Police
After Amanda VanWagenen finished her shift as a server in a Rockridge restaurant last week, she walked outside to her car to drive home, only to discover that it wasn’t there.
Oakland City Councilmember’s Noel Gallo’s appeal that “Every city in the U.S. has a curfew” drew boos and yelling from the packed council chambers as his controversial anti-crime strategy was roundly condemned by citizens and officials alike.
At issue: Gallo’s proposed citywide curfew from 10 pm to 6 am seven days a week and from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm on school days. It would make it illegal for youth to be in public or in businesses during those hours. Although the proposed ordinance was aimed at curbing offenses like prostitution and human trafficking, many speakers Tuesday night passionately argued against it for criminalizing all youth.
“Urban Shield is the largest full-scale exercise in the nation,” said Sgt. J.D. Nelson, Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) public information officer. The event was created by ACSO seven years ago and has grown each year. This year, Nelson estimates that more than 5,000 people participated from across the state, country and world.
The passing of Alaysha, known as “Ladybug” to her family, rallied the Oakland community, and prompted community leaders to call for an end to violence.
Proud family members filled the Scottish Rite Center on Friday morning to cheer for 36 new graduates joining the Oakland Police Department. This marks the 167th academy to graduate with OPD.
During the past two weeks, North Oakland has gotten a boost in efforts to fight crime, with an additional “crime reduction team” of six veteran officers patrolling the streets.
Pastor Billy Dixon Jr. leaned forward in his seat. “Do you know what 26 seconds of solid gunfire sounds like?” he asked. He placed his cell phone on the table, and started a timer. “Bang bang bang … !” he cried repeatedly, as a table full of Oakland North reporters, students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, looked on in silence. Dixon wasn’t joking. As co-chair of the Oakland Ceasefire program and a longtime resident of Oakland, he…
A new law that gives BART Police the power to prohibit individuals from riding the transit system is not reducing the number of assaults committed in BART stations, according to BART’s Quarterly Service Performance Review. The law, passed in May, gives BART Police the authority to hand out prohibition orders if a person harms an employee, steals, or gets cited for urinating in stations more than three times in 90 days. The ban is for 30 days and can be…
Councilmember Noel Gallo’s ordinance prohibiting demonstrators from carrying “tools of violence” went through final passage at Tuesday night’s Oakland City Council meeting, effectively banning items such as hammers, shields and knives from protests. The ordinance was brought up again before the council in light of the protests against George Zimmerman’s acquittal this summer in the Trayvon Martin case in Florida; specifically, after Drew Cribley, a waiter at Flora, was struck in the head with a hammer during the protests. “Hammer”…