Gun violence
OPEN Conversation and 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, hosted an event last Wednesday evening to facilitate a discussion about the shooting death of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager. 100 Black Men of the Bay Area is the local chapter of 100 Black Men of America. The members are professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, and businessmen. They mentor young people, and provide scholarships as well as a professional network for the Bay Area. OPEN Conversations is part of the larger non-profit, OPEN. Also aimed at professionals of color, the group holds events to discuss topics important to people in that community.
The Oakland Police Department that the reward for information relating to a 2009 homicide case has more than doubled to $25,000.
BART commuters experienced a system-wide delay Thursday morning as the BART Police Department investigated a report of a man with a gun possibly boarding a train. BART spokesperson Alicia Trost said a rider called shortly before 8 a.m., reporting possibly having seen a man with a gun outside the Richmond BART station. The rider thought the man might have gotten on a train at the station. Trost said BART police calculated which train he would have boarded, based on the…
Oakland has received a $1.87 million grant from the Department of Justice to fund the hiring of 15 new police officers over the next three years. With these officers, the department will be on course to reach its highest level of officer staffing since 2010.
In dual news conferences in Oakland and Washington D.C., Congresswoman Barbara Lee and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Tuesday that Oakland and Richmond have been named by the Justice Department as part of a new national program that Holder called an “all-hands approach to curbing endemic violence” in five U.S. communities with high violent crimes rates. “If we want to reduce violence in our East Bay communities, we must work together,” Lee (D-Oakland) told reporters Tuesday morning, alongside other…
California Assemblymember Nancy Skinner has proposed legislation that would allow for restraining orders to be placed on individuals who are deemed at risk for violent behavior with a firearm.
For six weeks this summer, no one was murdered in Oakland, the longest stretch without an unlawful killing since the 1990s. That streak was broken on Sunday, September 14.
After serving for a year as interim police chief, Sean Whent, an 18-year veteran of the force, was named permanent chief of Oakland Police Department by Mayor Jean Quan at Oakland City Hall Wednesday. “As a no-nonsense chief, he has led the Department’s reorganization, built a strong leadership team and strengthened police collaboration with neighborhood leaders,” Quan said in making the appointment. “We’ve made significant progress in the last year, reducing crime and completing mandated federal reforms. We have much…
Banjoko once lived in Oakland and was a part of the ‘90s Bay Area Hip Hop music scene. Currently, he is teaching chess and life strategies to students at Encinal High School in Alameda through a partnership with his friend John Fuentes, who oversees the after school high school program for Bay Area Community Resources (BACR). From now to the end of this school year, Fuentes’ goal is to have Banjoko teach chess at several Oakland high schools as well.