She Stops School Fights Before They Start. Oakland May Cut Her Job
Antioch Agrees to Pay $4.6 Million, Reform Police Department After Misconduct Suit
Stockton Leaders Urge City to Invest in Youth After November Mass Shooting
Stanford’s Aradshar Chaddar Dreamed Big — and Left a Lasting Impact
SF Filmmaker Kevin Epps Convicted of Manslaughter, Not Murder, in 2016 Shooting
Alameda County DA Drops Charges Against San Leandro Officer in Fatal 2020 Shooting
Gas Explosion Near Hayward Spurs Federal, State and Local Investigations
Alameda County DA Moves to Drop Charges Against Officer for 2020 Fatal Shooting
Arguments Over Genocide Dominate Stanford Protester Trial Hearing
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"content": "\u003cp>At Castlemont High School in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/deep-east-oakland\">Deep East Oakland\u003c/a>, Phelisha Saffold stands in the sunshine surveying the courtyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today is a good day out,” she says as students sit in clusters, talking and eating lunch. “Drama-free.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She points out the cheerleaders. “They’re not hyphy about nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few yards away, the boys are doing their thing. The courtyard is filled with lively chatter; there are no raised voices, which would signal that things could go sideways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s when your antennas come on, and you want to put your ear to it,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over two years working as a school-based violence interrupter at Castlemont, Saffold, 54, has learned to decipher the signs that can precipitate a fight. Yelling is obvious, but sometimes they’re more subtle: A student just seems different one day. Maybe they’re quiet or grumpy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s duty is to get ahead of conflicts before they boil over into brawls — or worse. It’s a job that took on renewed urgency after a student was shot and injured at the city’s Skyline High School last month, but with Oakland schools \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12067547/oakland-schools-in-turmoil-after-two-key-officials-depart-over-budget-crisis\">facing a crippling budget shortfall\u003c/a>, the future of that work is in doubt.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Someone for students to turn to\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The term “violence interrupter” doesn’t mean much to Saffold’s students. To them, she’s a mediator, mentor and confidant. She’s got a dozen “school daughters” who call her “mom,” but her vibe is more cool auntie than nagging parent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This work is a long game — less about swooping in right before a squabble breaks out than it is about building relationships far ahead of time, when there’s no sign of trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066519\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066519\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students Realidy (left), 16, and Nevaeh, 16, talk in the hallway at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My goal is to get them to understand that they could trust me and they could count on me,” she says. “A lot of the students are not used to that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She buys gift cards to celebrate good grades and takes students out to eat, or to a food pantry, if they don’t have groceries at home. For her, that’s part of preventing violence: addressing conditions like neglect and hunger that can give rise to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She checks in on kids, like, ‘Hey, why are you not in class? Are you feeling good today?’ Like, anything and everything,” says 16-year-old junior Nevaeh, who asked to be identified by only her first name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold spends most of her time listening to students. All day, they approach her with updates about their minor beefs or major family troubles. They vent and ask for advice, and in between, they keep her keyed into conflicts brewing out of her view on social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You hear that somebody’s about to get into a fight, but she already knows, so she’s stopping both of the girls,” Nevaeh says. “She’ll let other staff members know. She’s like, ‘Watch out for them.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066525\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At lunchtime one day in early December, instead of going outside to eat and talk with friends, Nevaeh and a handful of other students seat themselves at desks circled around Saffold, who greets them with, “There go my girls!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re here to discuss gossip and rumors, one of the biggest sources of campus drama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to talk about how to navigate around he-say she-say and how to solve your own issues without it escalating,” Saffold says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with the two other members of the school’s violence prevention team, Saffold created this twice-monthly group to focus on building students’ communication skills. It’s voluntary and open to anyone, but it usually ends up being a group of mostly girls who work closely with them.[aside postID=news_11861142 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2021/02/RS47159_032_Oakland_SkylineHSFootballPractice_02032021-qut-1020x679.jpg']Today, Saffold asks 15-year-old sophomore Kay’Lonnie Jackson to talk about a conflict she’d just worked through. Jackson and two other girls in the group had been clashing over some gossip all week, and that morning they’d finally put it to rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our beef was over some he-say she-say stuff, and both of us was in the wrong for listening and dragging on the beef,” Kay’Lonnie says. “So as a young lady, I went up to her and addressed myself where I was wrong, and she addressed herself where she was wrong and we apologized to each other.