People in Oakland are hurting. They’ve lost loved ones. They’ve seen people shot and killed. After a decade where homicides were down to a half-century low in the 2010s, the pandemic hit, and the whole Bay Area has seen an increase in violence. In Oakland, homicides were up more than 50% in 2021, with more than 100 murders for the first time in a decade. This year’s even worse.
On Wednesday, a 60-year-old man was gunned down near DeFremery Park in West Oakland, marking the city’s 100th homicide of the year. The shooting comes amid a surge of shocking, violent incidents in recent weeks, including two Berkeley High School students — and brothers — killed at a birthday party; six adults shot at an Oakland school; two men killed in front of their mosque; and one person killed, and another injured, during a midday shooting outside City Hall, where a City Council meeting was in session.
Schaaf, who ends her tenure as mayor this year after serving two terms, lamented the alarming increase in bloodshed in her city.
“It’s just heartbreaking, because it really felt like Oakland had turned the corner by utilizing Ceasefire,” said Schaaf, referring to Operation Ceasefire, a multipronged approach to reducing street violence through direct interventions and access to city services. “That very comprehensive kind of carrot-and-stick approach of Ceasefire had really created what many people called the Oakland Miracle. We were recognized nationally as having one of the most dramatic and sustained reductions in gun violence that any city (has) ever achieved. And that all went out the window with COVID.”
Wave of violence
In fact, homicides were at a 50-year low in the Bay Area throughout much of the 2010s. But the pandemic ushered in a new wave of violence across the region and the country, one that has hit Oakland particularly hard and has yet to recede. Homicides in the city were up more than 50% in 2021, when the number of murders peaked at 100 for the first time in a decade.
Schaaf attributed the alarming rise to various factors, including the slowdown of the court system; gang recruitment of “younger and younger juveniles who get treated quite differently in our court system,” which, she adds “has not yet adjusted to our new reality”; and the dramatic decrease in police staffing as a result of “exhaustion over COVID and the defund sentiment in Oakland” that, she said, has affected the enforcement of Ceasefire.
“And I think we also have to address the fact that all of us are left a little bit vulnerable mental health-wise since the pandemic,” added Cespedes. “Arguments that before would be settled with words now may take a fistfight or even a gunfight.”
Many of the Oakland residents who called in to Forum conveyed a sense of fear and exasperation, some angrily accusing city leaders and law enforcement of failing to stem the violence.
‘Sick and tired of being sick and tired’
“I’m calling because I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” said one caller, who introduced herself as Dee, urging officials to turn their words into actions.
“I’m a taxpaying citizen in Oakland. My kid, I can’t even let her go outside. How can I be in a city where I can’t even drive down the street without the fear of somebody putting a gun to my head?” Dee said.
