Crime
Occupy Oakland kicked off its “Move-In Day” with a rally Saturday afternoon at Frank Ogawa Plaza followed by a march through the city and several attempts to take over and move into a building. More than 9 hours later, clouds of tear gas once again hung over Oakland, more than 200 protesters had been arrested for unlawful assembly, and an American flag had been burned inside City Hall.
On Saturday afternoon, Occupy Oakland protesters gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza with a goal: To occupy a building and convert it into a social center to be used for the planned Oakland Rise Up Festival this weekend. But what began as a march with several hundred people quickly turned into yet another turf battle between protesters and the Oakland Police Department.
Following a federal judge’s decision on Tuesday, the Oakland Police Department must now relinquish some of its executive powers to the monitor in charge of overseeing court-ordered reforms within the department.
Violence prevention programs funded by Measure Y are working, according to a report presented at the Oakland City Council meeting on Tuesday night. But not well enough, councilmembers and speakers from the public responded.
About 75 Rockridge residents gathered for the monthly meeting of the Greater Rockridge Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council and to hear a presentation from an electronics company representative on video cameras the company makes for residents to place on their property, and in their neighborhood.
Carlos Nava, a 3-year-old, was killed by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting in East Oakland on August 9. Less than three months later, 23-month-old Hiram Lawrence was shot in the head by a stray bullet in West Oakland on November 28, and died two weeks after that when he was taken off life support. On December 30, 5-year-old Gabriel Martinez was shot and killed by another stray bullet in front of his family’s taco truck in East Oakland. Martinez…
With a price tag of at least $100,000 and the lead investigator having previous ties to Oakland, some critics are wondering whether the city’s newly-formed independent investigation team will be effective in figuring out just what happened between police and Occupy Oakland protesters.
When Roger Kiel allowed his daughter Shanice, 19, to attend a tattoo party in San Leandro this October, he did not expect the early morning call telling him that his daughter had been killed after two gunmen opened fire on her vehicle. Three of the six passengers were killed, including Shanice, who died almost instantly from a gunshot wound to the heart. One suspect has yet to be identified but the other gunman was arrested in Oakland days after the shooting….
Nearly two months after the first major confrontation between police and Occupy Oakland protesters, when downtown Oakland was blanketed with tear gas, city officials have commissioned an independent team of law enforcement experts to investigate how police handled their interactions with protesters.