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is Saffold’s goal: to teach students the skills to defuse arguments and think before they react to provocation. Progress is hard won. In this case, Saffold had met with the girls several times over three days to mediate the dispute before they eventually ended it themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Y’all was driving me crazy this week,” she says. “I felt like I wasn’t getting nowhere. So for you guys to call me today and y’all pretty much fixed it on y’all own, it just made me super proud. It let me know that you guys are listening to what I’m saying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Saffold dispenses advice, it comes from someone who’s been there: She was once a student at Castlemont — and a self-described hothead who got into her share of fights and ended up in continuation school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066523\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold (center), a school-based violence interrupter, talks with students during lunch at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Things have changed since her high school days. She recognizes the rumor mill that drives conflict, but technology has supercharged it. There’s social media, with its ability to broadcast a slight campus-wide in a second, and the way smartphones have turned students into amateur PIs. “They’ll record a conversation and take it to another student and say, ‘I got proof that this has been said,’” she explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Saffold knows this community because it’s hers. She grew up in East Oakland, “so nine times out of ten if something is going on, I might know your mother, your grandmother, your uncle, your cousin,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this work, that is as important as the training violence interrupters receive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They use that credibility, they use that experience, to gain trust with the individuals that they’re working with,” said David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, which works to reduce violence and incarceration. “They serve as an example for these young people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s connections help when she needs to involve students’ families to end a conflict — which sometimes means persuading a dad, aunt or cousin not to take things into their own hands and retaliate on behalf of their student.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Vital work at risk\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Today, most large urban districts in the country have some kind of violence intervention specialists on campus, said Muhammad, who has helped lead gun violence prevention strategies in cities nationwide, including Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here, Saffold is part of a violence prevention ecosystem developed after the district \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13893831/oakland-eliminated-its-school-police-force-so-what-happens-now\">dissolved its school police department\u003c/a> in the wake of the George Floyd protests and committed to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11989638/how-oakland-schools-strive-to-defuse-conflict-without-police-intervention\">overhauling its approach to safety\u003c/a>. She works with the former school security officers, now called “culture keepers,” who are focused on de-escalation and trauma-informed restorative practices, along with counselors and social workers, among others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066522\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066522\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold (center), a school-based violence interrupter, talks with Tierra Rogers (left), a gender violence specialist, and Ebony Gray, a case manager, at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Two of her closest allies on campus are the gender-based-violence specialist, who focuses on dating violence, sexual assault and exploitation, and the life coach, something between a mentor and a case manager who works intensively with students. The trio are part of a pilot program rolled out at seven high schools across the district beginning in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These three-person School Violence Intervention and Prevention Program teams are paid for by the city’s Department of Violence Prevention using money voters \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/City-Council-Leadership/Measures/Measure-Z-Reports-and-Evaluations\">allocated for improving public safety\u003c/a> through 2014’s Measure Z. The department funds community-based organizations like Saffold’s employer, the nonprofit Youth Alive, to carry out the work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/files/assets/city/v/1/city-administrator/documents/measure-z/final-interim-eval-school-vip-12.10.24.pdf\">A city-funded evaluation of the program\u003c/a> by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization, found that from its start in 2022-23 through the end of the 2023-24 school year, violence interrupters held 681 mediations. Almost 60% were proactive, while 11% were aimed at preventing retaliation. Overall, evaluators called the pilot program “promising,” though they noted that it was understaffed and underresourced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12064018/oakland-violence-prevention-program-at-risk-as-skyline-high-shooting-renews-urgency\">funding is set to sunset\u003c/a> at the end of the school year, and the district is in no position to pick up the tab — the Oakland school board \u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2025/12/11/ousd-oakland-public-school-board-vote-102-million-cuts/\">just approved a plan to cut $100 million\u003c/a> from next year’s budget amid \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12067547/oakland-schools-in-turmoil-after-two-key-officials-depart-over-budget-crisis\">leadership turmoil\u003c/a> as it looks to avoid another state takeover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nelson Alegria, the district’s newly minted executive director of safety, said administrators parsing data to try to streamline the program might pare away positions at some schools and staff up at others. But the program as a whole, he said, would stay largely intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066524\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066524\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold, a school-based violence interrupter, sits at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Safety is a top priority,” he said. “We want to make sure everybody understands that safety is not one of those things that we’re putting on the table to be cut.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School board director Mike Hutchinson, who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, has doubts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an extreme financial crisis of the likes we’ve never seen,” he said, noting that it could be a struggle for the district to fund even its core educational programming. “I’m concerned about a lot of our programs, from our culture keepers on campus to our restorative justice programs to definitely our violence interruption teams.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hutchinson said he plans to sit down with the head of the Department of Violence Prevention to discuss alternative funding sources, citing the Skyline High shooting as proof the district needs to double down on violence interrupters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Castlemont’s principal, Joseph Blasher, their work is essential. “You can’t learn if you don’t feel safe,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He credits campus violence prevention efforts for helping to \u003ca href=\"https://dashboards.ousd.org/views/ChronicAbsence_0/Comparison?