Teachers at American Indian Public Charter School in the Laurel District arrived to work Thursday morning to find that someone had spray painted the word “strike” on the school’s sign and on the pavement in front of the school. Someone had also filled the school’s padlocks with glue, and littered the campus with leaflets bearing the equation: “Chinese Students + High Stakes Tests = High API.”

Sopath Mey, the middle school’s principal, said that the disruption to the school’s morning routine was particularly inconvenient Thursday because the school was taking care of 40 extra students, the younger siblings of American Indian students whose parents couldn’t afford to take a day off work during the Oakland teacher’s strike. A neighbor chased away someone suspected of vandalizing the school at around 6 Thursday morning.

The teachers at AIPCS are not unionized and weren’t striking Thursday. The middle school posts some of the highest test scores in the state. Last year, AIPCS boasted an Academic Performance Index (API) of 977. AIPCS has long drawn the ire of charter school opponents who claim that charter schools sap students and money from the traditional public school system.
 

From the Oakland Police Department

The Oakland Police department is asking for the community’s help in locating a missing and at risk elderly woman. Fannie “Jewel” Taylor is an 87 year old African-American female. She is 5’4 and weighs 115 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes. Ms.Taylor wears glasses and is legally blind. She suffers from Alzheimer’s and may be disoriented.

She was last seen at her residence on 39^th St in Oakland by a relative on March, 24, 2010 at 1100am. Ms. Taylor was last seen wearing a tan robe. She does not drive but has been known to ride the AC Transit bus lines. Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Fannie Taylor is asked to contact the Oakland Police Missing Persons Unit at 510-238-3641.

Photo By Mike Spencer

The sad news that a liquor store owner shot and killed a man in East Oakland reminded us of this story from our archives by Mike Spencer. The private eye/journalist/rugby coach/City Hall watchdog reported back in 2008 that the Oakland liquor store owner without a licensed gun somewhere on the premises is the rare exception.

With his keen eye for the telling detail, Spencer highlighted the "Oakland Window," the small nook in a high corner where a liquor store employee (often with a gun) can keep an eye on things.

Perhaps it's all the construction on major arteries like Broadway and Telegraph Avenue, or maybe it's simply a matter of more bikes sharing space with more cars. If you've suspected that riding a bicycle in Oakland is an increasingly perilous proposition, the numbers back you up.

Bicycle-involved injuries in Oakland have increased by more than 30 percent between 2000 and 2008, according to data compiled by the Rand Corporation. Despite more bike lanes on Oakland streets, the number of bicycle involved injuries has grown from 120 in 2000 to 165 in 2008. Still, Oakland is not anywhere near as dangerous for bicyclists as Berkeley, which counted 180 bicycle accidents in 2008 with only a quarter of Oakland's population. Oakland's bicycle mishaps, however, are more fatal than Berkeley's. During the eight year period, 10 bicyclists died in collisions in Oakland while only one died in Berkeley. In San Francisco, where bicycle accidents have increased from 364 in 2000 to 471 in 2008, 19 bicyclists lost their lives.

Trib columnist Tammerlin Drummond is calling on the mayor to convene a crime summit in Oakland following the murder of a young father in front of his wife and children over the weekend. There’s good news and bad news for Drummond.

Did someone say summit?! Mayor Ron Dellums loves a good summit. In fact, in February he’s hosting a peace conference at the Claremont. Perhaps the event could be upgraded to summit status with the addition of a few task forces and blue ribbon commissions. That’s the good news. Drummond, who is an insightful chronicler of Oakland, should brace herself for the conference failing to do much about the city’s crime situation. 

The most interesting item in Drummond’s column was the news that Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts is floating the idea of an anti-loitering ordinance for the city’s minors. Batts is definitely the most promising public administrator Oakland has seen in some time, so if he says we need a curfew (that's usually what an anti-loitering ordinance boils down to,) then the City Council should consider going along. But they no doubt remember that such measures have a long and not very successful history.

Curfews were popular remedies for crime-plagued cities in the 1990s. There’s no evidence from those experiments showing that curfews cut juvenile crime or keep kids safe. Instead, curfews make cops waste time processing youths who’ve been picked up after hours. And it won’t just be the cops who will be vexed by extra paper work. Drummond scoffs at the opinion that curfews impinge on civil liberties. There are state and federal judges who disagree. Oakland doesn’t need extra legal bills. We’ve got all those summits to pay for. 

