More work by Josh that I have captioned...
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Dear Sweet Hell
Hellarity burns
Tuesday May 27, 2008
How a cauldron of squatters and property owners, stirred by green dreams and the bursting housing bubble, set an unusual Oakland house ablaze
"The angels in the summertime are ashes in the fall. As Eden fell so heaven shall. I will burn them all."
The sign, written in gothic letters on weatherworn plywood with faded red flames, is nailed to the side gate of a two-story duplex off Martin Luther King Jr. Way in north Oakland. Today, the old sign's words carry a chilling new meaning, greeting visitors to a house whose insides were scorched by an unidentified arsonist.
The charred house has been a cauldron of contention for more than 10 years. It has been the product of two anticapitalist housing experiments, one started by an environmentalist landlord who sought to create an ecotopia, and the other by a group of anarchists who intended to make it their home. In the process, it became a hub for traveling activists and aspiring hobos, and a headquarters for antiestablishment endeavors such as Berkeley Liberation Radio.
"People would hear about it through the grapevine, hop off a freight train, and show up on our doorstep with a backpack, a banjo, and a Woody Guthrie song," says Steve DiCaprio, a tenant who moved into the house in 2001 with his wife after living in a van out front. "We had an open-door policy. Anyone could come in, no questions asked. They just had to abide by certain rules: no hard drugs, no racism, no homophobia, and no violence. We wanted to emphasize equality — it was a reaction to the closed, materialistic, competitive, dog-eat-dog society we live in."
The house originally was part of the green property owner's attempt to create a network of sustainable, affordable housing. When his project floundered, the residence was slowly taken over by his tenants, a group of people who one-upped his radicalism. Both sides claimed to be avowed anticapitalists, but their strategies were at odds; his was to produce an alternative to the local housing market by creating a nonprofit that would help tenants own their homes as a collective. Theirs was to make space for themselves in a rent-based housing market by seizing property from investors and absentee landlords.
The owner eventually went bankrupt — drowned in the early stages of the current deflating housing market — and the property fell into the hands of a small-time real estate investor, despite the tenants' attempts to buy it themselves. The tenants refused to leave, transforming themselves into squatters, and fought it out with the buyer in court for three years. As the court case bogged down, housing values plummeted, making the landlord's investment lose value by the day.
On Feb. 28, when one of many hearings was set to take place, the squatters showed up in court but the landlord hadn't filed the paperwork needed to move the conflict closer to a resolution. The following night, in the early hours of March 1, someone lit three fires in the empty upper apartment, setting the house ablaze as people slept inside.
WELCOME TO HELLARITY
For years the house has been known as "Hellarity," although its original owner never called it that. In fact, he refuses to. To recognize that name would be to legitimize the people who adorned it with the title — a group he sees as thieves, squatters who disrupted a legitimate project he thought would have a small but tangible impact on a profit-driven housing market.
Born on the Sunrise Free School in northeastern Washington State, Sennet Williams — known by most as "Sand" — spent his early years bouncing between Spokane and "environmental and pacifist intentional communities" in the area. A year after moving to Berkeley in 1990, he graduated from UC Berkeley's Hass School of Business. With a degree in urban land economics, he wanted to do his part to turn the tide of environmental degradation by developing "nonprofit car-free housing" in Berkeley.
Williams didn't see attending business school or investing in property as contradictions of his ideals. For Williams, they were strategic moves. He thought that anticapitalist projects lacked an important element — money — and wanted to be a benefactor for alternative forms of housing.
One week after graduating, his dreamy aspirations came to a crashing halt when an SUV plowed into his compact car while he was on a ski trip at Lake Tahoe, badly injuring him and causing brain damage. His goals would have been quickly destroyed, but Williams sued the driver and convinced the court that the accident interfered with his budding career, winning a settlement in 1993 that he says was "almost a million dollars."
While his money was tucked away in mutual funds and he was living briefly at a student co-op in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1994, Williams solidified his ideas into an ambitious project called the "Green Plan" with some of his housemates. The plan was an elaborate scheme to "end homelessness" by creating "an urban nonprofit dedicated to self-governing and radical environmentalism" that would fund "rural sustainable ecovillages in Hawaii and elsewhere."
That summer, Williams bought five houses on credit in what he calls Berkeley's "'80s drug-war zones" and brought his Ann Arbor friends to California to turn his rundown properties into co-op material. Over the summer, the Green Plan became an official organization and Williams let its members live in his houses without paying rent. Instead, they were expected to pay monthly dues to their organization — roughly the equivalent of fair market rent — to put toward buying rural land or repurchasing the houses from Williams at cost. Those who couldn't afford to contribute were allowed to stay free in exchange for working on the houses, doing extra work for the Green Plan, or volunteering in its Little Planet café.
"Sennet (Williams) tried to be clear that he wasn't a landlord," says former Green Plan member Dianna Tibbs, but relations between Williams and the members quickly disintegrated. Three years after its formation, the Green Plan remained unincorporated as a nonprofit. A former member also said it was still too centered on Williams' ideas. Williams' relationship with the tenants soured. "Ultimately there was a rebellion among the people against Sennet," Tibbs says. In 1997 the project disbanded, transferring all of the money they had raised — about $50,000 — to the Little Planet café.
The Green Plan fell apart, but Williams was caught up in the fervor of the mid-90s real estate market. In 1997, he bought the house that would later be named Hellarity for $114,000, with the goal of "making it into a demonstration of an eco-house that would be an educational resource for the city." He says he chose that property in part so it "could be a tribute to the Black Panthers' goals of providing food in the inner-city," as it was on the same block as the home of Black Panthers founder Bobby Seale.
But shortly after Williams bought Hellarity, he says he became "overextended in real estate." By the time he made his first mortgage payments, he says there were "over 60 people" living in his houses. He owned eight in Berkeley, two in Oakland, and was planning to buy farmland in Hawaii. With Williams tied up in too many projects to fix up Hellarity, he moved in some people to "house sit" in exchange for free rent.
Shortly after people moved in, Williams stopped coming around the house. The housesitters gradually brought in their friends, the walls were slowly painted to suit the eccentric tastes of the occupants, and more people started calling the house theirs. Williams said he didn't invite them, but admits that he never asked them to leave. He had little contact with the occupants as years passed. "He was just a theoretical person that owned the house," DiCaprio says.
Hellarity took on a distinctly anarchist flavor in Williams' absence. "People with alternative lifestyles and alternative family arrangements could live without having to dedicate their lives to making money, giving them more time to invest in their homes and their communities," says long-term resident Robert "Eggplant" Burnett, Bay Area punk rock legend, publisher of the zine Absolutely Zippo, and editor of Slingshot newspaper. Hellarity hosted the pirate radio station Berkeley Liberation Radio, a do-it-yourself bike shop, and cooked meals for Food Not Bombs.
It seemed like an anarchist paradise, but it wouldn't last.
FOR SALE
By 2004, mortgage payments were driving Williams deep into debt, and Hellarity became a burden. The house was being pulled away from him from two sides: by anarchists who increasingly challenged the legitimacy of his ownership, and by creditors who placed liens against his properties.
When Hellarity was eventually sold by the court in a bankruptcy sale, the tenants say the man who would buy the house, Pradeep Pal, had never set foot in it. Pal, who refused to be interviewed for this article, lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood in Hercules and owned two businesses, Charlie's Garage in Berkeley and European Motor Works in Albany. He wasn't exactly a freewheeling real estate flipper — he was a South Asian immigrant who, according to Guardian research of property records, never owned real estate in the area other than his own home.
But to the tenants, Pal was a capitalist trying to buy them out of their home. In a recorded meeting with tenants, Pal admitted he hadn't been inside the house before he bought it, and Williams tells us the real estate agent who arranged the sale also never toured the house before Pal bought it. "He obviously had no interest in moving into the place or contributing to the community if he didn't even look at it," future occupant Jake Sternberg says. "This was someone who just wanted to make a profit."
The tenants made it clear to Pal that they didn't want him to buy the house and would make life difficult for him. As soon as it became apparent that Williams would lose the house, Crystal Haviland and a few other occupants started searching for someone to help them buy the house. In the summer of 2004, the house was slated to go up on foreclosure auction, but the tenants hadn't found a sympathetic donor.
The auction was set to occur on the steps of the René C. Davidson Alameda County Courthouse, and the occupants showed up banging drums and bellowing chants to warn off prospective buyers. "We wanted anyone interested in buying the house to know that the people who had been living at the house for 10 years wanted to buy it," says Haviland, who is now raising a child, studying psychology at San Francisco State University, and volunteering as a peer counselor at the Berkeley Free Clinic. "We didn't want people to buy it and turn it into an expensive gentrified thing." While people gathered, Williams showed up and announced bankruptcy, a legal move that cancelled the auction.
With more time to search for financial support, Haviland started talking with Cooperative Roots, an organization that bought a couple of Williams' other houses — now known as "Fort Awesome" and "Fort Radical" — in foreclosure auctions. Cooperative Roots is a Berkeley-based nonprofit organized in 2003 by members of the University Students Cooperative Association. They received money from progressive donors — mainly the Parker Street Foundation — to buy houses that they turned into "cooperative, affordable housing," says Cooperative Roots member Zach Norwood. Anyone who lives in their houses is an automatic member of the cooperative and makes monthly mortgage payments to the foundation.
For Hellarity, Cooperative Roots was a godsend. "Other people would walk into that house and say, "This place is disgusting," DiCaprio says. "But they said, 'Wow, this is a work of art.'<0x2009>" The Parker Street Foundation was willing to put down whatever was needed to buy the house, Norwood says, but the occupants were limited by the monthly payments they could afford. On Nov. 4, 2004, the house went up for bankruptcy sale, and Cooperative Roots was prepared to bid up to $420,000. "It was exciting to be there with a bunch of crazy Hellarity people, putting out bids for hundreds of thousands of dollars," Haviland says.
No one expected them to show up at the sale. Williams says they had previously offered to buy the house from him but he "didn't think they were serious." By the time they had the money, Williams no longer had control of the sale. At the courthouse, the anarchists were playing by the rules, bidding with money up front. The only other party interested in the house was Pal and his brother-in-law Charanjit Rihal, who were placing bids against the occupants. The two sides bid against each other, driving up the price until the occupants reached their limit. Pal and Rihal took the property for $432,000.
