Police

Two measures on the ballot this November give voters the chance to decide the future of public safety funding in Oakland. If either Measure BB or Measure X passes, the city can again collect funds for a slew of public safety programs that currently have no revenue to support them.

As part of National Crime Prevention Month this October, the Oakland Police Department is collaborating with the city’s Neighborhood Services Coordinators to promote awareness of issues such as victimization, volunteerism and creating safer communities.

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