Since April of last year, longshoremen, truck drivers, and other people working at the nation's ports have been required to carry something called a Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). Embedded with a microchip, the smart card is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's efforts to guard ports against terrorism.

The Transportation Security Administration is responsible for issuing the IDs and making sure they are used properly. A summary of enforcement actions for the past two years shows that Oakland is the only place where the TSA has issued violations for misusing TWIC cards.

Out of seven surface transportation violations recorded by the TSA, five were in Oakland and involved either allowing someone to use a TWIC card, using someone else’s TWIC card, directing the use of another’s TWIC card, or altering a TWIC card. The TSA can assess a fine up to $10,000, but in all instances the TSA issued warnings.

The TSA did not respond to calls for comment.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin manages TWIC enrollment for the TSA, which has issued cards to some 1.2 million port workers across the country. Undocumented aliens can’t obtain a TWIC card. People with felony convictions within the past seven years are also disqualified, although they can appeal. The enrollment process, which started in 2007, has left thousands of port workers unemployed during the recession, according to a report this summer from the National Employment Law Project.

It’s been a difficult period for truck drivers at the port. In addition to the TWIC rules, there were fewer containers to haul because of the recession. The California Air Resources Board was requiring trucks with engines made between 1994 and 2003 to be retrofitted with pollution reducing technology by January 1, but the drivers were granted a two-week extension on Sunday. A $22 million pool of money to help truck drivers upgrade their vehicles quickly ran out, but the state produced another $11 million to help an estimated 1,300 truck drivers pay for the $5,000 retrofit.
 

This story was funded through Spot.us.

On a Thursday afternoon in October, the Oakland Police Department was planning for trouble. Word came down that the judge in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, the Bay Area Rapid Transit cop who killed a man on New Years Eve, would announce the next day that the trial should be moved out of Alameda County. “There goes Friday,” said a police Captain, popping his head into Lieutenant Sharon Williams’ office on OPD’s fourth floor.

OPD has suffered its share of bad days in the last year, but as a new police chief takes charge of the department, there is a sense that OPD will be able to shed a culture of low morale. Lt. Williams said that optimism is replacing the malaise that has shadowed OPD’s rank and file in recent years. “Everyone I talk to about [the new chief] is excited,” said Williams.

Goodwill and optimism are promising. But the new chief will need more than that. Early indications show that Anthony Batts, who comes to Oakland from Long Beach, has a different approach to crime fighting than his predecessor, Wayne Tucker. Before he arrived on the job, Batts sent every officer with the rank of lieutenant and above a questionnaire which would be familiar to anyone who has worked at a company when it has been bought or a new CEO has arrived. But some of the questions Batts posed to his new subordinates offer clues about how he intends to change the department.

In addition to asking for a resume and an accounting of achievements, Batts also asked them to list the five people they regard as the organization’s best leaders. Batts wrote that if the answer is five sergeants, then list five sergeants. The point is clear. Batts is seeking talent and ideas throughout OPD. He will look beyond the pool of cops the previous administration groomed for advancement.

This will sit well with OPD’s rawest recruits. A new generation of police officers in Oakland and elsewhere are veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the military’s reputation for a rigid top down hierarchy, the United States military has embraced war-fighting innovation coming from grunts in the field.

A pair of essay questions in the questionnaire is blunt: Why do you think crime in Oakland is so high, and what would you do to reduce crime? One has to believe a problem can be solved before setting out to find a solution. Police Chief Tucker spoke frequently about Oakland’s “demographics.” When officials in Oakland use this word, they are usually explaining why they have failed to fix something, and the blame is shifted to the city’s black, brown, and poor residents. The hope is that Batts won't tolerate a mindset among officers that in crime in Oakland is a phenomenon beyond the control of law enforcement.

For one thing, this line of thinking has been demonstrated to be false. One need look no farther than Batts’ old beat to see that competent policing can yield reductions. Long Beach looks more like Oakland than any other city in the country save for its significantly lower crime rate. With a comparable number of cops per 1,000 citizens, Long Beach has a lower crime rate than Oakland. In 2007, Long Beach reported half the number of violent crimes, compared with Oakland despite an extra 80,000 residents.

