Gun violence
At a special meeting of the Community Policing Advisory Board Wednesday night at Oakland City Hall, Robert Wasserman called for residents to support the crime reduction strategies being suggested by the consultants, insisting that the plan would only work if everyone in the city took part.
Affordable housing advocates gathered at Tuesday night’s Oakland City Council meeting to urge elected officials to prioritize building and funding affordable housing citywide, saying that for vulnerable groups, new projects are the difference between living on the streets or living in a home.
One month after a homicide forced city leaders and event organizers to question the future of Oakland’s First Friday art festival, the event returned this weekend—smaller and more low-key than past versions, but turnout was strong. The themes of the March 1 were peace and unity. People gave peace signs all night, some wore neon green t-shirts that read “Respect Our City,” and organizers held two moments of silence in honor of Kiante Campell, the 18-year-old who was shot and…
In January, about a month after the massacre that left 27 people dead in Newtown, Connecticut, Vice President Joe Biden met with a group of 12 religious leaders to discuss national strategies to combat gun violence. President Barack Obama, who supports background checks as well as a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazine, had tasked Biden with heading a commission to come up with recommendations on gun policy. One of the leaders present at Biden’s meeting was Pastor…
William Bratton’s caused a stir in Oakland, and he hasn’t even arrived yet. The former top cop in Los Angeles and New York has been contracted by Strategic Policy Partnership, a law enforcement consulting group based in Massachusetts, to join a group of six policing experts tasked with improving public safety in Oakland.
In part two of a four-part series that will be published over the course of two weeks on Oakland North, meet the six new police consultants who have just been hired by Oakland to help reduce crime citywide. Each member of the panel has a different task and will be evaluating Oakland for a period of six months and before the panel makes its recommendations to the city. Robert Wasserman Robert Wasserman is a national law enforcement and security expert and the…
Oakland’s hired the crime consultants and approved the $250,000 bill, setting in motion the plan to bring in six law enforcement experts—including former Los Angeles top cop William Bratton—as the city’s latest attempt to curb its rising violent crime rate.
On a recent Saturday morning in Oakland, a group of residents marched and chanted, “Stop the violence, stop the silence! Do something!” The group calls themselves SAVE, an acronym for Soldiers Against Violence Everywhere. “We are soldiers,” said Theresa Butler, SAVE’s coordinator. “We are here in the rain, cold doing what we do.” SAVE was initiated in 2010 by Pastor Zachary Carey of True Vine Ministries after a member of his church was murdered in Oakland. “One Wednesday night we…
Nearly a week after the post-First Friday festival shooting that killed 18-year-old Kiante Campbell and wounded 3 others, event organizers say they’re waiting for a cue from the city about how to proceed. City of Oakland officials have called a meeting with the festival’s key stakeholders for Thursday to examine ways to keep future events safe. The art festival that takes over swaths of downtown Oakland on the first Friday of each month started as a humble gallery walk in…