Police
Police Chief Howard Jordan announced Thursday afternoon that Oakland is hiring police consultant William Bratton, a former Los Angeles police chief who also served as police commissioner in both New York and Boston, to combat what Jordan called an “unacceptable” crime rate under his watch. As the city’s new police consultant, Bratton is charged with helping Oakland develop programs to target gang activity, work with the community to build trust, and reduce violence, including using statistical data to prevent crimes….
Scid Howard III grew up on the streets of East Oakland, so he knows what it’s like to be a teenager in a city where some young people are lost forever to gun violence and others live on, scarred physically and mentally. Howard himself was shot at age 19 and witnessed the shooting death of his best friend at age 17. He now counsels young people for several support organizations in Oakland to save them from a similar fate. “My…
Nine years after the Oakland Police Department was ordered to comply with a series of court orders or be put into receivership, a federal judge approved a settlement agreement Wednesday between city officials and civil rights attorneys that avoids a takeover of the department by a federal monitor.
Oakland city officials and police officials, along with the attorneys bringing suit to push oversight of the police department’s reform efforts, agreed Wednesday on a settlement proposing that a new mutually agreed upon, court-appointed director take charge of department reforms.
The Oakland Police Officer’s Association — the police union, a nonprofit organization representing the city’s police officers — has for years dabbled in the political scene, endorsing candidates and spending thousands of dollars each election cycle advocating for candidates OPOA leaders believe will best address public safety and police concerns.
Discrimination and violence showed no boundaries at Friday’s Transgender Day of Remembrance at the Oakland Peace Center. Mexico, Brazil and India. Maryland, Florida and Louisiana. Turkey and Canada. All these are states and countries—their names read aloud in melancholy succession at the event–in which transgendered women were murdered this year.
California voters passed Proposition 35 by 81 percent, but there is little agreement among law enforcement agencies, legal experts and sex workers about how the initiative will affect the sex industry, especially with regard to the owners of indoor places of work like brothels, escort services and massage parlors.
This month, the city council’s Public Works Committee will consider a new graffiti ordinance, which aims to bolster Oakland’s current vandalism laws by inflicting harsher penalties on offenders and offering support for property owners frequently targeted by graffiti writers. The “Graffiti Enforcement Program” proposed by City Attorney Barbara Parker and District 3 representative Nancy Nadel, would enhance a section of the city’s municipal code which presently only addresses graffiti abatement procedures and prohibits the sale and possession of pressurized paint cans and markers to minors.
In a federal court document filed Thursday, city officials rejected a motion by local attorneys for a federal takeover of the Oakland Police Department, pushing instead for the creation of two new positions that would monitor the department’s progress in enacting the last 10 of 51 reforms ordered by a federal judge in 2003.