%3Aembed=y&%3Adisplay_count=no&%3Arender=false#40\">boost\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://dashboards.ousd.org/views/AbsenceDasboardPublic/AbsenceAnalysisSnapshot?%3AshowAppBanner=false&%3Adisplay_count=n&%3Aembed=y\">attendance\u003c/a> and cohort \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/CohRate.aspx?cds=01612590125161&agglevel=school&year=2024-25&initrow=&ro=y\">graduation rates\u003c/a> and get families more engaged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t imagine all of us just having to leave the campus. That would just be traumatizing,” Saffold said. “Not just for the students — I think for us as well, because we build these bonds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>More than just a job\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Bonding with teenagers and getting them to open up, even those Saffold has grown closest to, is a skill that takes constant upkeep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s is on display when she spots junior Tamiya Easley, 17, at lunch one afternoon. “You know we need to talk, right?” Saffold says. “About yesterday.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tamiya tries to dodge her. “What did I do yesterday?” she asks. “I didn’t even do nothing yesterday!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068134\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068134\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold (right), a school-based violence interrupter, talks with a student at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to talk about it,” Saffold says with a laugh. She gives Tamiya a sly smile and another warm “We’ll talk about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That disarms Tamiya. “Oh, when I was upstairs tripping?” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, you of all people,” Saffold says with a tone that lets Tamiya know she expected better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mom! It’s because I don’t like disrespect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tamiya explains that she heard some students had been talking about her. She got heated and they got defensive. But she ended up apologizing and it blew over.[aside postID=news_12064511 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/20251118_SKYLINE_WALKOUT_GH-18-KQED.jpg']Saffold applauds. “That’s what I’m talking about!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My anger got the best of me. I know that,” Tamiya says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold often reminds her students that this isn’t just a job for her. She loves it, but it’s more than that. It’s deeply personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to say it’s what saved my life, but it’s what helps me get through the loss of my son,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s son was shot and killed four years ago, when he was 28. And her son’s father died the same way 32 years ago. She said neither of them was in a gang or violent. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She tells students their stories to drive home a point: “If you’re kicking off violence, you’re not going to always be the winner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She keeps it real,” 16-year-old sophomore Kamarion Warner says, sitting across from Saffold during the lunchtime group meeting. Saffold proved to him how much she cares about students when he briefly moved to Stockton in ninth grade and she enlisted her granddaughter, who lives there, to take him under her wing at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She wants you to succeed,” Kamarion says. “You just have to be willing to listen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m trying to change lives. You guys know my story,” she tells the group. “If I could just save one of y’all, then I feel like I’ve succeeded.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "A recent shooting at Skyline High School brought renewed urgency to the job done by “violence interrupters,” who play a big role in keeping students safe. But OUSD’s budget shortfall means the future of that work is in doubt. ",
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"title": "She Stops School Fights Before They Start. Oakland May Cut Her Job | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>At Castlemont High School in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/deep-east-oakland\">Deep East Oakland\u003c/a>, Phelisha Saffold stands in the sunshine surveying the courtyard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Today is a good day out,” she says as students sit in clusters, talking and eating lunch. “Drama-free.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She points out the cheerleaders. “They’re not hyphy about nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few yards away, the boys are doing their thing. The courtyard is filled with lively chatter; there are no raised voices, which would signal that things could go sideways.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s when your antennas come on, and you want to put your ear to it,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over two years working as a school-based violence interrupter at Castlemont, Saffold, 54, has learned to decipher the signs that can precipitate a fight. Yelling is obvious, but sometimes they’re more subtle: A student just seems different one day. Maybe they’re quiet or grumpy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s duty is to get ahead of conflicts before they boil over into brawls — or worse. It’s a job that took on renewed urgency after a student was shot and injured at the city’s Skyline High School last month, but with Oakland schools \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12067547/oakland-schools-in-turmoil-after-two-key-officials-depart-over-budget-crisis\">facing a crippling budget shortfall\u003c/a>, the future of that work is in doubt.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Someone for students to turn to\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The term “violence interrupter” doesn’t mean much to Saffold’s students. To them, she’s a mediator, mentor and confidant. She’s got a dozen “school daughters” who call her “mom,” but her vibe is more cool auntie than nagging parent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This work is a long game — less about swooping in right before a squabble breaks out than it is about building relationships far ahead of time, when there’s no sign of trouble.