Crime
When James Smith was released on parole in 2007, the Department of Corrections gave him $200 and pointed him out the door—he had no support, nowhere to go, nothing but the clothes on his back. It had been years since he had been on the outside. In a matter of months, Smith was asking his parole officer whether he could be sent back to prison rather than finish parole. Without a job, life outside proved to be difficult—too uncertain. “I couldn’t find a job,” said the 45-year-old Oakland native. “It’s like being a pariah.”
As the Giants hosted the San Diego Padres on October 3, a long white banner peeked above the right field wall of AT&T Park. The sign, attached to the rigging of a yacht anchored in what Giants fans call “McCovey Cove,” did not support either team. Instead, the banner spelled out a political message in black block letters: Free Johannes Mehserle. Strung along the base of the boat was another banner listing a website, Justice4Johannes.com.
City officials announced Wednesday that an injunction is being sought against 42 alleged Norteño gang members in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, the second such action this year to fight the city’s gang problem. If approved, the injunction would allow police officers more rein in arresting the named gang members for engaging in activities—mostly illegal already—considered consistent with gang behavior.
“We are here to demand that you go back to the negotiating table. We need the officers, but we don’t have the money,” Bishop Frank Pinkard of Mosswood’s Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church said to the committee, while standing with representatives from four other faith-based organizations including the Men of Valor Academy and the Allen Temple Baptist Church.
Vandals sawed off eight branches of a commemorative sculpture in Oakland’s Firestorm Memorial Garden Thursday. The bronze monument, dedicated to the victims and survivors of the worst fire in Bay Area history—the Oakland hills fire of October 20, 1991—symbolized the eucalyptus trees that were decimated by the fire but would blossom again years later.
A twenty-minute documentary, produced by the North Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, examines failures in the California juvenile justice system and explores alternative methods in juvenile rehabilitation being used across the country
The run-off election between John Creighton and Victoria Kolakowski for a seat on the Alameda County Superior Court shows how complicated choosing a judicial candidate can be. From evaluating each candidate’s credentials to speculating about how each might act from the bench, Alameda County voters have a lot of thinking to do if they want to avoid the dartboard approach this November.
Oakland police officials said that the department would be reviewing its policies after a routine call to an Oakland home resulted in the shooting death of a dog—the second shooting in five months involving animals. The incident happened Tuesday when officers responded to a burglar alarm at a house on the 9000 block of Burgos Avenue in the Oakland hills. One of the officers, while checking the house for suspects, encountered a Labrador coming out the rear door, and shot…
Members of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a national support group for victims of sexual abuse by religious authority figures, came together Tuesday outside the Cathedral of Christ the Light in support of a newly filed sexual battery and negligence lawsuit against Father Stephen Kiesle and the Diocese of Oakland.