Safety

An advocate for children teaches kids and parents how to spot abuse

Twenty-five years ago, Norma Rodriguez went to a training session for the Child Assault Prevention Training Center. When she agreed to participate in the session, she didn’t realize that two weeks of learning how to prevent and recognize child abuse would change her life. She didn’t know that intense training would soon become her career.

City trying to shut down East Oakland hotels that it says cater 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.

Crowd control at Oakland protests: A visual explainer

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…