New Killing in WO; Plus, Car Thefts in Temescal/Rump Rockridge

Oakland's 31st murder happened yesterday -- on a Sunday afternoon. If you thought that "whipping out a tittie on a Sunday afternoon" was crazy (two superbowls ago) well this is just darn worse! Inexusable behavior.

Has OPD figured out what the common thread is in most of the murders?
Economic status of shooter, victim?
Race of both?
Common motive?
Common opportunity?
Common circumstances?

* * *

Moving on to actual crimes in North Oakland proper -- the Temescal/Rockridge brady bunch where the "legally" earned and taxed money's at...

we have muggings aplenty
we still have a good burglary burn rate
we lose at least five steel cages propelled by liquid explosive per week (stolen cars)

Who are the victims?

Choose from our three mutually exclusive specie of Temescaler/ Rockridger:
1 - mid 20s youngsters/artists/grungy or tatted out art students (35%)
2 - mid 30s young, urban professional yuppies who slave at corporate, inc. in SF (35%)
3 - mid 50s+ older people who lucked out and bought houses decades back (25%)

Note on car theft: see map below. City of Oakland had 106 officially reported car thefts in the last ten days. In the North Oakland area, 27 cars or 25% of the total.

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Takeaway: we must all be making it too easy for them!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "Vehicle Theft" to me means whole cars taken, not mere "Theft" of car parts of crap on your passenger seat.

Tips:
-close windows completely
-lock your doors
-use a steering wheel lock - masterlock works better than "the CLUB" - get one at Reed Bros on 45th
-use your alarm
-park with your wheels turned into the curb
-leave NOTHING in your car for thieves to steal: coins, phone, CDs, cameras, laptops, blah blah blah
-don't tint your windows
-always remove radio faceplate

You can't prevent guys from hotwiring your accord or civic once they're in, but you can keep them out by using the steps above.

Check out this handy list of the easiest cars to steal.

Lots of useful, common sense tips, too.

Including, etching your VIN into every window:

"VIN etching is so effective that many insurers offer discounts from 3% to 15% on comprehensive premiums for cars with etched windows. Cars that have been VIN etched have a 64% lower theft rate than non-etched cars. And, a VIN etched car has a more than an 85% chance of recovery if it is stolen."

March 5th bus stop shooting

Deadly Gunfire Claims Another Life In Oakland

Just hours after an Oakland City Council vote to add more officers to its police force, a neighborhood bus stop was riddled with gunfire early Wednesday leaving one person dead and another wounded.

The death was the city's 28th homicide of the year, far outpacing last where there were 15 homicides by this date.

The latest shooting took place at the corner of San Pablo and Brockhurst with officers responding to a "shots fired" call at 5:50 a.m.

Official details over at Oakland Crimespotting.

Where: San Pablo between 32nd and 33rd. Probably the homebase of "the perps" committing the 37th-41st Street armed robberies and burglaries in Temescal.


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Tri-City I-80 Crime Prevention Collab. Restarted

Daily Cal reports that

In response to increased crime rates in Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond, the Richmond City Council pledged $50,000 last week to reactivate a tri-city crime prevention program that disbanded about three years ago.

Great! And now... (deep voice)

"History of the Richmond-San Leandro strip, and how we got concentrated black poverty."

During WWII, blacks migerated from the Deep South, to get paid good wages in the war effort's shipbuilding jobs. Kaiser Shipbuilding, for example.

After the war ended, jobs dried up.
Don't forget about last hired, first fired.
No jobs = angry young men, loss of family authority.

Then the 1960s, a generation later. Civil rights enabled by fossil fuel freedom. But more crime because of the still-chronic lack of jobs.

1970s. CIA trafficks cocaine into LA, Detroit, SF Bay, other major cities for "Iran-Contra" scandal. Drug sales from Central American coca funded "our bitches" in Latin Am vs "Communists" and also funded Iranian weapons vs Iraq. ("let them kill each other" Kissinger)



1980s. crack epidemic reaches throughout US. most money laundered into big, private banks or offshore. Back into Wall Street as low interest capital. (Just like the old brit limey empire with opium and heroin sales--how do you think the Royals got so rich??) Unemployed poor people, largely black, get into drug sales to simply survive. few other options.

1990s-present. Accelerated Globalization offshored many of our remaining factory jobs -- the last remaining good paying jobs for less educated people -- to China, India, middle east, korea, etc.
Now we all have McJobs or highly professional "services" jobs. A "service economy" producing not much of value, unless you count hedge funds and real estate mortgage brokers-- WHOOPS!

So. Poor blacks from Richmond to South Oakland.
1) WWII jobs magnet
2) jobs disappear
3) drugs come in
4) where poor blacks are today

There's more to it, but this is the main gist.

Good thing Nancy Nadel is opening a choco factory, it'll employ all of west oakland soon in high paying jobs!

Seriously, we need more local factories. And farms.

A Better Oakland Police Recruiting Budget

It turns out that the Oakland City Council will approve $7.7 Million to spend on police recruiting.

I like that advertising has been reduced to $1M instead of the ludacris $1.5M bucks.

Great.

OPD is still not on the ball marketing online. According to a post on the Rockridge Crimewatch group, there have been NO ads for hiring OPD officers on craigslist. You won't find any ads except one for an $8-10k/month HR manager fatcat position. (Perhaps split that into three positions: one coordinator, and two neighborhood walking recruiters?)

Check craigslist for OPD jobs

You will find job postings on monster.com, but monster costs 4x what a job posting costs on craigslist ($495 instead of $75) and monster ads are seen by far fewer people.


I spoke with SFPD officers over the weekend who noted that *every* PD in the country is having trouble staffing up right now. Same with the military. Who wants to die for low pay, or nothing to show for it?

These guys also commented that hiring bonuses are not good for this reason, because they steal officers from other cities who need them. For sure, they can replace said officers more easily than OPD can. Oakland has plenty of violent crime. On the other hand, San Francisco has more homicides per year than Oakland. Do you hear that in the media?

Rebecca Kaplan's IDEAS
OPD marketing/recruiting needs to hear Rebecca Kaplan's ideas of hiring more people from within Oakland. If the police are your brothers and neighbors, you can't really well call them "pigs" can you? Plus, many households in West and East Oakland could use the money!

Also, most people who aced all our OPD tests but were screened out at the 11th hour, failed because of:
-- low credit scores (who cares? what about goldman sachs' and alan greenspan's "scores"?)
-- past drug use, long ago (who cares? who in our newer generations has NOT used drugs? I know I have, but I didn't keep up because that's not my style of addiction. C'mon now people. If we want more police, make the standards realistic!)

A Date with Mack the Knife

In the CoCo Times, there is a story about a man who went on a date with a woman who intended to kidnap and rob him with help from her other hoodlum East Oakland friends.

Luckily, the victim, like me, carried a knife and stabbed her male accomplice while he was stuck in the back of the car with the women.

Nice date!

Now go get your own piece.


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