OWNERSHIP VS. CONTROL
"This sale was symptomatic of a housing market gone haywire," says DiCaprio. "People like Pal and Rihal thought they could just throw a bunch of money into real estate and it would always be a good investment. I'm glad the market finally crashed, because that kind of behavior hurts a lot of people. It ended up driving the price of housing to the point that normal people can't buy anymore — and that's absurd."
Pal soon discovered he owned the property on paper only. The occupants didn't recognize the sale or his authority to tell them to leave. Three months after the sale, the occupants were still there, refusing to go. Pal took the case to court in an "action to quiet title," demanding that they be ejected from the property and that the title be freed from any future claims against it. He claimed the people in the house were squatters, living on his property without permission. But before the police could drag out the occupants, they countersued, holding themselves up in court without a lawyer for three years and living in the house the whole time.
One of the first cross-complaints came from Robert Burnett who — with his contempt for the computerized, cell phone-saturated consumer culture — wrote his cross-complaint on the back of a flyer on an ancient typewriter. When the document appeared in court, one side advertised a benefit for a pirate radio station at the anarchist info shop at the Long Haul with an image of tiny people being thrown out of an upside-down Statue of Liberty. On the other side, Burnett claims that he is a co-owner of the house, which he acquired through "adverse possession." Two other defendants made the same claim.
"Adverse possession transfers the ownership of a piece of real estate to people occupying the house without payment," says Oakland attorney Ellis Brown, an expert in property law. "In the state of California, you have to be openly living in a place for five years without the titleholder trying to make you leave to win an adverse possession case."
"Adverse possession originated to prevent Native Americans from taking back land from homesteaders, but squatters turned it around, using it to protect people who take possession of unused property," says Iain Boal, a historian of the commons who teaches in the community studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the author of the forthcoming book, The Long Theft: Episodes in the History of Enclosure. Boal emphasizes the large numbers of squatters in the world, a figure Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World (Routledge, 2004), pegs at 1 billion. "It is only here that squatters are seen as bizarre leftovers from the '60s," Boal says. "We are in a crisis of shelter, and people need to fill their housing needs."
DiCaprio concurs. Along with Burnett, DiCaprio was the main backer of the occupants' legal case. As we talk in a dark, live-in warehouse, he sips coffee out of a Mason jar and looks over the court case on his laptop. He says he wants to be a lawyer, but he has never been interested in making lots of money — he says he wants to "fight for housing rights." DiCaprio learned squatter law while cycling through family law court, criminal court, and federal court over a Berkeley house he was squatting and trying to win through adverse possession. The city threw him in jail, and he was released just after Pal sued the occupants of Hellarity.
He says Hellarity was different from other situations he's dealt with as a squatter. "We never thought of ourselves as squatters [at Hellarity] per se until Pal sued us and start using that language in court," he says. "Before he bought the house, no one was challenging our presence on the property. Sennet [Williams] was either actively or passively letting us stay there. By filing a claim to quiet title, Pal made it apparent the title was in question. By calling us squatters instead of tenants, they lost some claim to the property. So we took the ball and ran with it."
Their use of adverse possession was strategic, DiCaprio says, but they didn't intend to win the house that way. "We were never under any illusion that we would win ownership of the house in court," he says. "We wanted to use the court as a forum to enable us to buy the house. We were just treading water until Pal got tired and agreed to sell." The occupants say they offered him $360,000 for the house, the price it was originally listed for, but he refused to take a loss on his investment.
DiCaprio says the courts generally aren't sympathetic to squatters' cases. "Pro pers tend to be poor, so there is a class bias against them," he says, referring to people who represent themselves without a lawyer. DiCaprio says judges have rejected documents for having dirt on them and refused to give fee waivers to people with no income. "The courts do not like squatters. If you mix pro per and adverse possession, you could not have a more hostile environment against us."
For more than two years, Pal and the occupants played a cat-and-mouse game, dragging out the case and trying to complicate it in hopes the other side would just give up. Pal's lawyer, Richard Harms (who did not return Guardian calls seeking comment), objected to the terms "documents," "property," and "identify" when asked to produce evidence related to his claim. "Instead of trying to prove their case, they were just waiting for us to trip up and not file something before a deadline," says DiCaprio.
The occupants didn't slip, but as the case wore on, he and Burnett grew tired of upholding their side in court. By fall 2007, the two cut side deals with Pal. Burnett settled for $2,000 and DiCaprio for an undisclosed amount. "I realized I couldn't save it alone," DiCaprio says. "I told them to sink or swim."
ENDGAME
When Burnett and DiCaprio settled with Pal, the subprime housing crisis was splashing the headlines. Pal's investment was starting to seem more like a loss, but for the first time since he bought the property, it looked like it would finally be his. By November 2007, the remaining squatters dropped the battle for ownership and began bargaining with him for concessions.
By mid-February, Pal was ready to start renovations, and all but two of the squatters had moved out. They made their final plea and Pal gave his last compromise: two more weeks, then they had to go. "He was sure he was going to get the house, so he agreed to let us stay," says a squatter called Frank, who asked not to be named because of his immigration status.
What Pal may not have understood was that he was not the only party still interested in the house. The house was becoming a point of contention among the larger community of squatters and anarchists in the East Bay. Fissures broke around a central question: was it up to those living there to decide the fate of the notorious squat, or did the larger community of radical activists have a say in the property?
As Pal was getting rid of the last people occupying the house, the squatters' conflict came to Hellarity's doorstep. A new group of people came to the North Oakland house, among them a few who had previously stayed at Hellarity, ready to renew the struggle against Pal. Frank, who had been living in the house for seven months, was unhappy about the new arrivals.
"I told them that this kind of action would make problems for me," he says. "I already made an agreement with this guy [Pal] to leave by the end of the month." The new group saw things differently. "We own this place," says Jake Sternberg, the new de facto caretaker of Hellarity, who has since been pushing for the squatters to renew their court case. The discord between the squatters split up the duplex: the two old squatters stayed upstairs while the recent arrivals occupied the lower half.
Two weeks after the new crew moved in, a fire was lit in the upper apartment that burned through the ceiling and the floor. But who did it? Was it a disgruntled squatter who would rather destroy the house than hand it back to Pal? Or was Pal connected to the arson, losing his nerve as a newly energized group of squatters took over and the value of his investment crashed?
If not for the squatters, Pal might have been less affected by the subprime crisis than most property owners. He had no mortgage on the house — he bought it outright — so he wasn't under threat of foreclosure, unlike tens of thousands of other California homeowners. But Pal faced a different threat. It seems likely he bought the house as an investment, and as the market crashed, he was stuck with a house he could neither renovate nor sell, and was left to watch its value tank as he slogged through court proceedings.
For an investor like Pal, the numbers weren't looking good. In March, median housing prices had fallen 16.1 percent compared with those of March 2007, according to DataQuick Information Systems, and home sales declined 36.7 percent from the previous year. In April — for the seventh consecutive month — Bay Area home sales were at their lowest level in two decades, DataQuick reported. And according to Business Week, national home prices will plummet an additional 25 percent over the next two to three years.
On Feb. 17, the day after the new group of squatters moved in, Pal made an appearance at the house. In early March, Sternberg showed me a video he recorded during Pal's visit. On the screen, Pal is sitting on a couch in the downstairs living room of Hellarity. At the door, a well-built man who looks to be in his 30s and calls himself Tony leans against the wall with two younger men who call themselves Salvador and Ryan. Sternberg tells me that Pal came to the house demanding they leave his property. Sternberg called the police, accusing Pal of trespassing. As they waited for the OPD to arrive, which took more than 25 minutes, they discuss their conflict over the house.
At the beginning of the video, Sternberg tells Pal why he and his friends refuse to give up the property: "People came over here from Europe and they said, 'Hey, we're going to take this place.' Now they sell land to each other. And how did they get it? They took it.... And just because somebody pays for something doesn't mean that they get it. And just because somebody sells something doesn't mean they have a right to sell that."
A few minutes into Sternberg's video, Pal told the squatters he was ready to take matters into his own hands. "You just have to deal with me now because what I'm saying is, it's person to person.... And you know what? If it's gonna get dirty, it's gonna get dirty. I don't care. Because you know what? That's the way it's gonna be, because this is what I need. I need to have it. I don't have any lawyer. I can't afford a damn lawyer. So it's gonna be me and you. One to one. Man to man."
Pal eventually left the property after the police arrived, but the two younger men, Salvador and Ryan, spent the night upstairs. "[Pal] had them stay there because they thought the people downstairs would squat the upstairs," Frank says. "He wanted to protect the house." Frank, who says he was concerned that Pal would try to evict him with everyone else, initially didn't protest the presence of the two young men.
The next day, at Frank's request, Pal told Salvador and Ryan to leave, and for the two weeks that followed, Pal didn't return to the house. The new group of squatters expected to see him Feb. 28, the date set for a case hearing called by Pal's lawyer prior to the re-occupation of the house. If the defendants didn't show up, a default judgment could have been entered, granting Pal his request to have the squatters removed and ordered to pay $2,000 per month in back rent. The squatters showed up for court, but Pal's side hadn't filed the necessary paperwork to hold the hearing.
Once again the house hung in legal limbo and the day after the hearing, the remaining people upstairs moved out as agreed. Frank says Pal called him while he was at work that afternoon to make sure they were gone. For the first time in 11 years, the upper apartment was empty, waiting for either Pal or the other squatters to seize it.
But someone was committed to preventing that from happening. The night after the people upstairs moved out, at around 3:15 a.m., the squatters downstairs awoke to fire creeping through the floorboards above them.
"Both of the doors upstairs were locked," Sternberg says. "We broke through one of the doors and threw buckets of water on the flames."
After the fire department extinguished the blaze, the squatters called the police to have an investigator search the scene. "It appears that unknown suspects entered the house through unknown means, and then set three fires in an attempt to burn the house," the police report states. According to the report, all three fires were set in the upstairs apartment; two burned out before the fire department arrived. Officer Vincent Chen found two used matches in the bathroom, where the wood around the sink had been burned, and a gas can hidden in the bushes on the east side of the house.
