.

Quan was panned by members of an Upper Dimond neighborhood chat group.

"This is awful," one person wrote. "How could she possible do that in this climate? What's next? The fundamentals of armed robbery?"

Comments

[darius404]

I bet many of the same people who are upset over this would have the exact opposite reaction to a class on guns. Lockpicking has legitimate uses for people locked out of their houses and cars, just as guns have legitimate uses for self-defense and hunting. But people don't claim that target practice is tantamount to training armed robbers. What fools.