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066519\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066519\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-04-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students Realidy (left), 16, and Nevaeh, 16, talk in the hallway at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“My goal is to get them to understand that they could trust me and they could count on me,” she says. “A lot of the students are not used to that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She buys gift cards to celebrate good grades and takes students out to eat, or to a food pantry, if they don’t have groceries at home. For her, that’s part of preventing violence: addressing conditions like neglect and hunger that can give rise to it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She checks in on kids, like, ‘Hey, why are you not in class? Are you feeling good today?’ Like, anything and everything,” says 16-year-old junior Nevaeh, who asked to be identified by only her first name.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold spends most of her time listening to students. All day, they approach her with updates about their minor beefs or major family troubles. They vent and ask for advice, and in between, they keep her keyed into conflicts brewing out of her view on social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You hear that somebody’s about to get into a fight, but she already knows, so she’s stopping both of the girls,” Nevaeh says. “She’ll let other staff members know. She’s like, ‘Watch out for them.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066525\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066525\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-37-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At lunchtime one day in early December, instead of going outside to eat and talk with friends, Nevaeh and a handful of other students seat themselves at desks circled around Saffold, who greets them with, “There go my girls!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They’re here to discuss gossip and rumors, one of the biggest sources of campus drama.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to talk about how to navigate around he-say she-say and how to solve your own issues without it escalating,” Saffold says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with the two other members of the school’s violence prevention team, Saffold created this twice-monthly group to focus on building students’ communication skills. It’s voluntary and open to anyone, but it usually ends up being a group of mostly girls who work closely with them.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Today, Saffold asks 15-year-old sophomore Kay’Lonnie Jackson to talk about a conflict she’d just worked through. Jackson and two other girls in the group had been clashing over some gossip all week, and that morning they’d finally put it to rest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our beef was over some he-say she-say stuff, and both of us was in the wrong for listening and dragging on the beef,” Kay’Lonnie says. “So as a young lady, I went up to her and addressed myself where I was wrong, and she addressed herself where she was wrong and we apologized to each other.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is Saffold’s goal: to teach students the skills to defuse arguments and think before they react to provocation. Progress is hard won. In this case, Saffold had met with the girls several times over three days to mediate the dispute before they eventually ended it themselves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Y’all was driving me crazy this week,” she says. “I felt like I wasn’t getting nowhere. So for you guys to call me today and y’all pretty much fixed it on y’all own, it just made me super proud. It let me know that you guys are listening to what I’m saying.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Saffold dispenses advice, it comes from someone who’s been there: She was once a student at Castlemont — and a self-described hothead who got into her share of fights and ended up in continuation school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066523\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066523\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-32-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold (center), a school-based violence interrupter, talks with students during lunch at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Things have changed since her high school days. She recognizes the rumor mill that drives conflict, but technology has supercharged it. There’s social media, with its ability to broadcast a slight campus-wide in a second, and the way smartphones have turned students into amateur PIs. “They’ll record a conversation and take it to another student and say, ‘I got proof that this has been said,’” she explains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Saffold knows this community because it’s hers. She grew up in East Oakland, “so nine times out of ten if something is going on, I might know your mother, your grandmother, your uncle, your cousin,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this work, that is as important as the training violence interrupters receive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They use that credibility, they use that experience, to gain trust with the individuals that they’re working with,” said David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, which works to reduce violence and incarceration. “They serve as an example for these young people.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s connections help when she needs to involve students’ families to end a conflict — which sometimes means persuading a dad, aunt or cousin not to take things into their own hands and retaliate on behalf of their student.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Vital work at risk\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Today, most large urban districts in the country have some kind of violence intervention specialists on campus, said Muhammad, who has helped lead gun violence prevention strategies in cities nationwide, including Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here, Saffold is part of a violence prevention ecosystem developed after the district \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13893831/oakland-eliminated-its-school-police-force-so-what-happens-now\">dissolved its school police department\u003c/a> in the wake of the George Floyd protests and committed to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11989638/how-oakland-schools-strive-to-defuse-conflict-without-police-intervention\">overhauling its approach to safety\u003c/a>. She works with the former school security officers, now called “culture keepers,” who are focused on de-escalation and trauma-informed restorative practices, along with counselors and