When I first met Sternberg, he told me the Oakland Police Department's arson investigator, Barry Donelan, was helpful. Two and a half months after the fire, however, Sternberg says: "I regret having talked to the police."
Initially, Donelan didn't know they were squatters — Sternberg had told him they owned the house. "Once he found flyers for a fundraiser to defend the squat, he became angry," says Sternberg. "He said he submitted the case to the district attorney, and didn't expect anyone would be arrested."
Sternberg says Donelan also threatened to have him arrested for a traffic-related warrant and that he would turn Sternberg's name over to the Federal Communications Commission, which had an open investigation on the house for hosting Berkeley Liberation Radio. In March, Donelan told us he wouldn't comment on the case and at press time, he hadn't return Guardian calls about the status of the investigation.
EPILOGUE
Although the arson may never be solved, the squatters have strong suspicions about who was behind the fire. But they have a hard time deciding who, ultimately, is most culpable for the blaze. "No one involved in Hellarity is innocent, and no one is completely guilty," says DiCaprio. The one point of view everyone seems to share is that Hellarity has long been a tinderbox of contention, in which property owners struggling in a beleaguered housing market faced off against a group of people who reject the market outright for its inaccessibility to low-income people. Eventually, it all — literally — burst into flames.
When I visit after the fire, people are sitting outside playing guitar, smoking rolled cigarettes, and singing the timeless hobo ballad, "Big Rock Candy Mountain." The sounds drift over the budding vegetable gardens and into the downstairs living room, where a message written on a big green chalkboard suggests that if the fire was intended to drive people out, it was unsuccessful: "WELCOME BACK TO HELL(ARITY). Because bosses, landlords, and capitalists suck, the house has lots of repairs that need to be done before it becomes fully livable."
Upstairs, Sternberg looks up at a charred, gaping hole in the ceiling. "We have to make lemonade out of lemons," he tells me, explaining that they just got a skylight to fill the cavity. "We're going to continue fighting just like we've been fighting. This guy [Pal] has been in court with us for three years. He's got no case." *
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Just thinking about ICS
I work with Copwatch and Berkeley Liberation Radio. Witnessed a ton of police brutality. Been told blatant lies from cops more frequently than straight answers. Several years ago, I planned to get arrested blockading trucks from going into this awful polluting facility in a residential area of W. Oakland. The managers of the plant told the cops they didn't want publicity of any arrests so the cops physically removed us just to the sidewalk where we would get up and go back into the street. I told a cop (who had my right arm in a kind of control hold as he pushed me around the street) that I had come to protest the activities of this company and I was prepared to be arrested. He said he wasn't going to arrest me, but if I didn't follow his instructions he was going to keep twisting my arm until it broke. Then he twisted my arm just a little and I could feel how close he was to snapping something. He said, see how close you are to breaking your arm?
Friday, May 9, 2008
Mystery, Anger Cloud Story of Friday Night Shootings
By Richard Brenneman
Thursday, May 08
A brazen Friday night shooting of two young brothers in a troubled south Berkeley neighborhood has renewed calls for a greater police presence there. (The Planet is witholding their names because of their age.)
The first shooting was followed by a second 40 minutes later at 63rd and Herzog streets in North Oakland, less than a block outside the Berkeley city limits. The gravely injured victim there was Poitier McDaniel of Berkeley.
While the news media focused on a campus murder and a hostage standoff in the Berkeley hills, some citizens who live near the intersection of Sacramento and Oregon streets wondered on Tuesday why they couldn’t get more attention from City Hall and police headquarters.
A dispute that erupted on the street about 9:45 p.m. Friday ended in gunfire at Bob’s Liquors on that corner. A 16-year-old was shot three times, said one neighbor who declined to be identified by name. He said he had not been questioned by police although he saw the shooting.
Ayodele Nzinga, the mother of the boys who were the targets of the attack, said the Berkeley police have refused to return her calls about it. Police also did not return the Daily Planet’s calls about the shooting.
Nzinga said two men, both armed, had followed one of her sons into the store and shot the other one when he rushed into the store on hearing his brother’s call for help.
In the second shooting, the 29-year-old McDaniel was shot three times from behind after he and three friends were approached by two men who told them they couldn’t be on the street, said Dana McDaniel, his mother.
“It may be the same two people,” she said.
Getting on-the-record comments in the Sacramento Street shooting has proven difficult, with many neighbors refusing to be quoted by name for fear of possible reprisals.
The youths who were at-tacked in Berkeley were members of a local hip hop group, and Nzinga said both had prior run-ins with police, which she said was the result of growing up in public housing in a neighborhood with many ex-felons.
Another neighbor, Daniel Miller, who works at Spiral Gardens nursery on Sacramento just across from the shooting scene on Oregon, said he didn’t see the shooting itself, but came outside moments later.
“Apparently there was an altercation outside,” and a young man ran inside the store, where he was shot, Miller said.
Miller described the injured youth as “a very upstanding fellow” who “seemed like he was putting his life together. He’s been through a lot, but mostly he acted in a pretty noble manner and with a lot of character.”
But some other neighbors said they believed that the youth and his companion had been involved in neighborhood altercations and that at least one had been arrested as the result of a violent incident involving another youth.
“They’ve had problems,” Nzinga said. “But we live in South Berkeley.”
She said the incident began when the two youths, ages 18 and 16, stopped by the store. The 18-year-old went in to buy gum, and when he was leaving “he was accosted by two armed gunmen who pistol-whipped him.”
The youth fled into the store and ran to the back, calling out for his younger brother. When the boy entered the store, he was shot three times, once in the stomach and twice in the sides, she said. One slug bruised his aorta and missed his heart by a quarter-inch.
Nzinga said she had repeatedly called the Berkeley police in hopes of arranging protection for her sons, “but they never call me back.”
The Oakland police did call, she said, and interviewed her because of similarities to another incident in that city.
The surrounding neighborhood has seen a relatively high rate of violence and property crimes over the last six months, according to Berkeley Police figures gleaned from the department’s Community Crime View website.
Over the past six months prior to Friday night’s incident, the area within a thousand feet of the intersection has seen three assaults with a deadly weapon, four robberies, a carjacking, ten residential burglaries, three commercial burglaries, eight drug arrests, a dozen car thefts and 41 loud reports, which most typically are calls reporting gunshots.
“There’s a lot of crime here,” said a neighborhood merchant. “We’ve been trying to get a meeting with the city manager and chief of police but so far nothing’s happened.”
Another merchant said that for a time police had bicycle patrols in Beats 12 and 13, which fall on either side of Sacramento Street. “It works a lot better when the officers know the neighbors,” he said.
“They were dealing drugs up and down the street and we couldn’t get the police to come,” said a merchant.
Miller acknowledged that violence isn’t unusual in the neighborhood. “There’s at least one shooting every six months,” he said. But he also said police typically respond too heavily, and he charged that officers frequently forced young men to lie down while they hold “exotic” weapons on them.
But “after they find a couple of dime bags and make some arrests, then there’s no longer any police presence,” he said.
McDaniel, who lives at the intersection of Mabel Street and Ashby Avenue, said her son had been walking home with three friends at the time of the shooting.
A large man who enjoys working out, he may have been singled out for attack because he is larger than his friends, she said. She said someone had called out to the shooters, “They’re cool, they’re cool” in the seconds before the shots were fired.
“They heard the gun being cocked and that’s when they took off running,” she said. McDaniel said her son was struck by three bullets fired from behind, one severing his femoral artery.
“He bled out on the street, and they brought him back,” she said, after his heart stopped several times.
McDaniel said surgeons had operated on her son several times after the shooting and were undertaking yet another operation Wednesday afternoon in an effort to save his leg.
original
Thursday, May 08
A brazen Friday night shooting of two young brothers in a troubled south Berkeley neighborhood has renewed calls for a greater police presence there. (The Planet is witholding their names because of their age.)
The first shooting was followed by a second 40 minutes later at 63rd and Herzog streets in North Oakland, less than a block outside the Berkeley city limits. The gravely injured victim there was Poitier McDaniel of Berkeley.
While the news media focused on a campus murder and a hostage standoff in the Berkeley hills, some citizens who live near the intersection of Sacramento and Oregon streets wondered on Tuesday why they couldn’t get more attention from City Hall and police headquarters.
A dispute that erupted on the street about 9:45 p.m. Friday ended in gunfire at Bob’s Liquors on that corner. A 16-year-old was shot three times, said one neighbor who declined to be identified by name. He said he had not been questioned by police although he saw the shooting.
Ayodele Nzinga, the mother of the boys who were the targets of the attack, said the Berkeley police have refused to return her calls about it. Police also did not return the Daily Planet’s calls about the shooting.
Nzinga said two men, both armed, had followed one of her sons into the store and shot the other one when he rushed into the store on hearing his brother’s call for help.
In the second shooting, the 29-year-old McDaniel was shot three times from behind after he and three friends were approached by two men who told them they couldn’t be on the street, said Dana McDaniel, his mother.
“It may be the same two people,” she said.
Getting on-the-record comments in the Sacramento Street shooting has proven difficult, with many neighbors refusing to be quoted by name for fear of possible reprisals.
The youths who were at-tacked in Berkeley were members of a local hip hop group, and Nzinga said both had prior run-ins with police, which she said was the result of growing up in public housing in a neighborhood with many ex-felons.
Another neighbor, Daniel Miller, who works at Spiral Gardens nursery on Sacramento just across from the shooting scene on Oregon, said he didn’t see the shooting itself, but came outside moments later.
“Apparently there was an altercation outside,” and a young man ran inside the store, where he was shot, Miller said.
Miller described the injured youth as “a very upstanding fellow” who “seemed like he was putting his life together. He’s been through a lot, but mostly he acted in a pretty noble manner and with a lot of character.”
But some other neighbors said they believed that the youth and his companion had been involved in neighborhood altercations and that at least one had been arrested as the result of a violent incident involving another youth.
“They’ve had problems,” Nzinga said. “But we live in South Berkeley.”