In Long Beach, this was achieved through well-executed and well-defined community policing, which a member of Long Beach’s Citizen Police Complaint Commission described as “making the police department accountable to the people it serves.” Batts succeeded, said Commissioner Carolyn Smith-Watts, by making the workings of the Long Beach Police Department transparent.

Smith-Watts said that she is sorry to see Batts go to Oakland. She’s worried about him. “I know it’s more volatile up there,” she said. She also praised him for reducing crime in Long Beach. The president of the union that represents Oakland’s police officers suggested to the New York Times that the rank and file are waiting to see if Batts is going to be a crime fighter or a politician. The idea that a good crime-fighter is not political is absurd.

An effective police chief is a shrewd politician. A police chief must know what to say, how to say it, when to say it, and to whom to say it. That savvy was a secret to Batts’ success in Long Beach, said Smith-Watts, who was a police officer in Michigan before relocating to California. “He went to a lot of community meetings. He knew how to speak the language of the community, and his troops followed that,” said Smith-Watts.

According to Smith-Watts, Batts embraced a program that had police officers regularly attending church and religious services throughout the city. “He wanted to show the grandmas and the grandpas and the aunts and uncles, that [police work] was still a worthy profession,” said Smith Watts. 

Smith-Watts said that the discipline he modeled contributed to a decline in a style of policing she characterized as “hot dog,” by which she meant a guns-blasting, tires-squealing, aggressive posture that can create a gulf between cops and citizens.

“Hot dog” does not accurately describe how Oakland police officers conduct themselves. But as anyone who has driven in an Oakland police cruiser through East or West Oakland can attest, there’s work to be done bridging the divide between young black and Latino males and OPD. A deputy with the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department said he was once told by another sheriff, “If you work at OPD, you will do things, see things, and be a part of things that will make it impossible for you to be hired anywhere else.”

This culture gap may not be diminishing, but something heartening is already happening on Oakland streets. Even as an independent think tank ranked Oakland as the the third most dangerous city in the country, Batts takes over at a time when crime is showing a downward trend. As A Better Oakland reported in October, violent crimes are down 12 percent from a year ago, and all major crimes are down 14 percent during the same period.

This is one of the few spots of good news for OPD this year. In addition to a search warrant scandal, OPD is also dealing with a lawsuit claiming that the current head of OPD’s Internal Affairs Division covered up a fellow officer’s murder of a suspect several years ago. But without question the worst day in the history of OPD was March 21, when a convicted felon and a rapist murdered four police officers following a traffic stop.

OPD has not felt the final reverberation from that massacre. Sources from inside OPD say that report will likely come down quite hard on three commanders who supervised the taking of the apartment building where Lovelle Mixon had hidden. Jeff Thomason, OPD’s spokesperson, said that the report is not close to being finished.

The murder of Chauncy Bailey also continues to haunt OPD. In October, the acting police chief put Derwin Longmire back on duty despite considerable evidence gathered by the Chauncey Bailey Project that Longmire bungled the investigation through ineptitude or sloth. Longmire returns to his duties even after the state Justice Department found that Longmire did not handle the case properly.

On the Friday before Batts was sworn in, OPD officers braced themselves for unrest outside the Alameda County Superior Court House. The judge did decide that Mehserle’s trial should move, but the officers weren’t called on to keep order. It turned out to be a quiet Friday after all.

 

If you drive, you know all about the not-so hidden cameras that take clear photos of you and your car’s license plate running a red light. A grainy photo of you driving badly and a ticket arrive in the mail soon after.  

That ticket may hurt your wallet, but it could help Oakland’s troubled finances. Keeping revenue and safety in mind, Oakland plans to install a total of 16 traffic enforcement cameras across town with the hope of raising around $14,000 a month for the city’s traffic safety fund by April of next year.

As the Chron's In Oakland reported this week, there are five cameras in place already, and six more will soon be installed. In case you’ve missed them, there are cameras at the following intersections: Jackson Street and Seventh Street, two at San Leandro and 66th Avenue, and Foothill Boulevard and High Street. A Camera at 27th Street and Northgate, and another at High Street and Brookdale Avenue are in warning mode.