social workers, among others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066522\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066522\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-27-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold (center), a school-based violence interrupter, talks with Tierra Rogers (left), a gender violence specialist, and Ebony Gray, a case manager, at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Two of her closest allies on campus are the gender-based-violence specialist, who focuses on dating violence, sexual assault and exploitation, and the life coach, something between a mentor and a case manager who works intensively with students. The trio are part of a pilot program rolled out at seven high schools across the district beginning in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These three-person School Violence Intervention and Prevention Program teams are paid for by the city’s Department of Violence Prevention using money voters \u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/Government/City-Council-Leadership/Measures/Measure-Z-Reports-and-Evaluations\">allocated for improving public safety\u003c/a> through 2014’s Measure Z. The department funds community-based organizations like Saffold’s employer, the nonprofit Youth Alive, to carry out the work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oaklandca.gov/files/assets/city/v/1/city-administrator/documents/measure-z/final-interim-eval-school-vip-12.10.24.pdf\">A city-funded evaluation of the program\u003c/a> by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization, found that from its start in 2022-23 through the end of the 2023-24 school year, violence interrupters held 681 mediations. Almost 60% were proactive, while 11% were aimed at preventing retaliation. Overall, evaluators called the pilot program “promising,” though they noted that it was understaffed and underresourced.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12064018/oakland-violence-prevention-program-at-risk-as-skyline-high-shooting-renews-urgency\">funding is set to sunset\u003c/a> at the end of the school year, and the district is in no position to pick up the tab — the Oakland school board \u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2025/12/11/ousd-oakland-public-school-board-vote-102-million-cuts/\">just approved a plan to cut $100 million\u003c/a> from next year’s budget amid \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12067547/oakland-schools-in-turmoil-after-two-key-officials-depart-over-budget-crisis\">leadership turmoil\u003c/a> as it looks to avoid another state takeover.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nelson Alegria, the district’s newly minted executive director of safety, said administrators parsing data to try to streamline the program might pare away positions at some schools and staff up at others. But the program as a whole, he said, would stay largely intact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066524\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066524\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDVIOLENCEINTERRUPTER-34-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold, a school-based violence interrupter, sits at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Safety is a top priority,” he said. “We want to make sure everybody understands that safety is not one of those things that we’re putting on the table to be cut.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School board director Mike Hutchinson, who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee, has doubts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is an extreme financial crisis of the likes we’ve never seen,” he said, noting that it could be a struggle for the district to fund even its core educational programming. “I’m concerned about a lot of our programs, from our culture keepers on campus to our restorative justice programs to definitely our violence interruption teams.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hutchinson said he plans to sit down with the head of the Department of Violence Prevention to discuss alternative funding sources, citing the Skyline High shooting as proof the district needs to double down on violence interrupters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Castlemont’s principal, Joseph Blasher, their work is essential. “You can’t learn if you don’t feel safe,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He credits campus violence prevention efforts for helping to \u003ca href=\"https://dashboards.ousd.org/views/ChronicAbsence_0/Comparison?%3Aembed=y&%3Adisplay_count=no&%3Arender=false#40\">boost\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://dashboards.ousd.org/views/AbsenceDasboardPublic/AbsenceAnalysisSnapshot?%3AshowAppBanner=false&%3Adisplay_count=n&%3Aembed=y\">attendance\u003c/a> and cohort \u003ca href=\"https://dq.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/dqcensus/CohRate.aspx?cds=01612590125161&agglevel=school&year=2024-25&initrow=&ro=y\">graduation rates\u003c/a> and get families more engaged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t imagine all of us just having to leave the campus. That would just be traumatizing,” Saffold said. “Not just for the students — I think for us as well, because we build these bonds.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>More than just a job\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Bonding with teenagers and getting them to open up, even those Saffold has grown closest to, is a skill that takes constant upkeep.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s is on display when she spots junior Tamiya Easley, 17, at lunch one afternoon. “You know we need to talk, right?” Saffold says. “About yesterday.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tamiya tries to dodge her. “What did I do yesterday?” she asks. “I didn’t even do nothing yesterday!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12068134\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12068134\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251205-OUSDViolenceInterrupter-18-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Phelisha Saffold (right), a school-based violence interrupter, talks with a student at Castlemont High School in Oakland on Dec. 5, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We’re going to talk about it,” Saffold says with a laugh. She gives Tamiya a sly smile and another warm “We’ll talk about it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That disarms Tamiya. “Oh, when I was upstairs tripping?” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes, you of all people,” Saffold says with a tone that lets Tamiya know she expected better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Mom! It’s because I don’t like disrespect.