Safety
Since Youth Alive launched its first violence prevention program 20 years, some of the crime and gun violence trends in Oakland have changed, but two things remain consistent: Young people make up a high percentage of Oakland’s homicide victims, and many are killed by someone using a firearm.
The Oakland Police Department released a bulletin Monday evening stating that eight people, including a 1-year-old child, had been injured in a shooting on the 700 block of Willow Street in West Oakland.
“Love, respect, care, responsibility, honor, and peace”—that’s the Warrior’s Code that East Bay youth are being taught at Destiny Arts Center as part of the Growing Peaceful Warriors Program. Instructors teach young people self-defense and conflict management skills to deal with possible real-life dangerous situations through the martial and performing arts.
Oakland residents gathered outside St. Columba Catholic Church on Friday to honor the 102 people who have died because of violence in the past year.
Oakland joined the Transgender Day of Remembrance memorial this past week, with a mournful roll call honoring more than 200 transgendered people who died in different countries last year, many the victims of hate crimes.
Last month, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill designed to give kids more time in the extra protection of booster seats. State Senate Bill 929, which will go into effect on January 1, 2012, makes booster seats mandatory for kids up to eight years old, or 4 feet 9 inches tall.
Oakland city officials plan to reopen Frank Ogawa Plaza to the public this afternoon, Howard Jordan, the interim chief of police, said at a press conference in downtown Oakland Monday afternoon.
An urgent-sounding evacuate-now order from the city Saturday had Occupy Oakland protesters collecting their belongings and readying for a raid — but by midnight, after a heated argument between campers and a small faction of black-clad confrontationalists, the camp was still intact and settling for the night.
The attorneys representing the two people who were hit by a car during the Occupy Oakland strike march on November 2 held a press conference Friday at the Waterfront Hotel downtown, calling for the arrest of the man and woman who were in the vehicle during the accident. The attorneys also criticized the Oakland Police Department for not making any arrests and for the way officers have been conducting the investigation.