She said the incident began when the two youths, ages 18 and 16, stopped by the store. The 18-year-old went in to buy gum, and when he was leaving “he was accosted by two armed gunmen who pistol-whipped him.”
The youth fled into the store and ran to the back, calling out for his younger brother. When the boy entered the store, he was shot three times, once in the stomach and twice in the sides, she said. One slug bruised his aorta and missed his heart by a quarter-inch.
Nzinga said she had repeatedly called the Berkeley police in hopes of arranging protection for her sons, “but they never call me back.”
The Oakland police did call, she said, and interviewed her because of similarities to another incident in that city.
The surrounding neighborhood has seen a relatively high rate of violence and property crimes over the last six months, according to Berkeley Police figures gleaned from the department’s Community Crime View website.
Over the past six months prior to Friday night’s incident, the area within a thousand feet of the intersection has seen three assaults with a deadly weapon, four robberies, a carjacking, ten residential burglaries, three commercial burglaries, eight drug arrests, a dozen car thefts and 41 loud reports, which most typically are calls reporting gunshots.
“There’s a lot of crime here,” said a neighborhood merchant. “We’ve been trying to get a meeting with the city manager and chief of police but so far nothing’s happened.”
Another merchant said that for a time police had bicycle patrols in Beats 12 and 13, which fall on either side of Sacramento Street. “It works a lot better when the officers know the neighbors,” he said.
“They were dealing drugs up and down the street and we couldn’t get the police to come,” said a merchant.
Miller acknowledged that violence isn’t unusual in the neighborhood. “There’s at least one shooting every six months,” he said. But he also said police typically respond too heavily, and he charged that officers frequently forced young men to lie down while they hold “exotic” weapons on them.
But “after they find a couple of dime bags and make some arrests, then there’s no longer any police presence,” he said.
McDaniel, who lives at the intersection of Mabel Street and Ashby Avenue, said her son had been walking home with three friends at the time of the shooting.
A large man who enjoys working out, he may have been singled out for attack because he is larger than his friends, she said. She said someone had called out to the shooters, “They’re cool, they’re cool” in the seconds before the shots were fired.
“They heard the gun being cocked and that’s when they took off running,” she said. McDaniel said her son was struck by three bullets fired from behind, one severing his femoral artery.
“He bled out on the street, and they brought him back,” she said, after his heart stopped several times.
McDaniel said surgeons had operated on her son several times after the shooting and were undertaking yet another operation Wednesday afternoon in an effort to save his leg.
original
Sunday, April 13, 2008
OPD gets 28 new officers
ABC - 7 (4-11-08)
The mayor of Oakland promised to cut crime and a soaring murder rate by putting more police officers on the job and, today, he's a big step closer to that goal.
Watching her son become an Oakland police officer fills Margie Yslava with mixed emotions.
"I'm really proud but it's just the things that happen that you hear in the news. The things you hear about Oakland, the bad parts, the bad things," said Officer's mother Margie Yslava.
What would compel her 31-year-old son and father of two to leave a steady public works job and put his life on the line every day?
"I actually took a pay cut to come here, but this is what I want to do, you're here to help people and I truly believe that, it's a great place to be," said Kito Yslava from the Oakland Police Department.
This morning, Yslava and 27 others recruits became sworn-in officers, bringing the force to 753. The target is 803 officers by the end of the year.
Yslava's father wonders if that's an unrealistic goal.
"I realize they need more people but is that ever going to get fielded because you have attrition, people leaving, so to me they'll always be playing catch-up," said the officer's father Oswald Yslava.
Oakland police Chief Wayne Tucker says the attrition rate is down from five or six a month to about three.
"In July, we will graduate another 30 academy students which will make it 783. In May we will have started two academies with 100 people in those academies," said Chief Wayne Tucker from the Oakland Police Department.
A group of Oakland residents and business owners is backing a petition calling for even more officers, more than a 1,000. Mayor Ron Dellums' concern is how the city would pay for them.
2:38 length
Original
The mayor of Oakland promised to cut crime and a soaring murder rate by putting more police officers on the job and, today, he's a big step closer to that goal.
Watching her son become an Oakland police officer fills Margie Yslava with mixed emotions.
"I'm really proud but it's just the things that happen that you hear in the news. The things you hear about Oakland, the bad parts, the bad things," said Officer's mother Margie Yslava.
What would compel her 31-year-old son and father of two to leave a steady public works job and put his life on the line every day?
"I actually took a pay cut to come here, but this is what I want to do, you're here to help people and I truly believe that, it's a great place to be," said Kito Yslava from the Oakland Police Department.
This morning, Yslava and 27 others recruits became sworn-in officers, bringing the force to 753. The target is 803 officers by the end of the year.
Yslava's father wonders if that's an unrealistic goal.
"I realize they need more people but is that ever going to get fielded because you have attrition, people leaving, so to me they'll always be playing catch-up," said the officer's father Oswald Yslava.
Oakland police Chief Wayne Tucker says the attrition rate is down from five or six a month to about three.
"In July, we will graduate another 30 academy students which will make it 783. In May we will have started two academies with 100 people in those academies," said Chief Wayne Tucker from the Oakland Police Department.
A group of Oakland residents and business owners is backing a petition calling for even more officers, more than a 1,000. Mayor Ron Dellums' concern is how the city would pay for them.
2:38 length
Original
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Recent Oakland police killings
The line of crap these cops are trying to feed us is beyond arrogance. Neither case is seems to be even half plausible. Or maybe my incredulity is a response to the apparent blind faith in the truthfulness of police accounts. Here we have witnesses to the shootings in direct contradiction to the department statements. For me, anyway, I don't care if a guy is armed or not, the cops shouldn't be shooting people on the streets. It is not helping. Do you feel safer?
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/media?id=6035797
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/media?id=6035797
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Witnesses: Teen killed by police had his hands up
Accounts dispute Oakland police version of fatal shooting of 15-year-old
Tribune - Mar. 21
Witnesses said Thursday that Jose Luis Buenrostro-Gonzalez, 15, had his hands in the air and was unarmed when he was fatally shot by Oakland police Wednesday.
"I saw the boy (with his) hands up and saw bullets flying," said witness Luis, who declined to give his last name for fear of retribution. When he rounded the corner, Luis said, he saw Buenrostro-Gonzalez facing the police.
"I didn't see a gun," he said.
Another witness, Ricardo Pedroza, 17, said that when he was coming to meet Buenrostro-Gonzalez from a block away, he heard an undercover police vehicle screech to a halt and an officer on a loudspeaker warn Buenrostro-Gonzalez to put his hands in the air.
"He had his hands up and they were still shooting him," Pedroza said. Pedroza ran to tell his sister and told her to call for an ambulance. His sister, Maria Pedroza, 24, then went to check on Buenrostro-Gonzalez before police ordered her away, Pedroza said. "I ran down the street and saw him flat on his stomach. I asked the police 'Why did you shoot him?' The police said that he had a gun on him," Maria Pedroza said. "That is when they reached in his waistband and pulled something silver out. ... He never had a gun (when he left the Pedroza's house minutes earlier).”
Three gang-unit officers said they saw Buenrostro-Gonzalez walking near 79th Avenue and Rudsdale Street about noon Wednesday, with what they believed to be a firearm. Police said before they could give a verbal command to surrender, Buenrostro-Gonzalez pulled out a sawed-off rifle and pointed it at them, then all three officers shot at him. It was not known how many times Buenrostro-Gonzalez had been hit. "No one in the family is accustomed to having guns ... We are humble people," Buenrostro-Gonzalez's father, Jose Luis Buenrostro, said, disputing the police account of the fatal shooting.
Police maintain that the officers were not at fault and that Buenrostro-Gonzalez had threatened them with a firearm. "The officers reacted appropriately and in compliance with our policies when confronting an armed and dangerous suspect," said police Assistant Chief Howard Jordan. "They fired in defense of their lives after (Buenrostro-Gonzalez) pointed a weapon at them.”
Police said Buenrosto-Gonzalez may have been associated with gangs in East Oakland. His friends and family vehemently denied the possibility. "He was not in no gangs or nothing. He was calm, went to school, get good grades, was focused," his cousin Jess Gonzalez said. Buenrostro-Gonzalez was a sophomore at Oakland Aviation High School, a charter school, his family said.
This is the second fatal police shooting in Oakland in two weeks. Last Friday, Casper Banjo, 70, was fatally shot by police after pointing a replica pistol at officers. In September, police came under fire for the controversial shooting of Gary King.
Rashidah Grinage, director of PUEBLO, a police watchdog group, said she was not privy to the facts of the two most recent fatal shooting cases, but said she won't blindly accept the police story of what happened without an independent investigation. "I am definitely troubled that there have been three of these in a relatively short period of time," she said. "I think that definitely the department is going to have to look at this.” She called on the Oakland Police Department to immediately release the names of the officers involved. "What other public official who's involved in any kind of public controversy has his name withheld?" Grinage said.
original
Tribune - Mar. 21
Witnesses said Thursday that Jose Luis Buenrostro-Gonzalez, 15, had his hands in the air and was unarmed when he was fatally shot by Oakland police Wednesday.
"I saw the boy (with his) hands up and saw bullets flying," said witness Luis, who declined to give his last name for fear of retribution. When he rounded the corner, Luis said, he saw Buenrostro-Gonzalez facing the police.
"I didn't see a gun," he said.
Another witness, Ricardo Pedroza, 17, said that when he was coming to meet Buenrostro-Gonzalez from a block away, he heard an undercover police vehicle screech to a halt and an officer on a loudspeaker warn Buenrostro-Gonzalez to put his hands in the air.
"He had his hands up and they were still shooting him," Pedroza said. Pedroza ran to tell his sister and told her to call for an ambulance. His sister, Maria Pedroza, 24, then went to check on Buenrostro-Gonzalez before police ordered her away, Pedroza said. "I ran down the street and saw him flat on his stomach. I asked the police 'Why did you shoot him?' The police said that he had a gun on him," Maria Pedroza said. "That is when they reached in his waistband and pulled something silver out. ... He never had a gun (when he left the Pedroza's house minutes earlier).”