The cameras are not infallible. The company that sells the service to the City advertises that three out of every four scofflaws will be clearly identified and issued a ticket. While some of the cameras in Oakland are meeting that 75 percent rate, others are letting more than half of the violators escape without a fine. The cameras at the intersection of San Leandro and 66th Avenues have captured 2,472 violations in the last year, but only 1,052 resulted in traffic tickets mailed to motorists. The sharpest camera is at Jackson and 7th Streets, which only let 300 out of 1,257 violations get away unpunished.

A report on the cameras from the Oakland Police Department claims that the system stops more than reckless driving. The report, which the Oakland City Council’s Public Safety Committee will hear next week, trumpets that the cameras have helped in the identification of a suspect in a violent crime, as well as capturing footage of a hit and run fatality. It also lists the cameras as a factor in reducing sideshows along the MacArthur corridor, which in turn, has brought down the number of citations given for reckless driving around 82nd Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard.

The City hopes that the system will be self-sustaining by 2010. The expectation is that each camera system will issue 10 violations per day. The standard fine is $153.46 per violation, and the City anticipates making monthly gross revenues of $20,717.10 per system, says the report. It estimates that net monthly revenues per system will approximate $14,655, with a collection rate of 60 percent.

The City chose to work with Redflex Traffic Systems, a global vendor of photo enforcement systems, after accepting bids from three vendors in September – October 2006. Redflex has contracts with more than 240 city, county and state agencies in the U.S. Its contract with Oakland is for a period of 37 months for an amount not to exceed $4,320,000. The program launched in September 2008.

The costs associated with each installation also factor in PG & E’s one-time connection charges, which according to the report, have ranged from $2,734 to $14,124 per intersection – based on the amount of work and materials required to provide the necessary power connection to the system.

The report says the City began seeing a revenue flow from the program as soon as it started last September, but a construction accident destroyed some hardware connected with the camera at the intersection of 66th Avenue and San Leandro Street, resulting in a loss of about $14,655.

Editor's note: A new prosecution team in the City Attorney’s office is going after quality of life misdemeanors that poison neighborhoods, and can lead to crimes that take lives and destroy families. Think small-time drug dealing, prostitution, and vandalism. City Attorney John Russo says you can add cockfighting to the list. 

Responding to calls from neighbors, Oakland police raided a warehouse last winter where dozens of men had congregated.

Inside the Sanchez Ironworks in an industrial neighborhood of East Oakland, officers found dozens of men watching and gambling on cockfighting. Evidence photos from the raid show a disturbing scene: piles of dead and maimed birds, bet money, animal steroids, pools of blood on the floor and more splattered on the clothes of the birds’ handlers.

Cockfighting is a barbaric “sport” in which hyper-aggressive roosters are placed in a small enclosure to hack each other to death with gaffs – curved, razor-sharp blades attached to the feet of the animals when they fight. Cockfighting is illegal in every state, but it’s a tradition going back centuries both in the U.S. and in other countries, and it is sadly too common today in our state.

In Oakland, we’re going after those who profit from and get enjoyment from cockfighting using a new unit of criminal lawyers in the City Attorney’s Office called the Special Prosecution Team.

We formed this unit last year – in partnership with the Alameda County District Attorney – to go after the pervasive misdemeanors crimes that degrade the quality of life in Oakland and invariably lead to more serious and violent crimes.

These “quality-of-life” crimes include drug-related offenses, prostitution, vandalism and cruelty to animals. Misdemeanors associated with cockfighting are right up our alley.

Cockfighting may not be as heinous as homicide or other violent crimes that too often destroy families in our community. But it has often been associated with drug-dealing, concealed firearms and other serious crimes.

Watching animals rip each other to shreds for enjoyment sends a powerful message to both children and adults that cruelty, violence and disrespect for life and the law are acceptable – even admirable.

After the police raid on the warehouse last February, we charged about 70 people with being spectators at a cockfight. To date, defendants have paid about $12,000 in fines and served 111 hours of community service.

We hope these prosecutions send an equally powerful message that there are consequences for illegal behavior, and that the community won’t tolerate the kind of sadism at the heart of these events. Those who are not aware that cockfighting is illegal in the U.S. will find out – hopefully before they are standing in front of a judge.

