Police

Final arguments wrapped up in the case of the City of Oakland versus Hiral Patel, the owner of the National Lodge, an International Boulevard hotel accused of catering to prostitution.

In December, 2010 the city attorney’s office sued the National Lodge and the Economy Inn under California’s Red Light Abatement Act, which requires hotel owners to prevent prostitution on their property. The lawsuits include many instances of crime, including prostitution and child prostitution. The city is now trying to shut down both hotels in an ongoing trial that continues Friday.

Scroll down to see each frame of this slideshow.  As the Occupy Oakland protests continued this winter, so did confrontations between Oakland Police Department officers and protesters. In the most recent incident, which happened on January 28 after Occupy Oakland supporters attempted to take over the Kaiser Convention Center in order to transform it into a social center, over 400 protesters were arrested, many after police encircled marchers and did not allow them a clearly indicated avenue to disperse. That…

At the beginning of the year, the Oakland City Council started preparing to merge parking enforcement services with the Oakland Police Department to save the city money.

Under the policy at the time, each parking enforcement employee would have been subject to the lowest level of background checks that all OPD employees are subject to, which stirred controversy.

The City of Oakland’s Citizen’s Police Review Board met Thursday night for the first time since postponing a forum that was scheduled for Feb. 9 on police response to Occupy Oakland. But the board did not hold the much-anticipated forum, and instead discussed why the meeting was postponed, where a suitable location for the forum would be, what would be discussed, and when.

During another contentious meeting Tuesday night, the City Council deadlocked over a resolution aimed at increasing the policing of protests. The resolution would have made protests that block streets without a permit illegal, and allowed the city administrator to use “whatever lawful tools” required to prevent protesters from hindering everyday business operations.

City officials are preparing to transfer Oakland’s parking enforcement unit to the Oakland Police Department. The transfer will allow the parking enforcement staff to be trained to write tickets and accident reports. But the move may create problems for some parking enforcement technicians, critics say, because they will now have to pass a more intensive background check than the one required for their initial hire.

Howard Jordan was named the permanent Police Chief of Oakland at a press conference on Wednesday morning, and Teresa Reed was named the city’s new Fire Chief.

Nearly 400 people were swept up in mass arrests at an Occupy Oakland protest on Saturday night, according to a city of Oakland press release, including six local journalists.