OAKLAND

waiting to see what the financial damage from the "strong police presence" at all the protests is going to cost Oakland, and what huge budget cuts they're going to make.

I am reading a funny novel set in Oakland, Youth in Revolt.

never read it, though a friend recommended it to me years ago. Maybe I should read it.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/03/21/us/AP-Police-Shot-CA.html

ugh

3 of the 4 are now reported dead. Apparently this was really close to the East Oakland police station. It could be worse, they could have killed people on the healthy neighborhoods walking tour.

from AP: As for the slain shooting suspect, the father said, "The man was evidently terribly desperate. It is a sad story..."

father of the cop that got shot but is still alive

Kinda shocked here to hear reports of "celebrations" of the cops' deaths.

I'm not

4th officer dead

Shocked, not surprised.

did anyone hear about 5 murders going don on 12th st near 14th ave on march 4th? i rode past a roped off street and 2 coroners' vans on my way home, but i never saw anything about it in the news. but you'd think 5 murders in one day would merit news coverage. strange.

I think there was an Oscar Grant protest that day.

there was, and all the news i searched for on the net was about that... but still- 5 people murdered in an apartment building? that's practically a massacre, and the news loves calling things massacres.

^^ true that. Also, if someone is murdered in San Francisco it trumps a murder in Oakland.

Maybe a stupid question, but how do you know that 5 people were murdered?

i went to the crime stats website to look at how many murders there have been in the last 90 days within a mile from my house. i was curious, because it's not every day you see buildings roped off and coroner's vans on the ride home from work...

oh yeah, it's listed on the OPD crime stats report - guessing that since 4 of them all happened within minutes of each other and were either 1st degree or no type stated and the 5th was a half hour later and second degree, that the 5th murder was probably the person that killed the other four. Weird that there wasn't news about it, you're right!

also, i guess it seems flippant to mention, since the oakland thread has been devoted to loss of life lately, but the parkway is having its last hurrah right now. people are lined up around the block to get in. i, for one, am devastated not only at the loss of the parkway, but at the fact that this neighborhood looks like it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

my s.o. used to live in that neighborhood (near the Parkway) when it first opened, and it was a lot worse then than it is now. I think a lot of people who moved to Oakland in the last 3 or 4 years have moved to that neighborhood (at least most of the people I know), so I don't think it's going to go back to 1997 levels of dismal, at least in terms of crime.

http://uhurunews.com/event?resource_name=march-and-candlelight-vigil-for-lovelle-mixon-and-the-african-community

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/25/BADD16N9VP.DTL

This is some through-the-looking-glass shit.

That doesn't surprise me. What would is if there were a rally in Oakland for Johannes Mehserle - the BART cop that shot Oscar Grant. "We are all Johannes Mehserle. We all sometimes fuck up and kill someone for no good reason." Actually Mixon and Mehserle do have that in common.

he didn't rape little girls though

oh come on, it was just _one_ little girl.

O_O
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03/25/18582590.php

LOVELL MIXON IN MEMORY AND SUPPORT RALLY ON EAST OAKLAND
by Freelance Reporter
Wednesday Mar 25th, 2009 9:47 PM

Family friends and total estrangers gather today’s at the place where Lovell Mixon Ceased to exist in this physical form this past Saturday in Oakland CA. People were there to show solidarity and support and to tell the media and the whole police department that they can go to hell because "we don’t believe in the demonization of this modern day Malcolm X". A Native American Man said " the only raper i can really think of is the ones who came and rape my mother land"

Because Lovell Mixon was a stirring orator and a charismatic leader of men. Struck down too early to write his compelling autobiography.

jesus christ

that is actually totally insane

Lolo Darnell, one of Mixon's cousins at the demonstration, said, "He needs sympathy too. If he's a criminal, everybody's a criminal."

I just don't know how to respond to this.

i wish that certain people could see that not every single thing in world comes down to race.

so basically Oakland residents really REALLY hate the cops. Like, more than rapists.

and more than pedophiles, too

let's not blow it out of proportion, that looks like 5-10 "community organizers" and 40-50 friends they picked up off the street. you could probably organize a thousand man march through oakland in support of the seven galaxies in 24 hours, it's just that sort of place.

^^^^Frank Chu wishes

ive heard people suggest that mixon's rape charges were trumped-up, if not wholly fabricated.

and i mean, whether or not it's a rational response, there are rational people who distrust oakland police. that said, it's very sad that these four people died.

this is true - i mean, my fiance got harassed very recently for no apparent reason: he (a white guy) was just riding his bike to work and some cop basically tried to intimidate (and forced him as close to the edge of road as possible, so that he had to ride through a bunch of broken glass and got a flat tire) him. we also had some rude cop beating down our door while trying to track down our neighbours. so yeah, i don't have much love for the police around here. but it sure as hell doesn't mean that it's ok to be happy that 4 men are dead, given that i have no idea what kind of policemen they were.

what i hear around here isnt a happiness that cops are dead, but a kind of SO WHAT response, motivated by the volume and history of unreported/unpublicized police violence in oakland. im new here (in oakland, not on ILX LOL), so i have basically no idea about the real story, but i know that these vigils are not throngs of cop-haters having parties!

re: OPD history - there are really good, legitimate reasons the Black Panther Party was born in Oakland.

can anyone recommend a book to read abt this?

69, what part of oakland are you in?

live above the adams pt whole foods, work for a housing/banking watchdog at 13th and broadway.

full disclosure: my gf and i are moving to the mission this weekend, but im interested in having dual-bay-citizenship

I've never had a negative interaction with the cops around here, but I am a bougie white dude so what do I know.

my gf and i are moving to the mission this weekend, but im interested in having dual-bay-citizenship

congrats! welcome to the neighborhood! I'm at 25th and Hampshire

Perhaps Oakland needs to spend 10 years without any police presence whatsoever.

I hear that Juarez has some really great community organizers that might be able to help out Oakland in their post-police future.

not really a 1:1 analogy there (but I lolled)

congrats! welcome to the neighborhood! I'm at 25th and Hampshire

― I'm Into that Japanese Pop-Funk (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, March 26, 2009 5:04 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

hi dere 21st and AL

but this is a discussion for another thread

hey im not from oakland or anything but i bet its possible to remain critical of the opd and its history and policies and not actually be advocating a police-free city

http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/7425/imageuploadimage.jpg