Of course, we also intend to protect animals from suffering and dying for human entertainment. Even the birds who survive cockfights suffer terribly. Pierced eyes, punctured lungs and broken bones are common injuries. Gamecocks are bred and raised to be extremely aggressive, so they cannot be adopted even when recovered by law enforcement.

In Oakland, keeping roosters for any reason is prohibited by the municipal code. Anyone who suspects that cockfighting may be going on in their neighborhood should call the City Attorney’s Special Prosecution Team at (510) 238-3601.

We will continue to work with the Oakland police and other agencies to make sure there are consequences for this kind of animal cruelty in our city.
 

Almost two years to the day after an Oakland police officer shot 20 year-old Gary King, Jr. in the back, City officials agreed to pay King’s family to make a resulting lawsuit disappear.

On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council voted to approve a $1.5 million settlement. It’s easy to see why the City attorney opted to avoid a jury trial. While an internal investigation by the Oakland Police Department found that the killing was justified, an account by a police officer on the scene contradicted the story offered by officer Pat Gonzales, who killed King in broad daylight near the corner of 54th Street and Martin Luther King, Jr Way.

The killing of King highlights the risks that come when a portion of the city’s population carries illegal weapons as a matter of course. In Oakland, nearly 10 percent of seventh graders have reported bringing a gun onto school property.

According to Gonzalez, the incident began after he saw King and his friends loitering in the parking lot of a liquor store on the east side of MLK Way. Gonzalez said that King matched the description of a murder suspect. Gonzalez asked King if he could talk to him. King walked towards Gonzalez, after handing his soda to his friend. A video taken from the liquor store shows Gonzalez throwing King’s potato chips into his police car. The video shows Gonzalez grabbing King’s wrist, and King pulling away and trying to run. Gonzalez then threw King to the ground and wrestled him to the car.

In Gonzales’ telling, he used his Taser on King and then said he saw King reach into his waistband. Believing that King was drawing a gun, Gonzalez dropped his Taser and grabbed King’s hand. It was then, he said, that he felt the outline of King’s gun. Gonzales said he pushed King back and drew his police gun. By his own account, Gonzalez shot King without warning as King was fumbling for his gun in his pants.

While no one disputes that King resisted arrest and was found with a gun in the pocket of his basketball shorts after he was shot, 10 people who had clear views of the shooting said that King never reached into his pants or turned around when officer Gonzalez shot him twice in the back. These people saw King run at full-speed away from Gonzales before being shot twice in the back.

These witnesses were not all King’s friends and relatives, but a cross section of the people one would expect to find on a major street in North Oakland in the middle of the afternoon: A retired nurse on her way to tea with a friend in Berkeley, a father and son coming back from Children’s Hospital, an event designer on her way to a ceramics class.

Shooting an fleeing armed suspect on a busy street is risky, but in some cases, it would make sense. What if King had turned around and started shooting? But the police officer’s actions after King was shot cast doubt on Gonzales’ assertion that he knew King had a gun.

The most damaging account to Gonzales’ version comes from the first officer to arrive on the scene after Gonzales shot King. He said that when he arrived he saw Gonzalez standing two to three feet away from King, who was lying on his stomach in handcuffs. Gonzales’ gun was back in his holster. Gonzales told the officer to do CPR. “I rolled King over and conducted a patdown search where I located a revolver inside of his left shorts pocket,” the officer said in a deposition.

According to the second cop’s statement, Gonzales never told him about the gun, and didn’t warn him that King was armed before asking him to do CPR. Gonzales said that after the other officers arrived, he handcuffed King and removed King’s gun. The competing versions have not been reconciled and the discrepancy no doubt added to the City Attorney’s decision to settle the case out of court.

Unlike an Oakland police officer who was dismissed in June after he killed two unarmed people, Gonzales is still with the Oakland Police Department. He was injured during the apprehension and subsequent killing of Lovelle Mixon, who shot four police officers in March.
 

When William Bratton resigned as Los Angeles’ top cop on Monday, folks in Oakland wondered for a moment if the celebrity chief was heading north to turn around the city’s troubled police department. A Southland police chief is Oakland-bound, but it’s not Bratton.

