Meet the "Defund the Police" Activist Who Runs a Violent Security Service
Carroll Fife is a controversial local politician—married to a radical activist with several less-than-reputable businesses and nonprofits.
The national culture war taints local news. This article concerns a radical activist and his “defund the police” politician wife. Your reaction could be suspicion: you might think Defund the police is a strawman by right-wing politicians! or Nobody sincerely wants to defund or eliminate the police.
Please allow the broader conversation about race and policing and elections and fascism and whatever other tripe to simmer on the back burner. Here in the Bay Area, as Lee Fang previously reported, there is a concerted effort by pseudo-radicals—backed by billionaires—to seriously defund and abolish the police. These efforts aren’t just rhetoric: in the wake of a landmark event in 2020, a cadre of crazies well-educated and diverse organizers took power across the Bay and enacted controversial public safety policies.
Welcome to Oakland, SF’s neighbor:
Oakland politicians tend to be even more extreme than their SF counterparts. A well-funded activist network sprung up in the East Bay to recruit foot soldiers for the politicians. Many of these organizations outright declare their purpose is to defund or abolish the police. They also grift, create lame pamphlets, and, as we’ll soon learn, do private security. I digress: just remember that billionaires waste hoards of cash so that upper-middle-class children grassroots activists can annoy normal Oaklanders.
The stage has been set: in fair Oakland is where we lay our scene. Brace yourself for tonight’s titillating romance.
Carroll Fife, the heroine of this tragedy, sits on Oakland’s city council. She is an anti-racist who fights for equal rights for all: including white people, black people, and, in her words, “yellow” people. She wants to “re-engineer community safety” and has a contentious record on law enforcement policy. In her words, she “advocated for cost-saving opportunities for civilian employees to take over certain functions performed by sworn police officers.” The inflation-adjusted OPD budget has decreased (see Table 3) since she assumed office, she “spearheaded the push to defund the Oakland Police Department” at budget meetings, and the Anti-Police Terror Project, a group with a campaign to defund the OPD, has publicly endorsed her candidacy. Fife has failed to buck the trend of increasing violence in Oakland during her tenure.
Her opinions on housing also gained her infamy across the political spectrum. California is currently gripped by massive housing shortages caused by oppressive zoning regulations. Major cities in the state look like suburban sprawl, and Oakland and San Francisco are no exceptions. SB 50 was a failed state bill that stopped local governments from implementing housing restrictions. Fife, despite running a nonprofit called Moms 4 Housing, opposed the bill. During her tenure on the city council, she has also struck down construction proposals for mixed-income high rises.
Enough of Fife and her platform. Her husband marches center stage: meet Earl Harper, aka Tur-Ha Ak.
His main hustle is the Community Ready Corps (CRC). I’m not sure what this organization does, and Harper isn’t sure either. Watching him discuss the purpose of his nonprofit is like watching David Miscavige discuss the tenets of Scientology:
Our Prime Objective is to build and/or contribute to self-determination in disenfranchised communities. We believe that, in order to be truly self-determined, a community needs to be able to express power wherever power is being expressed.
A “self-determination” organization sounds like a pitch for a pyramid scheme, to me. The second sentence contains a beautiful third clause which features seven words longer than five letters and still expresses nothing of substance—a tautology of buzzwords.
The CRC appears to be a black power club that does… stuff. They clean up garbage and hand out produce occasionally, and I think that’s nice. You might be concerned that Harper’s club is a scam, but fret not; the Akonadi Foundation—real-estate mogul Wayne Jordan’s multi-million-dollar 501.c.3 created to transform Oakland into Mogadishu—bankrolls this cult (probably including the dump truck).
Harper’s other vocation is private security. He has operated multiple private security businesses over his career. Consider, for example, Urban Shield (archive):
Envision a security solution that functions like to a [sic] group of watchful protectors, both virtually and in person, committed to ensuring the safety of you and your belongings.
Harper has a habit of not establishing clear mission objectives for his organizations. He might offer cybersecurity support with this company, but how he does so is a mystery. The website has broken links. The Facebook advertisements look like Harper prompted Google Gemini to generate images of computer hackers. Two facts: 1. Harper still keeps the Facebook page active and 2. importantly, he advertises the firm as a “Security Guard Service.”
This is just one of Harper’s security ventures. He also ran another called A.R.M.E.D Security Services LLC. This other company has multiple Facebook pages with different names, one of which is still active. The website for this group is defunct. Harper continues to struggle with the fundamentals of business because he refuses to explain what services he provides. He posts combat tutorials, so I assume he considers himself to be a martial arts trainer. He says “A.R.M.E.D is a self defense system that combines the best of martial arts and real world combatives.” But his explanation adds another layer of confusion because he filmed his Enter the Dragon bloopers in another sensei’s dojo. What qualifications does he have? Who knows? Either way, A.R.M.E.D Security Services LLC sounds like another possible private security company.
That’s not all! Community Ready Corps—the black power cult I discussed earlier—is yet another security company of Harper’s. Harper’s first pillar of self-determination is “Self Defense and Community Safety” which, in his words (archive), means “CRC [Community Ready Corps] focuses on providing community-based solutions for community safety.” Right underneath that description, he posted several photos of himself doing private security for celebrities, including Cornel West.
Furthermore, the chancellor of Peralta Community College almost gave the Community Ready Corps $2 million in 2020 to “perform the community-based security services through December 31, 2021 for the Laney Campus.” I think it's reasonable to assume, then, that the CRC is another security company of Harper’s.
