Safety
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”…
Hundreds of cyclists thronged the Bay Bridge on Tuesday to celebrate the opening of the span’s new bicycle and pedestrian path.
Residents came to shake hands, share food and build new friendships in their neighborhoods Tuesday night, banding together with their Neighborhood Watch Groups to host “National Night Out” block parties throughout the city.
More than 200 family, friends, and community members gathered on Tuesday at McNary-Williams-Jackson Mortuary to pay their respects to 8-year-old Alaysha “Ladybug” Carradine.
An 11-year old Moses Kamin peers into the lens of his adoptive mother’s camera, clad in a bright yellow tank top, a faint smile below his dark brown buzz-cut.
“He looks so different now,” said Steve Masover, looking at the photo album. “But last time I saw him before the sentencing, his hair was the same.”
City and police officials expressed their surprise at Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan’s abrupt resignation, but had few details about what prompted the Wednesday morning announcement.
Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan announced Wednesday morning that he is stepping down from the department and seeking medical retirement. The abrupt resignation came moments before a scheduled news conference with Jordan and former New York City and Los Angeles Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, which was quickly canceled. Bratton was set to present a crime reduction plan that was a part of a $250,000 contract that brought in a six-member consultant panel in late January. In a letter to OPD…