Anthony Batts, Oakland Police Department’s new chief, was the chief of police in Long Beach for seven years. With demographics similar to Oakland’s and a comparable number of cops per 1,000 citizens, Long Beach has a lower crime rate than Oakland. In 2007, Long Beach reported half the number of violent crimes than Oakland despite an extra 80,000 residents. That figure alone is reason for crime-weary Oaklanders to have hope. Batts is also a different kind of police department administrator than Oakland has had for most of this decade.

Chief Batts has a doctorate in public administration and publishes articles in law enforcement journals and other publications. In 2006, Batts co-wrote an article in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Law Enforcement Bulletin outlining his department’s success with community oriented public safety (COPS) despite “a high level of police activity that keeps its officers in response mode.” Batts could be describing Oakland when he writes that “patrol officers in such areas continually address calls for service and detectives handle exorbitantly high caseloads.”  But in Long Beach community policing appears to work.

Consider the citizen complaints against the Long Beach Police Department. In 2007, the citizen police complaint commission received 285 complaints compared to 341 the previous year. Oakland had nearly 1,000 citizen complaints in 2007.
 

The company that made a fortune towing cars with five or more outstanding parking tickets for the City of Oakland could soon lose its lucrative concession. On Tuesday, the Oakland City Council will consider a proposal to use a private company that “boots” the cars of scofflaw motorists rather than towing them. Oakland officials hope to raise an extra $800,000 a year by booting more vehicles with the help of technology from PayLock, a private company that runs similar programs in New Orleans and Baltimore. 

Under the new system, parking control officers will slap a lock on the tires (“boot”) of cars with five or more unpaid parking tickets. Motorists will call PayLock to pay the back fines plus a $125 fee to the city and a $140 fee to PayLock. The car’s owner can remove the boot 24 hours a day seven days a week with a number code provided by PayLock once the payment has been settled.  

The loser in this proposal would be A&B Towing in East Oakland, which currently charges $170 for towing and $60 a day in storage fees to motorists who run afoul of the city’s parking laws. The Oakland City Administrator estimates that the average cost of retrieving a car through PayLock will drop to $915 from the $1,005. 

It’s good business for PayLock, which is offering to give Oakland five cameras equipped with license plate recognition systems and three new SUVs to patrol the city looking for cars with more than five unpaid parking tickets. The program is not supposed to cost the City any money and can begin within six weeks of receiving approval from the City Council. 

A&B is still in the picture, however. Cars that are considered abandoned will be towed after three days of being booted. 

Right around the time last year that people with an interest in Oakland’s national reputation were weighing the pros and cons of having an HBO series about an aging pimp filmed in the city, producers for a cable television program called Gang Wars slipped into town to document what they called “Baby Iraq” in two installments.

Rough cuts of the documentaries are circulating around City Hall. While the programs follow the exploits of the Oakland Police Department’s anti-gang unit, the producers spent an equal amount of time with gang members, self-styled or otherwise. The producers obviously had the cooperation of OPD, although it’s far from certain that the police will think the final product was a fair exchange for the access.

The police are depicted as massively out-gunned and outnumbered by Oakland’s criminal street gangs. The police do confront heavy firepower, and an ever-replenishing supply of new recruits to gangs, but Gang Wars: Oakland is unclear about actual numbers. At one point, the narrator says there are 40,000 gang members in Oakland, although at another, he says the city counted 10,000 gang bangers. It’s a rough cut, complete with uncensored language, so maybe those facts will be sorted out later.

In keeping with the traditions of the sensationalistic cable television documentary, Gang Wars: Oakland spends more time looking for drama and storylines than questions or answers. Oakland is a place that “some call Baby Iraq,” and that’s all there is to understand. Everything else is just the interplay between OPD and the thugs.
 

The Chron reported Sunday that the Oakland Police Department fired an officer who shot and killed two people running away from him in separate incidents. In both cases, Hector Jimenez said he saw the victims reaching into their waistbands for a gun. Neither of the men were armed when Jimenez killed them.

Jimenez’ termination from OPD raises the question of who gets shot when Oakland police officers draw their guns. Nearly 10 years of data show that the majority of people shot at by the Oakland Police department were black men. The firing comes as Oakland police officers arrested a 16-year old boy suspected of shooting at patrol officers in West Oakland late Saturday night.