Additionally, Harper has also been filmed at rallies doing—surprise—what appears to be private security. Take a look at this, filmed during a rally for a campaign to recall the mayor, on Yahoo News:
There are two main characters in the video. The first is the man with dreads wearing the North Face jacket: Seneca Scott, an activist known for his disagreements with Carroll Fife and defund ideology. The second can easily be seen because he wore black gloves, and he raised his arms and pointed down. He also had a hoodie: this one black and gray (not the one with “KANO”). Guess who?—it’s Harper! Guess what he was up to?—according to the footage and eyewitnesses, private security!
So Harper, obviously, is a security guard. However, he’s exactly the last person you’d want to be a security guard.
First, Harper doesn’t have a security license. Public information available from the Department of Consumer Affairs shows Earl Harper hasn’t had a personal security guard license since 2016, and Urban Shield hasn’t had a license since 2009. Community Ready Corps never had a license, which is concerning because they’ve been paid millions of dollars to do private security. Earl Harper also lacks both an updated baton and firearm permit.
According to excellent reporting by David Row for The Citizen, employees at Urban Shield had a history of committing BSIS (Bureau of Security and Investigative Services) violations.
The first incident took place on December 21, 2007. Jacob Rooney said he “accidentally” broke a bottle in an unidentified club. While attempting to deposit the broken bottle in the trash, Rooney claimed that an Urban Shield Security Services security guard “tasered him in the stomach while other security guards threw him on to the ground and handcuffed him,” according to the BSIS citation. Urban Shield Security Services was fined $525 for this violation.
[During another fishy encounter at a sushi restaurant,] Two of the detained individuals were employees of Urban Shield Security Services. One was “suspected of firing a single gunshot” during the disturbance while the other “cover(ed) the doors and restrooms.” The BSIS investigation determined that “there was no record of a security guard registration or firearms permit issued” to either employee… A much higher fine of $5,000 was levied for this violation…
A security guard interviewed for the Citizen article claimed the incidents were “severe,” and it’s no wonder that the Urban Shield license was canceled less than a year after the second. Apparently, Urban Shield has continued to operate for a decade without a license.
Earl Harper himself has a criminal record. He got booked for a firearm charge in 1997 and was sentenced to two years probation. Then, he was recently arrested last year for battery. The court document of the situation I obtained from the local courthouse is worth a read (I redacted the victim’s name for privacy reasons):
On 14FEB2023, at about 0940 hours, HARPER, Earl and his wife CARROLL, Fife were involved in an argument with the victim, [VICTIM] over the victim accusing them of not helping homeless people. During the argument HARPER pushed, choked, and punched the victim. HARPER and the victim [VICTIM] briefly separated before beginning to argue again. OPD officers with activated BWCs then observed HARPER grab [VICTIM] by the neck and HARPER then struck [VICTIM] in the face with a[n] open left fist one to two times.
The latter case is still ongoing.
Furthermore, given these circumstances, it's unclear whether Harper could even obtain his licenses at all. Guard card trainers claim “Crimes of violence and felonies automatically disqualify you from applying to be a security guard in the State of California.” Although he never committed a felony, he has multiple violent misdemeanors on his record. He kept his personal licenses after his company scandals and the firearm charge.
To summarize, Earl Harper is a defund-the-police activist married to a politician with a history of controversies. He owns and operates more than a dozen businesses under different names and addresses. His primary vocation is illegally (allegedly) running a security firm: featuring expired licenses and employees who use tasers and excessive force. Despite these red flags, he persuades billionaires, small business owners, and local governments to pay him.
But this isn’t the climax of our romance. Carroll Fife is a local politician—obligated by Oakland to disclose any of her spouse’s transactions that might be a conflict of interest. Almost none of her hubby’s operations appear on any paperwork. There is barely any mention of Harper’s activities on Fife’s California form 700—the form required in Oakland—even though the state considers businesses owned by spouses to be reportable investments.
To be continued…
I emailed Fife for a comment months ago and got no response. Carroll and Earl: please email me your response to my work.
Background: I wrote this story months ago and tried publishing it with a few outlets with no success. I think editors thought my style was too polarizing—I enjoy Gonzo too much—and they thought the focus of the article was too local.
I have decided to publish my work anyway for two reasons:
I think it has journalistic value. Oaklanders have a right to know that their elected leaders run underground security militias. Oaklanders have a right to know that their elected leaders, despite pretending to be advocates for the working class, get funding from billionaires. Oaklanders have a right to know about the elected leaders who punch them—literally, punch them.
Another outlet is rumored to be publishing a story about Fife—finally, finally, finally—and I think they could use my scoop.
I want to thank a journalist—I promise he’s one of the good ones—who helped me out behind the scenes. He knows who he is. He’s Mr. Miyagi and I’m the Karate Kid. I’m sorry the publication didn’t work out, but maybe we could collaborate again someday.
I plan on drafting a piece about Fife’s network of nonprofits soon. I won’t make any promises about deadlines because I always break them.
Good coverage connecting the CM to an armed hired hand and private militia for hire by the city. I wish we’d get to the end game of billionaires backing local activists who want no rule of law. Own everything…
Perhaps covering who the billionaires are, too? They need to be massively publicly shamed. It's the money from the top that drives the depravation in Oakland and beyond. Good article, Mr. Mueller.