An Oakland City Council discussion about Flock cameras was already pretty testy, but Councilmember Ken Houston flipped it off even more by giving the finger to an audience member while the meeting was in progress.

Tuesday’s Oakland City Council meeting was the site of a very spirited debate about police use of ​​automated license plate-reading cameras from the surveillance company Flock Safety. On one hand, we have seen these cameras lead to the arrests of genuine criminals who may not have otherwise been caught. But Flock cameras also have a troublesome trend of misidentified vehicles and false arrests, and even more alarmingly, that Flock camera data has been shown to have been shared with Trump’s FBI and ICE agencies, even when the vehicles identified were not associated with crimes.

After much debate, the Chronicle reports that the Oakland City Council approved a two-year, $2 million extension of the use of those Flock cameras. But that debate was not a particularly healthy debate, as KTVU reports that at one point during a very spirited public comment session, Councilmember Ken Houston gave the finger to an audience member, or maybe it was directed at several audience members.

Warning: The video below not only shows the middle-finger moment, but also features a public commenter commenting from the dais, “How the fuck does that make sense?”

This video was not shown on the main public feed of the Oakland City Council meeting, and was taken by a blogger known as the Oakland Observer. And the lewd gesture went largely unnoticed at the time, until a public commenter called it out during their allotted speaking time.  

“I just wanted to call out — I know the majority of council members aren’t really listening right now, because the majority of you have been bribed, not only by the Oakland Police Officers Association, but also by astroturf organizations like Empower Oakland, Abundance Network, and all of the Chamber of Commerce representatives,” commenter Ralph Brown said. “But want to give a big shout-out to Ken Houston. You think we didn’t notice you flipping off the audience from your seat just now?”

Cat Brooks, longtime activist and executive director of the Anti-Police Terror Project, tells KTVU that the reason for Houston's gesture was that, "During public comment, someone was pointing out the fact that only 20% of [his] district had voted, which meant only about 6,000 people had voted for him, and he apparently did not like that."

As KPIX notes, this was not Houston's only unprofessional outburst of the meeting. At one point he yelled at Council President Kevin Jenkins, "I wanted to finish because if they can come out deep, we can come out deep too, and I wanted to find out — Excuse me! Let me finish what I'm saying. Shut up."

Was this a forgivable one-off, or is Ken Houston just a massively unprofessional and immature elected official? KPIX interviewed Houston the day after the exchange, and the interview indicates that Houston is someone who perhaps has a lot of growing up to do. KPIX’s Katie Nielsen asked Houston if he gave the finger on purpose, and he not only clearly lies, but starts gesturing like some Tenderloin drug dealer trying to sell you Kratom.

"Not on purpose, but now that it's done? Yes, I did. Because I'm always like this [gestures as if he is holding two fingers on his face], and this dude was, and I was like, 'Is he filming me? OK. Whatever. Whatever!,'" Houston told KPIX. "The people that voted me in office voted me to be who I am, and that's what I'm going to be, and if they don't like it, recall me, because I don't give a rip."

Of the person/people to whom he was directing the middle finger, Houston said, "They're not my constituents. I don't care what they say. I don't give a rip what they say. I'm not a politician, and I'm not going to let people talk down to me or talk to me like I'm nothing, because if they can say F me. I'm going to say F you too.”

KPIX also unearths a video that Houson posted to his own Instagram page, where he is seen yelling at protesters, "We got people out here from Portland trying to tell us in East Oakland what to do. They better get out of my face, I tell you that. I'm just letting you know. You in the wrong place, fucking with me.”

To their credit, Houston’s City Council colleagues seem mortified with his increasingly machismo-fueled infantile behavior.  

"It's mirroring what's happening at the federal level, with the level of discourse, and I don't think we should engage in that way. I don't want to see Trump-style conversation tactics seep into Oakland," Councilmember Carroll Fife told KPIX. "It's unfortunate that this is the topic of discussion, and not how Oakland is growing.”  

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Image: @Oak_Observer via Twitter