Three gang-unit officers said they saw Buenrostro-Gonzalez walking near 79th Avenue and Rudsdale Street about noon Wednesday, with what they believed to be a firearm. Police said before they could give a verbal command to surrender, Buenrostro-Gonzalez pulled out a sawed-off rifle and pointed it at them, then all three officers shot at him. It was not known how many times Buenrostro-Gonzalez had been hit. "No one in the family is accustomed to having guns ... We are humble people," Buenrostro-Gonzalez's father, Jose Luis Buenrostro, said, disputing the police account of the fatal shooting.
Police maintain that the officers were not at fault and that Buenrostro-Gonzalez had threatened them with a firearm. "The officers reacted appropriately and in compliance with our policies when confronting an armed and dangerous suspect," said police Assistant Chief Howard Jordan. "They fired in defense of their lives after (Buenrostro-Gonzalez) pointed a weapon at them.”
Police said Buenrosto-Gonzalez may have been associated with gangs in East Oakland. His friends and family vehemently denied the possibility. "He was not in no gangs or nothing. He was calm, went to school, get good grades, was focused," his cousin Jess Gonzalez said. Buenrostro-Gonzalez was a sophomore at Oakland Aviation High School, a charter school, his family said.
This is the second fatal police shooting in Oakland in two weeks. Last Friday, Casper Banjo, 70, was fatally shot by police after pointing a replica pistol at officers. In September, police came under fire for the controversial shooting of Gary King.
Rashidah Grinage, director of PUEBLO, a police watchdog group, said she was not privy to the facts of the two most recent fatal shooting cases, but said she won't blindly accept the police story of what happened without an independent investigation. "I am definitely troubled that there have been three of these in a relatively short period of time," she said. "I think that definitely the department is going to have to look at this.” She called on the Oakland Police Department to immediately release the names of the officers involved. "What other public official who's involved in any kind of public controversy has his name withheld?" Grinage said.
original
Dates and Names
March 19, 2008 - Unnamed OPD shot Jose Luis Buenrostro-Gonzales
March 14, 2008 - OPD Officer Tim Martin shot Casper Banjo
February 16, 2008 - BPD Officer Rashawn Cummings shot Anita Gay
Family of slain man asks: 'How did we get here?'
We need to stop taking the explanations of police as granted. This here is another shooting that doesn't add up. Cops never seem to think it is important to examine whether they should have been bothering this old guy in the first place. There doesn't sound like there are actually any allegations of criminal activity by Banjo. Apparently, the question, "So?" doesn't immediately pop up for these reporters like it does for me.
They shot Banjo because he was in posession of a replica gun? It still wouldn't have been okay to shoot him if the gun had been real, right?
-----------------------------
Questions linger in death of Oakland artist fatally shot by police
Tribune - March 22
As if the grief over Oakland artist Casper Banjo's sudden death last week was not enough sorrow for friends and family, there is the weight of unanswered questions about how he died.
On the evening of March 14, the 70-year-old Banjo was surrounded by armed officers outside the Eastmont Mall police precinct commanding him to relinquish the cast-iron 9-mm Berretta replica pistol he was holding. He did not.
The question burdening those who knew him is how Banjo — by all accounts a talented printmaker and peaceful person — came to be standing in front of police with a fake firearm at sunset on 73rd Avenue.
And why a 160-pound elderly man was shot by an assault rifle instead of a non-lethal weapon.
The bottom line, police said, is that only Officer Tim Martin can fully answer why he felt Banjo was enough of a threat to police to shoot him.
Police who had surrounded Banjo called for an officer trained to use a non-lethal bean bag round, which can still be dangerous if used incorrectly. But he was too late. Police will not approach an armed person with a stun gun in such a situation.
That leaves the basic command "put down your gun," Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said.
Meanwhile, mourners are left with heavy hearts and minds.
Banjo had been working from a small Section-8 subsidized apartment on 69th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard, near where he was killed.
He walked past the Eastmont Mall in the mornings to exercise after quadruple bypass heart surgery last year.
Banjo disliked living in East Oakland and Deterville and said he feared nearby drug dealers and was cautious not to linger on the street for too long for fear of becoming a target.
A worker at the Center for Elders Independence called the family Thursday — as they were preparing for Banjo's funeral — to say he could move next week to a board and care facility. He wanted to live in a place where people eat breakfast and dinner in the kitchen, his family said.
Akili Banjo said Banjo had complained to her and his doctor at the Center for Elders Independence, which supervised his medical care, that the medication he had recently been prescribed was making him feel anxious (he took four medications and the latest one was changed a month ago). I just didn't realize it could be worse than he thought it was," she said.
She said she worried about his health but emphasized that he wasn't mentally unstable.
He could have been confused, however, during the confrontation with police, and she wondered if he had suffered a seizure while officers were commanding him to drop the replica gun. She said Banjo would "black out" during a seizure and remember nothing, as is common among some forms of epileptic seizures.
Wright said Banjo did not sound depressed or mentally out of sorts when the two talked by phone the day before the shooting.
The idea of Banjo threatening anyone with a gun was "bizarre," Wright added, echoing the reaction of a dozen colleagues and family members.
Deterville said it boiled down to black men — young, old and in between — being profiled as dangerous. Racism is the "elephant in the room," he said.
Police, he said, should be able to discern whether someone is a real threat.
It is extremely hard to tell if a gun is fake and police don't have enough time to say "Hey, is that a real gun?" if they feel their life is in danger, said Holmgren.
original
They shot Banjo because he was in posession of a replica gun? It still wouldn't have been okay to shoot him if the gun had been real, right?
-----------------------------
Questions linger in death of Oakland artist fatally shot by police
Tribune - March 22
As if the grief over Oakland artist Casper Banjo's sudden death last week was not enough sorrow for friends and family, there is the weight of unanswered questions about how he died.
On the evening of March 14, the 70-year-old Banjo was surrounded by armed officers outside the Eastmont Mall police precinct commanding him to relinquish the cast-iron 9-mm Berretta replica pistol he was holding. He did not.
The question burdening those who knew him is how Banjo — by all accounts a talented printmaker and peaceful person — came to be standing in front of police with a fake firearm at sunset on 73rd Avenue.
And why a 160-pound elderly man was shot by an assault rifle instead of a non-lethal weapon.
The bottom line, police said, is that only Officer Tim Martin can fully answer why he felt Banjo was enough of a threat to police to shoot him.
Police who had surrounded Banjo called for an officer trained to use a non-lethal bean bag round, which can still be dangerous if used incorrectly. But he was too late. Police will not approach an armed person with a stun gun in such a situation.
That leaves the basic command "put down your gun," Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said.
Meanwhile, mourners are left with heavy hearts and minds.
Banjo had been working from a small Section-8 subsidized apartment on 69th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard, near where he was killed.
He walked past the Eastmont Mall in the mornings to exercise after quadruple bypass heart surgery last year.
Banjo disliked living in East Oakland and Deterville and said he feared nearby drug dealers and was cautious not to linger on the street for too long for fear of becoming a target.
A worker at the Center for Elders Independence called the family Thursday — as they were preparing for Banjo's funeral — to say he could move next week to a board and care facility. He wanted to live in a place where people eat breakfast and dinner in the kitchen, his family said.
Akili Banjo said Banjo had complained to her and his doctor at the Center for Elders Independence, which supervised his medical care, that the medication he had recently been prescribed was making him feel anxious (he took four medications and the latest one was changed a month ago). I just didn't realize it could be worse than he thought it was," she said.
She said she worried about his health but emphasized that he wasn't mentally unstable.
He could have been confused, however, during the confrontation with police, and she wondered if he had suffered a seizure while officers were commanding him to drop the replica gun. She said Banjo would "black out" during a seizure and remember nothing, as is common among some forms of epileptic seizures.
Wright said Banjo did not sound depressed or mentally out of sorts when the two talked by phone the day before the shooting.
The idea of Banjo threatening anyone with a gun was "bizarre," Wright added, echoing the reaction of a dozen colleagues and family members.
Deterville said it boiled down to black men — young, old and in between — being profiled as dangerous. Racism is the "elephant in the room," he said.
Police, he said, should be able to discern whether someone is a real threat.
It is extremely hard to tell if a gun is fake and police don't have enough time to say "Hey, is that a real gun?" if they feel their life is in danger, said Holmgren.
original
Friday, March 21, 2008
May 22 event at Sweetie Pie & Poppy's
Parking lot party celebrating the youth of Oakland, building the awareness of the violence going in our community. This event will also be celebrating Gary King Jr., the 20-year old who was shot and killed by Oakland Police last September. There will be an open mic for young people to rap, sing, dance or just speak about their views on the violence in Oakland. This is a peaceful celebration where creative energy can come together and strengthen the neighborhoods of Oakland.
Sweetie Pie & Poppy
5319 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 547-9743
From noon-6 pm
Police Hold Gun On Teacher Aboard Bus Full of Students
The most awful part of this story is that even after a week, the Berkeley Police failed to acknowledge a mistake had been made. The police are so busy claiming that their actions are justified, they appear to be oblivious to the harmful and dangerous impact they have on the community.
This kind of thing has an impact on the children who witness it. I find it difficult to understand how those children are ever going to feel safe on the streets after witnessing such an indefensible non-voluntary stop. This police spokesperson admits that the cops were supposed to be looking for a juvenile.
------------------------
Daily Planet - March 14, 2008
Several Berkeley police officers jumped on a public bus full of Cragmont elementary students last week and held a gun on their teacher, misidentified as a robbery suspect, while he was taking students to a basketball game.
Parents and school staff charge the Berkeley Police Department with bias against black males.
DeAndre Swygert told the Planet that he was taking 10 students from Cragmont to Emerson when three to four police cars surrounded their AC Transit bus and pulled it over.
“One of the kids said ‘look’ and I saw one of the officers banging on the bus window with his gun,” Swygert said. “Then six to seven officers approached the bus through the back door, put a gun by my face and told me to put my hands up. They did not handcuff me, but they made me put my hands behind my back. One of the officers grabbed me by my shirt and got me off the bus. They started searching my backpack and asked me who I was, where I was going and if I was with the kids.”
