Police

An eclectic group gathered last Thursday at the Oakland Cultural Center to view the Oakland premier screening of the work in progress, THE TRUST: Reclaiming Community In the Heart of the Prison Crisis. Produced and directed by yoga teacher Tamara Perkins, the film puts faces on the incarcerated and brings light to the issues they confront.

For more than two decades, the automotive attractions nicknamed “sideshows” have been a dangerous and illegal ritual in Oakland, claiming many lives along the way. Often referred to a “block party on wheels,” sideshows are impromptu tire screeching, doughnut-spinning, traffic-blocking congresses of cars surrounded by a crowd of people cheering on drivers as they execute dangerous twists and turns.

On Monday night, the Oakland Police and leadership-training group Youth Uprising celebrated the city’s first “sideshow-free” summer in 20 years with a reception that highlighted the dangers of the Oakland-born tradition.

A short hearing on the status of North Oakland’s gang injunction this Thursday served as a backdrop for protest and legal maneuvering by groups opposed to the city’s newest tactic for curbing violence.

As the Giants hosted the San Diego Padres on October 3, a long white banner peeked above the right field wall of AT&T Park. The sign, attached to the rigging of a yacht anchored in what Giants fans call “McCovey Cove,” did not support either team. Instead, the banner spelled out a political message in black block letters: Free Johannes Mehserle. Strung along the base of the boat was another banner listing a website, Justice4Johannes.com.

City officials announced Wednesday that an injunction is being sought against 42 alleged Norteño gang members in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, the second such action this year to fight the city’s gang problem. If approved, the injunction would allow police officers more rein in arresting the named gang members for engaging in activities—mostly illegal already—considered consistent with gang behavior.

“We are here to demand that you go back to the negotiating table. We need the officers, but we don’t have the money,” Bishop Frank Pinkard of Mosswood’s Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church said to the committee, while standing with representatives from four other faith-based organizations including the Men of Valor Academy and the Allen Temple Baptist Church.

A twenty-minute documentary, produced by the North Oakland-based Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, examines failures in the California juvenile justice system and explores alternative methods in juvenile rehabilitation being used across the country

Oakland police officials said that the department would be reviewing its policies after a routine call to an Oakland home resulted in the shooting death of a dog—the second shooting in five months involving animals. The incident happened Tuesday when officers responded to a burglar alarm at a house on the 9000 block of Burgos Avenue in the Oakland hills. One of the officers, while checking the house for suspects, encountered a Labrador coming out the rear door, and shot…

Laughter, prayer, song and tears marked Saturday night’s third annual PURPLE Fundraising Gala for the families and friends of those who have lost their lives to violence. The event, organized by the Oakland-based advocacy group 1,000 Mothers to Prevent Violence, recognized two Oakland police investigators and a retired schoolteacher for having gone “beyond the call of duty to bring healing to surviving families.”