Between January 1999 and October 2007, OPD officers shot at people 74 times resulting in 16 fatalities. Black men were the targets in 59 cases. And black men represented 75 percent of the fatal officer-involved shootings.

Okaland Police Department’s number of officer-involved shootings is not unique. During the same period, police officers in Fresno shot at people 65 times, of which 35 ended in death. However, the racial distribution of the fatalities more closely reflects Fresno’s demographics. The victims included five black men, four Asian men, 12 Hispanic men, two Hispanic women, and 11 white men.

In Sacramento, there were 35 officer-involved shootings during the same nine-year span. Of those shootings, there were 13 fatalities. The majority (seven) were black men.

OPD’s firing of Jimenez demonstrates that the City won’t tolerate reckless officers who kill unarmed men. The police department must now ask itself if officers shoot disproportionately at black men.





 

By now, the world has heard about Oakland’s Saturday massacre: 4 police officers murdered by a wanted felon. The details of this horrific tragedy are both frightening and disturbing.

On Saturday afternoon, Officer Dunakin did a routine traffic stop at 73^rd and MacArthur in East Oakland. Many of you pass by that corner everyday going to the Coliseum, the airport, Eastmont Mall, or home. It is the main thoroughfare that runs between I- 880 and 580.

It was a routine traffic stop with no reason for defensive maneuvers. Officer Dunakin radioed in the license plate, make and model of the car and approached the vehicle to obtain the driver’s license. The driver was Lovelle Mixon, an unemployed, paroled felon who had just bought the car and was riding around in East Oakland. He was armed with a semi-automatic pistol. The officer had no idea who he was dealing with.

The plate check revealed that the automobile was improperly registered. The license check revealed that the picture on the license did not match the number. In addition, the officer found out that Mr. Mixon was wanted on a no-bail parole violation warrant.

Officer Dunakin motioned to Officer Hege, another motorcycle traffic cop who had appeared on the scene that they needed to take Mr. Mixon into custody. As they approached the car, Mr. Mixon knew even more that they did. He knew that he was being investigated for a three year-old murder of another Oakland man, his distant cousin. He also knew that he would be a suspect in several recent Oakland rapes, including a 12 year old girl.

Mr. Mixon jumped out of his car, gun blazing on these two unsuspecting officers. He shot them both before they could take any defensive action, draw their weapons, or radio for help. Down went both officers on MacArthur Blvd. Then, Mr. Mixon, in a cold, deliberate disregard for human life, stood over each officer and shot them again, execution style, while they lay on the ground. He then ran one block to his sister’s apartment on 74^th Avenue and waited for other police to come.

The officers did not know that he was a suspect in the rape cases because the report confirming his DNA had arrived at the Oakland Police Department from the lab on Friday afternoon. The information was not entered into the police records and no warrant issued to pick up Mr. Mixon for questioning. It was determined that that information could wait until Monday.

Many residents called 911 and reported the shooting to the Oakland Police. Many more went to the fallen officers and offered first aid and comfort until help arrived. When back-up police arrived, many gave extensive details of the incident, description of the shooter, and the direction that he had run in.

One brave soul identified the shooter to the police and the building he ran into. Mr. Mixon continued his reckless disregard for life by keeping his 16-year old niece in the apartment. He sat and waited to simply kill more police officers. During this time, Mr. Mixon was not calling for help, asking to surrender, or attempting to explain his actions. He was simply sitting in his sister’s apartment.

His lair wass a six-unit apartment building, with his sister’s unit on the ground floor just inside the main entrance. It was dangerous for any of the residents to flee the building since they would have had to pass right by the apartment to get out. The SWAT team quickly surrounded the building and tried to make contact with Mr. Mixon, but got no response. They don’t know if he had hostages or would attempt to kill any of the neighbors. A decision was made to search the apartment and to subdue Mr. Mixon.

The SWAT team entered the apartment. Mr. Mixon began firing his AK-47 armor –piercing bullets through the doors and walls, hitting three more officers, two of whom would die, Ervin Romans and Dan Sakai. Mr. Mixon was killed while in a sniper’s crouch firing at the police through the walls.

The result of this tragedy: four Oakland police officers gunned down; two during an innocent traffic stop and two more SWAT officers as they fearlessly attempted to neutralize this killer. Mr. Mixon is dead as well, bringing a total of five lives lost in this senseless act of violence.