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tamiya explains that she heard some students had been talking about her. She got heated and they got defensive. But she ended up apologizing and it blew over.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Saffold applauds. “That’s what I’m talking about!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My anger got the best of me. I know that,” Tamiya says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold often reminds her students that this isn’t just a job for her. She loves it, but it’s more than that. It’s deeply personal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t want to say it’s what saved my life, but it’s what helps me get through the loss of my son,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saffold’s son was shot and killed four years ago, when he was 28. And her son’s father died the same way 32 years ago. She said neither of them was in a gang or violent. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She tells students their stories to drive home a point: “If you’re kicking off violence, you’re not going to always be the winner.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She keeps it real,” 16-year-old sophomore Kamarion Warner says, sitting across from Saffold during the lunchtime group meeting. Saffold proved to him how much she cares about students when he briefly moved to Stockton in ninth grade and she enlisted her granddaughter, who lives there, to take him under her wing at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She wants you to succeed,” Kamarion says. “You just have to be willing to listen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m trying to change lives. You guys know my story,” she tells the group. “If I could just save one of y’all, then I feel like I’ve succeeded.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "antioch-agrees-to-pay-4-6-million-reform-police-department-after-misconduct-suit",
"title": "Antioch Agrees to Pay $4.6 Million, Reform Police Department After Misconduct Suit",
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"headTitle": "Antioch Agrees to Pay $4.6 Million, Reform Police Department After Misconduct Suit | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>The city of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/antioch\">Antioch\u003c/a> has agreed to implement a series of police reforms and pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit over allegations of widespread officer misconduct, officials announced Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reforms include enhanced training for officers, new restrictions on acceptable use of force and an independent monitor meant to assess the department’s ongoing compliance \u003ca href=\"https://bncllaw.com/antioch-agreement.pdf\">with the agreement. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The settlement came more than two years after 23 residents sued 45 Antioch Police Department officers over \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11947876/antioch-police-racist-texting-scandal-confirms-what-many-black-and-brown-residents-have-decried-for-years\">accusations of physical abuse\u003c/a>, widespread use of various slurs and a lack of supervision or accountability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The important part is not that we have put the agreement together,” civil rights attorney John Burris, who filed the complaint on behalf of the residents, said. “The important part is to implement it and that it’s followed, and that people are held accountable if they, in fact, do not follow the rules and procedures set forth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burris said his clients reached the $4.6 million settlement agreement with the city earlier this year. He appeared alongside city government officials on Friday morning to sign the agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The last few years have been difficult and for many residents deeply unsettling,” Antioch City Manager Bessie Scott said. “Trust was strained, confidence in institutions took a serious hit and many in our community have carried that weight in ways that don’t throw up in the headlines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062501\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062501\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Antioch Police Department in Antioch, California, on Oct. 30, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Some of the changes to police department policy seemed to address specific allegations of misconduct from the suit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One plaintiff, Trent Allen, was arrested on murder charges in 2021. Allen alleged that Antioch officers knocked him unconscious and then continued to kick him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During an FBI investigation into alleged criminal activity by Antioch and Pittsburg officers, investigators found a \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23778279/disclosure-report-court-redactions-final.pdf\">trove\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12029300/former-antioch-officers-face-trial-for-alleged-conspiracy-civil-rights-violations\">racist and violent text messages\u003c/a> from the arresting officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That federal investigation ultimately resulted in\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11958522/fbi-arrests-antioch-pittsburg-police-officers-following-indictments\"> the arrests of several other officers\u003c/a> from both Antioch and Pittsburg for a range of charges, including illegally obtaining and distributing anabolic steroids, destroying evidence and faking college credits to get pay bumps.[aside postID=news_12065727 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/04/230816-Dublin-Womens-Prison-Suit-MD-01_qed-1020x680.jpg']Former officer \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12030234/ex-antioch-officer-testifies-against-former-partner-in-federal-civil-rights-case\">Eric Rombaugh\u003c/a> sent messages saying he kicked Allen’s head like a field goal while using racist slurs against Black people. Rombaugh, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy, testified that he and former officer \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12045925/7-year-sentence-for-former-antioch-cop-stands-out-among-east-bay-officers-cases\">Morteza Amiri \u003c/a>would send each other photos of the injuries they caused and congratulate each other on uses of force. Amiri was later convicted of using excessive force with his police K-9.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department’s new policy states that head strikes with hands, feet or hard objects are now explicitly prohibited unless no reasonable alternative is available and it’s justifiable force.