The Wood Street homeless encampment closed last week, forcing many who lived there into city-run shelters. But more permanent housing solutions are a long way off, including the development planned for the 3-acre lot where the encampment has sat for years. Thursday marked the end of the month-long sweep of the encampment near 18th Street, one of the city’s largest, where people had been living in tents, trailers and recreational vehicles. The city said about 70 people were living at…

A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday asked the Oakland Police Department, the mayor, and lawyers who brought a class-action suit against the department for input to address what he called the “cultural inability” of the Police Department to hold itself accountable. U.S. District Judge William Orrick did not release the department from the federal oversight it has been under since 2003, when a settlement agreement in the lawsuit spelled out 51 tasks for the department to complete toward…

Mayor Sheng Thao fired Oakland Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong Wednesday, saying she lost confidence in his ability to lead the department. At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Thao said she wasn’t firing Armstrong for cause, though an independent investigation found that he failed to discipline a police sergeant for a hit-and-run accident in 2021. A year later, that same officer fired his gun in a Police Department elevator and destroyed the evidence, investigators found. Thao stressed that she was not…

An Oakland mural dedicated to women in the Black Panther Party came to life Friday night, as visitors to the Oakland Museum of California were invited to create their own artwork in a live mural.  The project was put on by the West Oakland Mural Project, a mural and mini museum honoring women instrumental to the Black Panther movement. Visitors got to work painting, bringing the colorless canvas to life with vibrant reds, blues, yellows, and blacks.  The live mural,…