Crime
Hot door knobs, swinging paint cans and pet Tarantula spiders may have defended the young Kevin McAllister against two burglars in “Home Alone,” but boobytraps may not be enough to protect your belongings during the holidays, when some kinds of crime typically increase.
On Monday afternoon, Oakland police shot and killed a man following a chase involving a car that was wanted in connection with a previous Oakland shooting.
After studying a recent New York Times interactive that offered readers a way to try different cuts and tax increases to decrease the national budget deficit, Oakland North decided to do the same—but on a smaller scale, focusing only on Oakland. Our interactive gives Oaklanders a way to try grappling with the city’s budget deficit themselves.
Half of Tuesday’s three-hour Public Safety Committee meeting at Oakland City Hall addressed November’s fatal officer-involved shooting of an unarmed East Oakland man. Oakland Police Department Chief Anthony Batts announced he has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigations to open a federal civil-rights investigation to determine whether the OPD officers wrongly used lethal force.
On Friday, a state appeals court panel in San Francisco ruled that Oakland did not misspend millions of dollars generated from Measure Y, a 2004 police staffing parcel tax.
Oakland police arrested a man allegedly involved in the non-fatal shooting of a 19-year-old Richmond man and a 14-year-old Oakland girl on Saturday in downtown Oakland.
As part of Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts’ new strategy to involve the community in policing policy, on Saturday officers held two sessions—one for the community and one for the media—on when police are legally allowed to use force. At police headquarters, officers explained the training they receive on when to use force, took questions on specific scenarios and brought visitors to their training facility where attendees were allowed to participate in interactive video simulations of dangerous scenarios officers face in the field.
Ever since then-BART police officer Johannes Mehserle fatally shot Oscar Grant on the platform of its Fruitvale station nearly two years ago, BART—and particularly its police force—has struggled to rebuild its relationship with the communities it serves. New BART Police Chief Kenton Rainey says he’s the man for the job.
When voters passed Measure BB in November, Oakland residents may have thought they were helping resolve the Oakland Police Department’s funding and staffing woes. But with the new year around the corner and a city budget still in crisis, Oakland officials and residents warn that the effects of the measure’s passage are more complex than that—and could end up causing more harm than good to a city recently ranked the fifth most dangerous in the nation.