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Antioch officers are also required to establish a database for any incidents where force was “used and/or displayed, articulated, or suggested,” including K-9 deployments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Complaints of officer misconduct relating to discriminatory policing, use of force or unbecoming conduct must now be forwarded to the chief of police within three days and the city manager is also required to be kept in the loop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The community, when they make a complaint against an officer … they need to know that matter is going to be investigated timely and objectively, fairly. That doesn’t always happen,” Burris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agreement expires after two years of compliance. If the city has not reached compliance after 5 years, an extension would have to be determined in court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The city of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/antioch\">Antioch\u003c/a> has agreed to implement a series of police reforms and pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit over allegations of widespread officer misconduct, officials announced Friday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The reforms include enhanced training for officers, new restrictions on acceptable use of force and an independent monitor meant to assess the department’s ongoing compliance \u003ca href=\"https://bncllaw.com/antioch-agreement.pdf\">with the agreement. \u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The settlement came more than two years after 23 residents sued 45 Antioch Police Department officers over \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11947876/antioch-police-racist-texting-scandal-confirms-what-many-black-and-brown-residents-have-decried-for-years\">accusations of physical abuse\u003c/a>, widespread use of various slurs and a lack of supervision or accountability.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The important part is not that we have put the agreement together,” civil rights attorney John Burris, who filed the complaint on behalf of the residents, said. “The important part is to implement it and that it’s followed, and that people are held accountable if they, in fact, do not follow the rules and procedures set forth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Burris said his clients reached the $4.6 million settlement agreement with the city earlier this year. He appeared alongside city government officials on Friday morning to sign the agreement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The last few years have been difficult and for many residents deeply unsettling,” Antioch City Manager Bessie Scott said. “Trust was strained, confidence in institutions took a serious hit and many in our community have carried that weight in ways that don’t throw up in the headlines.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062501\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062501\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251030-ATIOCHPITTSBURGFILE_00937_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Antioch Police Department in Antioch, California, on Oct. 30, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Some of the changes to police department policy seemed to address specific allegations of misconduct from the suit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One plaintiff, Trent Allen, was arrested on murder charges in 2021. Allen alleged that Antioch officers knocked him unconscious and then continued to kick him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During an FBI investigation into alleged criminal activity by Antioch and Pittsburg officers, investigators found a \u003ca href=\"https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23778279/disclosure-report-court-redactions-final.pdf\">trove\u003c/a> of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12029300/former-antioch-officers-face-trial-for-alleged-conspiracy-civil-rights-violations\">racist and violent text messages\u003c/a> from the arresting officers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That federal investigation ultimately resulted in\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11958522/fbi-arrests-antioch-pittsburg-police-officers-following-indictments\"> the arrests of several other officers\u003c/a> from both Antioch and Pittsburg for a range of charges, including illegally obtaining and distributing anabolic steroids, destroying evidence and faking college credits to get pay bumps.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Former officer \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12030234/ex-antioch-officer-testifies-against-former-partner-in-federal-civil-rights-case\">Eric Rombaugh\u003c/a> sent messages saying he kicked Allen’s head like a field goal while using racist slurs against Black people. Rombaugh, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy, testified that he and former officer \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12045925/7-year-sentence-for-former-antioch-cop-stands-out-among-east-bay-officers-cases\">Morteza Amiri \u003c/a>would send each other photos of the injuries they caused and congratulate each other on uses of force. Amiri was later convicted of using excessive force with his police K-9.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The department’s new policy states that head strikes with hands, feet or hard objects are now explicitly prohibited unless no reasonable alternative is available and it’s justifiable force.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Antioch officers are also required to establish a database for any incidents where force was “used and/or displayed, articulated, or suggested,” including K-9 deployments.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Complaints of officer misconduct relating to discriminatory policing, use of force or unbecoming conduct must now be forwarded to the chief of police within three days and the city manager is also required to be kept in the loop.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The community, when they make a complaint against an officer … they need to know that matter is going to be investigated timely and objectively, fairly. That doesn’t always happen,” Burris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The agreement expires after two years of compliance. If the city has not reached compliance after 5 years, an extension would have to be determined in court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Stockton Leaders Urge City to Invest in Youth After November Mass Shooting",