Berkeley police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss told the planet, “Since the suspects were seen with a gun by the victim, officers, in keeping with tactics to ensure community and officer safety, will have their guns drawn.”
“If there is a suggestion or report that a suspect is armed, officers are well within policy in keeping with not just their own safety but also the community’s safety. The suspect could have posed a threat to the children.”
On the 1100 block of Euclid, a teenager jumped out of a maroon van and pointed a semi-automatic pistol at a student and made off with a camera and some other belongings. Reportedly, the thief jumped back into the van and drove off.
After searching the maroon van, officers did not find a gun, which led them to believe the suspect was still armed.
“What they did was inappropriate,” Swygert said. “I had children with me ... Some of them started to cry. I think the police could have done a whole lot better. They singled me out because I am a young black male with dreadlocks. They stopped me for no reason. If they were looking for robbers who had hijacked a car then why did they have to stop the bus?”
“They were looking for a black male juvenile,” she said. “In this case they would not have been looking for anyone else.”
Angela Gilder called DeAndre’s encounter with the police “humiliating.”
“Yet another case of ‘mistaken identity,’ Mr. Swygert was at the mercy of the officers in a very degrading and embarrassing manner,” she said. “No apology was given to Mr. Swygert or our students. All too often this ... is a situation that occurs numerous times with many young African American males.”
A Cragmont parent said her son was very upset by incident.
“I thought it was crazy they drew guns, and that they dragged the coach down and asked him questions,” she said. “I am shocked they would do it in the presence of children ... I have grown up in Berkeley and it’s very common for the BPD to go out of their way to do this ... They think everybody with dreads and a sweatshirt is a suspect.”
Alonzo told the Planet that he and some of his friends had put their hands up when they saw the police.
“They asked us who Mr. Swygert was,” the 10-year-old said. “We told him he was our coach and we were coming from Cragmont.
Another parent said her son has had nightmares from the incident.
“My son told me he didn’t know what was going to happen to him or DeAndre in the bus,” she said. “I told him it was unfortunate, but that if you were a young black male you were going to get stopped at least once, if not more, in your lifetime. We’ll probably have this conversation more than once.”
Principal Vu said he was trying to set up a meeting with the Berkeley Police Department to bring in counselors to meet with the students.
Vu said that counselors would be available on campus Thursday to talk to students about the incident.
Berkeley Police Officer Jerome Colbert, a former teacher and school resource officer, will meet with Swygert, students and parents today to answer questions about the incident.
original
This kind of thing has an impact on the children who witness it. I find it difficult to understand how those children are ever going to feel safe on the streets after witnessing such an indefensible non-voluntary stop. This police spokesperson admits that the cops were supposed to be looking for a juvenile.
------------------------
Daily Planet - March 14, 2008
Several Berkeley police officers jumped on a public bus full of Cragmont elementary students last week and held a gun on their teacher, misidentified as a robbery suspect, while he was taking students to a basketball game.
Parents and school staff charge the Berkeley Police Department with bias against black males.
DeAndre Swygert told the Planet that he was taking 10 students from Cragmont to Emerson when three to four police cars surrounded their AC Transit bus and pulled it over.
“One of the kids said ‘look’ and I saw one of the officers banging on the bus window with his gun,” Swygert said. “Then six to seven officers approached the bus through the back door, put a gun by my face and told me to put my hands up. They did not handcuff me, but they made me put my hands behind my back. One of the officers grabbed me by my shirt and got me off the bus. They started searching my backpack and asked me who I was, where I was going and if I was with the kids.”
Berkeley police spokesperson Sgt. Mary Kusmiss told the planet, “Since the suspects were seen with a gun by the victim, officers, in keeping with tactics to ensure community and officer safety, will have their guns drawn.”
“If there is a suggestion or report that a suspect is armed, officers are well within policy in keeping with not just their own safety but also the community’s safety. The suspect could have posed a threat to the children.”
On the 1100 block of Euclid, a teenager jumped out of a maroon van and pointed a semi-automatic pistol at a student and made off with a camera and some other belongings. Reportedly, the thief jumped back into the van and drove off.
After searching the maroon van, officers did not find a gun, which led them to believe the suspect was still armed.
“What they did was inappropriate,” Swygert said. “I had children with me ... Some of them started to cry. I think the police could have done a whole lot better. They singled me out because I am a young black male with dreadlocks. They stopped me for no reason. If they were looking for robbers who had hijacked a car then why did they have to stop the bus?”
“They were looking for a black male juvenile,” she said. “In this case they would not have been looking for anyone else.”
Angela Gilder called DeAndre’s encounter with the police “humiliating.”
“Yet another case of ‘mistaken identity,’ Mr. Swygert was at the mercy of the officers in a very degrading and embarrassing manner,” she said. “No apology was given to Mr. Swygert or our students. All too often this ... is a situation that occurs numerous times with many young African American males.”
A Cragmont parent said her son was very upset by incident.
“I thought it was crazy they drew guns, and that they dragged the coach down and asked him questions,” she said. “I am shocked they would do it in the presence of children ... I have grown up in Berkeley and it’s very common for the BPD to go out of their way to do this ... They think everybody with dreads and a sweatshirt is a suspect.”
Alonzo told the Planet that he and some of his friends had put their hands up when they saw the police.
“They asked us who Mr. Swygert was,” the 10-year-old said. “We told him he was our coach and we were coming from Cragmont.
Another parent said her son has had nightmares from the incident.
“My son told me he didn’t know what was going to happen to him or DeAndre in the bus,” she said. “I told him it was unfortunate, but that if you were a young black male you were going to get stopped at least once, if not more, in your lifetime. We’ll probably have this conversation more than once.”
Principal Vu said he was trying to set up a meeting with the Berkeley Police Department to bring in counselors to meet with the students.
Vu said that counselors would be available on campus Thursday to talk to students about the incident.
Berkeley Police Officer Jerome Colbert, a former teacher and school resource officer, will meet with Swygert, students and parents today to answer questions about the incident.
original
PRC, Copwatch Want Answers On Shooting by Police Officer
That's how the taser companies have been able to make so much money in law enforcement. People dislike seeing people getting killed in these police actions when the cop over-reacts and pulls his weapon when more finesse is called for.
But tasers tend to be taken for granted in that they are billed as non-lethal. So officers misuse them out of a falsely placed confidence in their safe effect. I've seen video of people getting tased for talking back to an officer. In those cases, I want to say ban their use. The benefit of tasers can only be seen if drawn guns are the only alternative. In all other uses, tasers seem to me to be cruel punishment.
Also, they seem to be inefficient in the goal of immobilizing the subject. I've seen videos where people get tased over and over presumably because they keep moving instead of following the officer's order to be still or "stop fighting." It stands to reason that a person who has just been tased might have trouble staying still because of the survival instinct to escape pain as well as the loss of motor control tasers are designed to effect.
------------
Daily Planet-Feb 22, 2008
Berkeley’s Police Review Commission and Copwatch are among the groups demanding answers to why five-year Berkeley Police Officer Rashawn Cummings used deadly force on Anita Gay, a 51-year-old South Berkeley grandmother.
Still, she said there are questions she would want to see answered: “Why did the officer respond by himself?” she asked. The Berkeley Police Department General Order D-5 issued Oct. 30, 2006 says that, in the case of a domestic dispute, a dispatcher “should, whenever possible, dispatch two officers to the scene.”
“Domestic violence is one of the most dangerous calls,” Prichett said, underscoring that she questions whether there is adequate supervision and training of Berkeley police.
Prichett said she also wants to know why the officer didn’t use pepper spray rather than deadly force, which was an option.
Questions have been raised about whether the Berkeley police department ought to invest in Taser guns, devices that emit electro shocks. The BPD currently is not prohibited from purchasing them.
Councilmember Betty Olds said she understands some people have died from the use of Tasers, “But a lot fewer people have died with Tasers than with pistols,” she said.
“We would caution against suggesting that a Taser may have been a viable option in Saturday night’s officer involved shooting. The incident unfolded very quickly,” said Sgt. Mary Kusmiss in a written statement.
Schlosberg said the ACLU doesn’t have a position against Tasers. “They should be very strictly regulated,” he said, noting that Tasers have been implicated with loss of life when there have been multiple shocks, prolonged shocks and pre-existing medical conditions.
“They are not risk free,” he said.
The district attorney’s investigation should be completed in about six weeks.
original
But tasers tend to be taken for granted in that they are billed as non-lethal. So officers misuse them out of a falsely placed confidence in their safe effect. I've seen video of people getting tased for talking back to an officer. In those cases, I want to say ban their use. The benefit of tasers can only be seen if drawn guns are the only alternative. In all other uses, tasers seem to me to be cruel punishment.
Also, they seem to be inefficient in the goal of immobilizing the subject. I've seen videos where people get tased over and over presumably because they keep moving instead of following the officer's order to be still or "stop fighting." It stands to reason that a person who has just been tased might have trouble staying still because of the survival instinct to escape pain as well as the loss of motor control tasers are designed to effect.
------------
Daily Planet-Feb 22, 2008
Berkeley’s Police Review Commission and Copwatch are among the groups demanding answers to why five-year Berkeley Police Officer Rashawn Cummings used deadly force on Anita Gay, a 51-year-old South Berkeley grandmother.
Still, she said there are questions she would want to see answered: “Why did the officer respond by himself?” she asked. The Berkeley Police Department General Order D-5 issued Oct. 30, 2006 says that, in the case of a domestic dispute, a dispatcher “should, whenever possible, dispatch two officers to the scene.”
“Domestic violence is one of the most dangerous calls,” Prichett said, underscoring that she questions whether there is adequate supervision and training of Berkeley police.
Prichett said she also wants to know why the officer didn’t use pepper spray rather than deadly force, which was an option.
Questions have been raised about whether the Berkeley police department ought to invest in Taser guns, devices that emit electro shocks. The BPD currently is not prohibited from purchasing them.
Councilmember Betty Olds said she understands some people have died from the use of Tasers, “But a lot fewer people have died with Tasers than with pistols,” she said.
“We would caution against suggesting that a Taser may have been a viable option in Saturday night’s officer involved shooting. The incident unfolded very quickly,” said Sgt. Mary Kusmiss in a written statement.
