Gun violence
The City Council on Tuesday night voted in a slew of programs aimed at reducing violent crime in Oakland, including hiring a police consulting firm for $250,000, contracting with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, hiring 20 civilians to assist police, and funding a third police academy in two years.
In the wake of recent mass shootings—including one in December at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which took 26 lives, and one in late July at an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, which left 12 dead—an East Bay politician is pushing for new state restrictions on the sale of ammunition in California. The move has received widespread support from city and school officials in cities like Oakland and Richmond, which struggle with high rates of violent crime.
Police Chief Howard Jordan and Mayor Jean Quan held a press conference Monday afternoon to condemn the recent spate of violence that resulted in four homicides in Oakland last Friday.
On a barren West Oakland corner, amongst homes where the windows and front yards are gated and dead-bolted protectively from the world outside, now stands a “Tree of Life” — the Attitudinal Healing Connection’s debut traveling mural project. The mural and all seven of its transportable panels were unveiled Thursday afternoon at the West Oakland Youth Center’s construction site on Market Street. Construction on the facility, currently a skeleton of drywall, scaffolding and timber, isn’t expected to be complete until…
Police Chief Howard Jordan announced Thursday afternoon that Oakland is hiring police consultant William Bratton, a former Los Angeles police chief who also served as police commissioner in both New York and Boston, to combat what Jordan called an “unacceptable” crime rate under his watch. As the city’s new police consultant, Bratton is charged with helping Oakland develop programs to target gang activity, work with the community to build trust, and reduce violence, including using statistical data to prevent crimes….
Scid Howard III grew up on the streets of East Oakland, so he knows what it’s like to be a teenager in a city where some young people are lost forever to gun violence and others live on, scarred physically and mentally. Howard himself was shot at age 19 and witnessed the shooting death of his best friend at age 17. He now counsels young people for several support organizations in Oakland to save them from a similar fate. “My…
Twenty people from fifteen of the most violent groups in Oakland gathered in one room last week, as city officials, law enforcement, and community members appealed to them to stop shooting as part of the city’s latest violence prevention effort.
A billboard campaign initiated by Oakland youth uses personal stories of loss to spread an anti-gun violence message.
A rise in shootings has prompted Oakland city officials and community members to revisit Operation Ceasefire, a violence prevention program the city tried before but failed to sustain, one that specifically targets offenders with known track records of gun violence.