Gun violence
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.
On Thursday afternoon, the announcement that court hearings regarding the proposed Fruitvale gang injunction would be delayed did not stop approximately 30 demonstrators outside the office of the Alameda County Administrator from demanding an alternative measure to reduce gang violence in their neighborhoods.
Bike bells chimed as voices shouted “Bike for justice!” on the streets of Oakland’s Fruitvale and San Antonio neighborhoods late Tuesday evening. A group of 30 community activists toured the streets—lined with taco stands, vedura y fruta mercados, liquor stores and auto body shops—calling people inside stores and at bus stops to join them in opposing what could be the city’s second gang injunction.
It was a question left unanswered in a press-release issued by the Oakland Unified School District last week: What do Oakland Schools, the Oakland Police Department, and a project to build a 60,000-pound bronze monument in downtown Oakland have in common? The answer: about $10.5 million.
On Monday, the Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Press released its annual City Crime Rate Rankings list, which ranks cities from highest number of crimes reported to lowest. Little has changed since last year—the top five remain the same—and Oakland, California, is still one of them. The good news, sort of, is that Oakland has dropped out of third place and is now No. 5.
A Richmond man was shot to death Tuesday in front of a cross outside East Oakland’s Allen Temple Baptist Church, the same day church officials announced that Allen Temple had been awarded two-year grant to combat violence in the city.
Two measures on the ballot this November give voters the chance to decide the future of public safety funding in Oakland. If either Measure BB or Measure X passes, the city can again collect funds for a slew of public safety programs that currently have no revenue to support them.
In 2004, Lorrain Taylor, the mother of two twin sons murdered in 2000, founded an advocacy group she called the 24/7 Gospel—now called 1,000 Mothers to Prevent Violence—and part of its mission is the support group, the Circle of Prayer and Empowerment, or COPE. The group meets every other Saturday, near Lake Merritt, at Regeneration Church. Her main job at these support groups is to hear the survivors of these loved ones mourn, as well as to simply invite family members to come and sit with others and talk, or just listen. Reaching out to families of homicide victims is Taylor’s full-time job now. When needed, she shows up to their doorsteps with groceries, a smile, a hug, kind words.
A short hearing on the status of North Oakland’s gang injunction this Thursday served as a backdrop for protest and legal maneuvering by groups opposed to the city’s newest tactic for curbing violence.