In addition, there are four families who have lost their loved ones; children who no longer have fathers, wives who no longer have husbands and parents who no longer have a son. Mr. Mixon left behind a daughter and extended family. He also left behind a string of rapes, a possible murder, a parole violation, and no telling how many other damaged lives in his wake.

The city of Oakland is stunned by this senseless violence and mourns the tragic loss of innocent lives. This incident raises many scary questions that have to be answered. First and foremost, why wasn’t all the information available to those front-line, unprotected officers? Why was the information that Mr. Mixon was a suspected rapist and a warrant for his arrest not in the police database? Perhaps, if the officers had known they were dealing with such a dangerous and violent individual, they would have taken more defensive actions to protect themselves and the public.

A Broken Parole System. Why is it that an unlicensed, unemployed, convicted felon can purchase a car and have in his possession two deadly assault guns? Why is it that he was allowed not to have contact with a parole officer for several weeks prior to the shooting and in fact,who didn’t even know of his whereabouts?

The State of California owes Oakland better control and maintenance of parolees. Our city can no longer become simply a Return-to-Sender, where the State dumps parolees with no skills and no alternatives, and so they simply return to a life of crime and violence.

This shows the crying need for not just beefed up police services, but rehabilitation and alternatives to crime. The return to crime rate of criminals is over 80%. Yet, the success rate of rehabilitation programs is over 90%.

Programs like Men of Valor work with parolees, starting while they are still incarcerated and transform them into productive society members. Yet, they receive virtually no support or funding from state, county or local agencies. These are the kinds of things that work to break the cycle of crime. The second and most important thing is that we have to produce more jobs in our city. Alternatives break the circle of crime.

Finally, Oakland has to say no to this drug/gangster culture. We can no longer afford to glorify criminals and murderers. Some people have referred to Mr. Mixon as a “soldier”. He was no soldier. He was not fighting for principles or dedicated to a better society.

No, he was a terrorist and destroyer, who killed and raped members of our community and terrorized an entire neighborhood. There is nothing about his actions that deserve glorification.

As in every killing, I feel for his family, but I object to his actions in the strongest way possible. It is time for Oakland to say enough to the drug trade. It is time for the Federal and State agencies to put resources into our city to break this cycle of crime. It is time to break the grip of drugs on our city and stop this carnage now.

Oakland can no longer afford for innocent people to be killed, robbed and raped. This becomes the day to stop it and realize it will not happen because of “they,” it will only happen because of "us." It is time for us, Oakland, to stop this senseless violence and devastating drug/crime culture. Now.

Donations may be made to the families and mailed to the Oakland Police Officer’s Association, Attn: Renee Hassna, 555 Fifth Street, Oakland, CA 94607. Make checks payable to the Dunakin Children’s Family Trust; the Romans Children’s Family Trust; the Sakai Family Trust. May God bless their souls.

Clinton Killian is an attorney in downtown Oakland, an Oakland resident, a former Oakland Planning Commissioner. He can be reached at: (510) 625-8823 or email: clintonkillian@yahoo.com.

National as well as international media outlets are carrying stories about the shootings that took place on Saturday, March 21 in Oakland. There are more than 2000 online news sources that have covered the police officers' killings, ranging from the New York Times, Bloomberg News, the Boston Globe, and the Kansas City Star to the British Broadcasting Corporation, Xinhua and Radio Netherlands.

It's easy to understand the vast interest in this case. But if you're feeling overwhlemed by all the information out there, and just want to know how to contribute to the families of the officers or want to send your condolences, we suggest referring to the following links:

• How to Donate to the Families of the Slain Oakland Officers
  
  
• Legacy Pages for the Officers:

Mark Dunakin

John Hege

Erv Romans

Dan Sakai

• Oakland Police Officers Association page
  
  
• Some news articles:

The New York Times:  Oakland Seeking Answers in Police Killings

The Oakland Tribune:  Street Shrines for Slain Oakland Officers Draw Crowds, Debate

San Jose Mercury News: Cop Killer was Depressed About Heading Back to Prison, Family Says

The San Francisco Chronicle: Doomed SWAT Seargants Didn't Expect an AK-47