Schlosberg said the ACLU doesn’t have a position against Tasers. “They should be very strictly regulated,” he said, noting that Tasers have been implicated with loss of life when there have been multiple shocks, prolonged shocks and pre-existing medical conditions.
“They are not risk free,” he said.
The district attorney’s investigation should be completed in about six weeks.
original
Fatal shooting OPD's second in two weeks
Police should not be permitted to fire on fleeing suspects. It constitutes shooting a person in the back.
According to department policy, an officer is justified in a shooting if he is in fear for his life. Fear is too easy. Even if the person is only trying to escape, the officer still claims he worried the person would turn around and fire a weapon.
That "fear standard" justifies the mistakes of cops who fire in response to a man pulling his wallet for example. No wonder there are so many mistakes when, after the fact, this standard justifies any shooting by police. Police can say they were afeared for their life and bypass the absence of real danger.
The policy is interpreted as an unspoken mandate to kill persons who simply appear to have a gun. It seems it is no matter what the circumstances of the stop nor whether the officer’s own actions provoked an unnecessary confrontation.
Rationally, if an officer makes a bad stop, meaning they abuse the benefit of the doubt given them, the natural reaction of the person being stopped includes making moves to protect himself.
If you justify an officer's kill by the fear standard, then it seems only fair that you have to justify defensive moves made by the person he is stopping. Oaklanders have good reason to run when they see officers with guns drawn, in reasonable fear for their lives. Yet, officers are exonerated after shooting people in the back.
----------------------------------
Officers say teen pointed rifle at them
Tribune - Mar. 20
OAKLAND — A 15-year-old boy was fatally shot around noon Wednesday by police officers who said he pointed a rifle at them, making it the second deadly shooting by Oakland police in as many weeks. Wednesday's shooting occurred in the area of 79th Avenue and Rudsdale Street.
The department said officers saw the youth walking on the sidewalk with what they believed to be a firearm. All three officers shot at him. It is not known yet how many times the youth was hit.
"The officers fired in defense of their lives," Holmgren said. "They thought he was going to shoot them. It's a traumatic experience.”
It is the second fatal police shooting in Oakland since Friday, when a 70-year-old man, Casper Banjo, was shot and killed after pointing a replica pistol.
Last year, authorities said, officers shot at a suspect in about a dozen cases, fatally wounding five of them, including the highly controversial September 2007 shooting of Gary King. King was shot in the back twice after a struggle with police, who said he was reaching for a loaded weapon. The witnesses said they never saw a gun — or saw King reach for one — and that the officer overreacted.
The litmus test is whether a reasonable person would fear for his life and the safety of others. It is a responsibility that must be considered critically when exercised, said Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris, known for handling police misconduct cases. Burris said, "The question is, if a person has a gun, do you automatically get to shoot them?" Burris said police justify shootings by claiming the officer's life was in danger.
Officers and their departments have no interest in admitting a mistake in judgment, such as whether they panicked or shot in error, because the death raises the possibility of civil or criminal liability, Burris said. The officer is probably going to get the benefit of the doubt, but the evidence has to be critically reviewed and evaluated to determine if deadly use of force was justified, he added. Officers can resort to nonlethal weapons, such as a shotgun that fires bean bags or a Taser— if the time and situation permit their use.
In the Friday shooting of Banjo, police were waiting for an officer to arrive and subdue him with a bean bag round. But, they said, before that officer arrived, Banjo pointed a fake gun at an officer after being ordered him to drop it.
Police are trained to assume someone may be armed. Officers will shoot if they fear for their safety, a POST official said.
original article
According to department policy, an officer is justified in a shooting if he is in fear for his life. Fear is too easy. Even if the person is only trying to escape, the officer still claims he worried the person would turn around and fire a weapon.
That "fear standard" justifies the mistakes of cops who fire in response to a man pulling his wallet for example. No wonder there are so many mistakes when, after the fact, this standard justifies any shooting by police. Police can say they were afeared for their life and bypass the absence of real danger.
The policy is interpreted as an unspoken mandate to kill persons who simply appear to have a gun. It seems it is no matter what the circumstances of the stop nor whether the officer’s own actions provoked an unnecessary confrontation.
Rationally, if an officer makes a bad stop, meaning they abuse the benefit of the doubt given them, the natural reaction of the person being stopped includes making moves to protect himself.
If you justify an officer's kill by the fear standard, then it seems only fair that you have to justify defensive moves made by the person he is stopping. Oaklanders have good reason to run when they see officers with guns drawn, in reasonable fear for their lives. Yet, officers are exonerated after shooting people in the back.
----------------------------------
Officers say teen pointed rifle at them
Tribune - Mar. 20
OAKLAND — A 15-year-old boy was fatally shot around noon Wednesday by police officers who said he pointed a rifle at them, making it the second deadly shooting by Oakland police in as many weeks. Wednesday's shooting occurred in the area of 79th Avenue and Rudsdale Street.
The department said officers saw the youth walking on the sidewalk with what they believed to be a firearm. All three officers shot at him. It is not known yet how many times the youth was hit.
"The officers fired in defense of their lives," Holmgren said. "They thought he was going to shoot them. It's a traumatic experience.”
It is the second fatal police shooting in Oakland since Friday, when a 70-year-old man, Casper Banjo, was shot and killed after pointing a replica pistol.
Last year, authorities said, officers shot at a suspect in about a dozen cases, fatally wounding five of them, including the highly controversial September 2007 shooting of Gary King. King was shot in the back twice after a struggle with police, who said he was reaching for a loaded weapon. The witnesses said they never saw a gun — or saw King reach for one — and that the officer overreacted.
The litmus test is whether a reasonable person would fear for his life and the safety of others. It is a responsibility that must be considered critically when exercised, said Oakland civil rights attorney John Burris, known for handling police misconduct cases. Burris said, "The question is, if a person has a gun, do you automatically get to shoot them?" Burris said police justify shootings by claiming the officer's life was in danger.
Officers and their departments have no interest in admitting a mistake in judgment, such as whether they panicked or shot in error, because the death raises the possibility of civil or criminal liability, Burris said. The officer is probably going to get the benefit of the doubt, but the evidence has to be critically reviewed and evaluated to determine if deadly use of force was justified, he added. Officers can resort to nonlethal weapons, such as a shotgun that fires bean bags or a Taser— if the time and situation permit their use.
In the Friday shooting of Banjo, police were waiting for an officer to arrive and subdue him with a bean bag round. But, they said, before that officer arrived, Banjo pointed a fake gun at an officer after being ordered him to drop it.
Police are trained to assume someone may be armed. Officers will shoot if they fear for their safety, a POST official said.
original article
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Sonya
She reached the roof just as the hour of the rat began. A few blocks away, the clock tower broadcast twelve bell tones.
She looked out at the blackness of the night. The day had been clear but no stars shone in the sky due to the flood of lights beaming up from the cities.
It had been after sundown when she and Taric were stopped by the police last Summer. When they refused to allow a voluntary search, the men ripped the bags from from both their backs.
The cops were in full riot regalla regardless of the peaceful nature of the protest. Sonya never saw their faces, never saw name tags. The furious and frightened police dumped the contents of the backpacks out on the street.
She looked out at the blackness of the night. The day had been clear but no stars shone in the sky due to the flood of lights beaming up from the cities.
It had been after sundown when she and Taric were stopped by the police last Summer. When they refused to allow a voluntary search, the men ripped the bags from from both their backs.
The cops were in full riot regalla regardless of the peaceful nature of the protest. Sonya never saw their faces, never saw name tags. The furious and frightened police dumped the contents of the backpacks out on the street.
Berkeley Copwatch interview
This is an old interview but still kick ass
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=6590
http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=6590
Daily Show Coverage of Code Pink
Jon Stewart calls it an all volunteer army. I guess he doesn't count all the mercenaries. The state can't expect to staff a war with voluntary recruits, so they have to use subterfuge to trick young people into joining.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=163653&title=marines-in-berkeley
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=163653&title=marines-in-berkeley
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
3 strikes Law, non-violent crimes
Stealing two Weed Eaters brings Sacramento man life prison term
By Associated Press
Feb. 5, 2008
ROSEVILLE - A 42-year old Sacramento man who stole two Weed Eaters from a Home Depot store is going to state prison for 28 years to life.
A Placer County judge says the recent theft on top of two robberies 15 years ago are enough to bring Reginald Whitfield a life prison term under California's "three-strikes" law.
Whitfield was convicted of armed robberies in 1991 and in 1993. He wrapped his hand like a gun in the first robbery and struggled with security officers after he was caught taking food from a market in the second.
Whitfield's attorney argued the minimal violence means he should not qualify as a third-strike offender.
Prosecutors say Whitfield also has numerous arrests for drugs, thefts, parole violations and failures to appear in court.
Original
Oakland Tribune
By Associated Press
Feb. 5, 2008
ROSEVILLE - A 42-year old Sacramento man who stole two Weed Eaters from a Home Depot store is going to state prison for 28 years to life.
A Placer County judge says the recent theft on top of two robberies 15 years ago are enough to bring Reginald Whitfield a life prison term under California's "three-strikes" law.
Whitfield was convicted of armed robberies in 1991 and in 1993. He wrapped his hand like a gun in the first robbery and struggled with security officers after he was caught taking food from a market in the second.
Whitfield's attorney argued the minimal violence means he should not qualify as a third-strike offender.
Prosecutors say Whitfield also has numerous arrests for drugs, thefts, parole violations and failures to appear in court.
Original
Oakland Tribune
SF-8 hearing this Thursday Feb. 7 at 9:30am
http://www.freethesf8.org
Charges narrow in 1971 slaying of S.F. cop
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Sgt. John Young was killed in August 1971 at the Inglesid...
State prosecutors are narrowing the charges against a group of reputed former militants accused of taking part in the 1971 slaying of a San Francisco police officer, dropping conspiracy charges against five of the eight defendants because they were filed too late.
The amended charges, to be filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, will remove one defendant, Richard O'Neal, from the case altogether, and leave the other seven men charged with murder, lawyers said Tuesday. A defense attorney said the change would force the prosecution to scale back its case, but a prosecutor disagreed.
