Police
Around 400 people gathered in downtown Oakland yesterday to protest police violence as part of a nationwide event. The event, dubbed the “National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation,” was organized by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network.
Voters will be deciding this November on Measure Z, which if approved would continue a parking and parcel tax that funds public safety services and violence prevention programming.
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.
Police officers, firefighters, emergency medical officers, and law enforcement personnel of all types are honored at a Blue Mass, during which community members and faith leaders can offer thanks to the people responsible for public safety and remember those who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
The Oakland Police Department that the reward for information relating to a 2009 homicide case has more than doubled to $25,000.
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.
The sidewalk at Telegraph and 27th Avenue was lined with signs reading, “Got Drugs?” and, “¿Tiene drogas?” The bilingual placards marked the site of the nation’s ninth National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day, where the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Alameda County District Attorney’s office worked with Oakland and three other Alameda County cities on Saturday to take possession of old, unused and unwanted drugs until the DEA could destroy them. Nationally, drug take-backs have collected and destroyed about 4.1…
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.