The defendants are charged with murdering Sgt. John Young, 51, who was killed in August 1971 when at least three men burst into the Ingleside Police Station and one of them fired a shotgun through an opening in a bulletproof glass window.
O'Neal, a city custodian, was not charged in Young's death but was accused of conspiring with the others in the shooting and wounding of a uniformed special officer, Lawrence Heap, in February 1971.
Prosecutors described the defendants as former members of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers. All have denied involvement in Young's slaying, saying the prosecution's case is based on coerced and fabricated evidence.
Three men, including current defendant Harold Taylor, were arrested in New Orleans in 1975 and charged with murdering Young, but a judge dismissed the charges after finding that New Orleans police had tortured them.
The charge of conspiring to murder police officers is being dismissed against five defendants - O'Neal, Taylor, Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown and Henry Watson Jones - because the statute of limitations was three years at the time of the alleged plot, from 1968 to 1973. There is no statute of limitations for murder.
Of the three defendants who are still to be charged with conspiracy, two, Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, have been in prison since 1971 for killing two New York police officers. The third defendant, Francisco Torres, was also charged in that case, but the charges were dropped after the jury deadlocked, and he has remained in New York.
California prosecutors argue that the three-year deadline for a conspiracy prosecution must be suspended while a defendant is out of the state. But Michael Burt, an attorney who represents Boudreaux, said defense lawyers will contend that the deadline should be suspended only when the defendant is a fugitive.
Burt also said the dismissal of the conspiracy charges against his client and others would limit the scope of the case. He said prosecutors sought to prove there was a wide-ranging conspiracy to murder police officers in several states, with evidence including crimes that the defendants were convicted for or accused of committing from 1968 to 1973.
"The strategy was to use these allegations to dump as much prejudicial information into the record as they could to shore up a fairly weak homicide case," Burt said. "Without that conspiracy charge, it's going to narrow the issues considerably."
But David Druliner, a senior assistant attorney general heading the prosecution team, said the reduction of the charges should have little effect on the case. Other crimes committed by the defendants should still be admissible as evidence that they plotted to kill Young, he said.
Original
http://www.sfgate.com
Charges narrow in 1971 slaying of S.F. cop
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Sgt. John Young was killed in August 1971 at the Inglesid...
State prosecutors are narrowing the charges against a group of reputed former militants accused of taking part in the 1971 slaying of a San Francisco police officer, dropping conspiracy charges against five of the eight defendants because they were filed too late.
The amended charges, to be filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, will remove one defendant, Richard O'Neal, from the case altogether, and leave the other seven men charged with murder, lawyers said Tuesday. A defense attorney said the change would force the prosecution to scale back its case, but a prosecutor disagreed.
The defendants are charged with murdering Sgt. John Young, 51, who was killed in August 1971 when at least three men burst into the Ingleside Police Station and one of them fired a shotgun through an opening in a bulletproof glass window.
O'Neal, a city custodian, was not charged in Young's death but was accused of conspiring with the others in the shooting and wounding of a uniformed special officer, Lawrence Heap, in February 1971.
Prosecutors described the defendants as former members of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers. All have denied involvement in Young's slaying, saying the prosecution's case is based on coerced and fabricated evidence.
Three men, including current defendant Harold Taylor, were arrested in New Orleans in 1975 and charged with murdering Young, but a judge dismissed the charges after finding that New Orleans police had tortured them.
The charge of conspiring to murder police officers is being dismissed against five defendants - O'Neal, Taylor, Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown and Henry Watson Jones - because the statute of limitations was three years at the time of the alleged plot, from 1968 to 1973. There is no statute of limitations for murder.
Of the three defendants who are still to be charged with conspiracy, two, Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, have been in prison since 1971 for killing two New York police officers. The third defendant, Francisco Torres, was also charged in that case, but the charges were dropped after the jury deadlocked, and he has remained in New York.
California prosecutors argue that the three-year deadline for a conspiracy prosecution must be suspended while a defendant is out of the state. But Michael Burt, an attorney who represents Boudreaux, said defense lawyers will contend that the deadline should be suspended only when the defendant is a fugitive.
Burt also said the dismissal of the conspiracy charges against his client and others would limit the scope of the case. He said prosecutors sought to prove there was a wide-ranging conspiracy to murder police officers in several states, with evidence including crimes that the defendants were convicted for or accused of committing from 1968 to 1973.
"The strategy was to use these allegations to dump as much prejudicial information into the record as they could to shore up a fairly weak homicide case," Burt said. "Without that conspiracy charge, it's going to narrow the issues considerably."
But David Druliner, a senior assistant attorney general heading the prosecution team, said the reduction of the charges should have little effect on the case. Other crimes committed by the defendants should still be admissible as evidence that they plotted to kill Young, he said.
Original
http://www.sfgate.com
Rats
"Rats sing, they dream, and they express empathy for others," Coco Yu of PETA's Asia-Pacific branch said in a statement.
Original
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/world_news&id=5934762
Rats are really cool and they are exempted from many animal cruelty laws. It's legal to do almost anything to them in labs.
Original
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/world_news&id=5934762
Rats are really cool and they are exempted from many animal cruelty laws. It's legal to do almost anything to them in labs.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
unidentified victim shot by undisclosed officer
This drives me crazy.
Why would the the Chron even post this?
There is literally no information in the blurb.
It doesn't even hint at who the source is.
It just drags me into this feeling of cover-up. If it's not, why would this victim deserve so little attention? I'm going to do a public records request
original article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/03/BAGSUQQTJ14.DTL
Why would the the Chron even post this?
There is literally no information in the blurb.
It doesn't even hint at who the source is.
It just drags me into this feeling of cover-up. If it's not, why would this victim deserve so little attention? I'm going to do a public records request
original article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/03/BAGSUQQTJ14.DTL
5 dead by OPD in 2007, at least three more wounded
The last homicide of 2007 was committed by the OPD on Andrew Moppin, 20
The Tribune reported that
"It was the fifth fatal officer-involved shooting in Oakland in 2007."
However, at least one of those was never identified in the press, and at least 3 other suspects were wounded by police guns, unidentified, the Tribune has yet to follow up.
And, yes, police shootings are included included in the homicide rate.
original article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/02/BADEU7RFO.DTL
The Tribune reported that
"It was the fifth fatal officer-involved shooting in Oakland in 2007."
However, at least one of those was never identified in the press, and at least 3 other suspects were wounded by police guns, unidentified, the Tribune has yet to follow up.
And, yes, police shootings are included included in the homicide rate.
original article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/02/BADEU7RFO.DTL
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Oakland Shootings by police
Dec. 31, 2007
Andrew Moppin, 20
fatally shot by unidentified OPD officers
----------------------------
Dec 21, 2007
One dead in officer-involved shooting in Oakland
----------------------------
Sept 20, 2007
Gary King, Jr., 20
shot to death after tazing by Sgt. Pat Gonzalez
----------------------------
July 3, 2007
Officer-involved shooting in East Oakland wounds an unidentified victim
----------------------------
May 19, 2007
Oakland officer wounded, suspect killed
----------------------------
Feb 4, 2007
Addiel Meza, 21
Police slay man firing gun in street
----------------------------
Jan 16 2007
Alleged church burglar, 46
Shot in police search
----------------------------
Jan 3 2007
Howard Moody Williams, 37
Shot and killed by Contra Costa sheriff's Deputy Dale Hadley
Andrew Moppin, 20
fatally shot by unidentified OPD officers
----------------------------
Dec 21, 2007
One dead in officer-involved shooting in Oakland
----------------------------
Sept 20, 2007
Gary King, Jr., 20
shot to death after tazing by Sgt. Pat Gonzalez
----------------------------
July 3, 2007
Officer-involved shooting in East Oakland wounds an unidentified victim
----------------------------
May 19, 2007
Oakland officer wounded, suspect killed
----------------------------
Feb 4, 2007
Addiel Meza, 21
Police slay man firing gun in street
----------------------------
Jan 16 2007
Alleged church burglar, 46
Shot in police search
----------------------------
Jan 3 2007
Howard Moody Williams, 37
Shot and killed by Contra Costa sheriff's Deputy Dale Hadley
Chief Hambleton's cover up
I went to a subcommittee meeting of the Berkeley Police Review Commission some months after this article was printed.
One of the subcommittee members asked him why the internal affairs investigation had failed to ascertain the exact amount of drugs stolen. The Chief responded that to him it was only a matter of curiosity and not worth the resources it would take to discover the extent of the crime.
It is popularly held belief in Berkeley that Kent not only stole these drugs for himself but to sell in the community. I have spoken to individuals who claim to have bought from him.
Many Berkeleyans following the case, felt that if the investigation had uncovered the amount of drugs stolen, it would have been obvious that Kent had stolen far more than he would have been able to consume.
original article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/14/MNG77I9AQP34.DTL
One of the subcommittee members asked him why the internal affairs investigation had failed to ascertain the exact amount of drugs stolen. The Chief responded that to him it was only a matter of curiosity and not worth the resources it would take to discover the extent of the crime.
It is popularly held belief in Berkeley that Kent not only stole these drugs for himself but to sell in the community. I have spoken to individuals who claim to have bought from him.
Many Berkeleyans following the case, felt that if the investigation had uncovered the amount of drugs stolen, it would have been obvious that Kent had stolen far more than he would have been able to consume.
original article
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/14/MNG77I9AQP34.DTL
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Gary King, Jr.
I hate that Gary King, Jr. was shot in the back by Sgt. Gonzalez.
It makes me hostile and outraged towards the police and the police administrators.
I do love how Oakland remembers its culture and history. The public schools in Oakland are atrocious so most of it gets passed down through oral history.
This is 3rd shooting by Gonzalez, all his victims are young black men who had the audacity to try to run from him.
original article
http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/2300/
It makes me hostile and outraged towards the police and the police administrators.
I do love how Oakland remembers its culture and history. The public schools in Oakland are atrocious so most of it gets passed down through oral history.
This is 3rd shooting by Gonzalez, all his victims are young black men who had the audacity to try to run from him.
original article
http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/2300/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