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"content": "\u003cp>Weeks after a shooting at a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12065597/after-stockton-mass-shooting-at-childrens-party-officials-warn-against-retaliation\">children’s birthday party in Stockton\u003c/a> killed four young people, community groups are calling for more support and compassion for the victims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonprofit and faith leaders on Thursday urged leaders to invest in the city’s youth and neighborhoods, which they say have faced years of disinvestment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Gun violence does not appear out of nowhere,” said Peter Elias, a youth leader with the Reinvent South Stockton Coalition. “It is produced by condition, by decades of policy decisions that stripped resources from neighborhoods, normalized trauma and left young people and left young people surrounded by loss with few pathways forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our response to violence … must be prevention. It must be investment,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Nov. 29, four people, ages 8, 9, 14 and 21, were killed after gunfire erupted during a large family gathering celebrating the birthday of a Stockton 2-year-old. At least 13 more people were injured in the incident, which authorities believe involved multiple shooters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Law enforcement officials at the time said they believed the shooting began inside the banquet hall on Lucile Avenue in Stockton, where the party was taking place, and later spilled outside, where more people were gathered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/GettyImages-2248688999-scaled-e1766166180857.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi stands at a vigil for the victims of a shooting on Nov. 30, in Stockton, California. \u003ccite>(Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The community leaders gathered on Thursday said that in the weeks since, they have been connecting victims’ families with counseling and social services, as well as material needs they cannot meet, like food, clothing and burial support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of that work has been coordinated by the San Joaquin County Youth Justice Coalition, which gathered the group on Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Community organizations, faith leaders, youth advocates and mental health professionals are stepping up because far too often, the systems that are supposed to support families arrive late, or do not come at all,” Elias said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The speakers warned against spreading narratives around what led to the shooting or placing blame. While Sheriff Patrick Withrow has said that the department is confident the shooting was a targeted act, no arrests have been made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day after the shooting, Mayor Christina Fugazi said it had been gang-related, but the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office did not confirm that allegation. They have not identified a motive.[aside postID=news_12065597 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/StocktonShootingGetty1.jpg']“Our commitment has been and continues to be to show up with compassion,” Pastor Henry B. Phillips of The Open Door House of Prayer said. “False narratives can cause harm and deepen wounds. Our young people deserve care, not condemnation; they deserve understanding, not blame; And healing, not harm.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shooting led to tensions among city leaders this week, after Vice Mayor Jason Lee told the Stockton publication \u003ca href=\"https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_d22e5390-8402-4635-9344-cefac1a31720.amp.html\">\u003cem>The Center Square\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that other officials had delayed a vote to ban face coverings just days before the shooting. In the article, he was quoted as saying that not passing the ban allowed criminals to get away with violent crimes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fugazi appeared to respond to that claim during a council meeting on Wednesday, saying: “To blame me for the mass shooting, and council for the mass shooting, is reckless and irresponsible. The fact that because there was a ski mask involved, somehow taking that off … would’ve stopped that shooting? Does anybody think that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thursday’s speakers called on the city leaders to focus instead on providing funding and resources to youth communities and neighborhoods that have faced disinvestment in recent years to prevent violence before it starts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have a choice,” said Bobby Bivens, the president of Stockton’s NAACP chapter. “Do we allow leadership and governance not to recognize that our community is hurting? We have elected officials who promised people that they were coming in to improve the quality of life, but that has not happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re calling on leadership in this community … to reach the young people that you see instead of ignoring our past. We’re calling on the Stockton community … to address the violence in our community,” he continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Our response to violence … must be prevention. It must be investment,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Nov. 29, four people, ages 8, 9, 14 and 21, were killed after gunfire erupted during a large family gathering celebrating the birthday of a Stockton 2-year-old. At least 13 more people were injured in the incident, which authorities believe involved multiple shooters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Law enforcement officials at the time said they believed the shooting began inside the banquet hall on Lucile Avenue in Stockton, where the party was taking place, and later spilled outside, where more people were gathered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067969\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067969\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/GettyImages-2248688999-scaled-e1766166180857.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi stands at a vigil for the victims of a shooting on Nov. 30, in Stockton, California. \u003ccite>(Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The community leaders gathered on Thursday said that in the weeks since, they have been connecting victims’ families with counseling and social services, as well as material needs they cannot meet, like food, clothing and burial support.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of that work has been coordinated by the San Joaquin County Youth Justice Coalition, which gathered the group on Thursday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Community organizations, faith leaders, youth advocates and mental health professionals are stepping up because far too often, the systems that are supposed to support families arrive late, or do not come at all,” Elias said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The speakers warned against spreading narratives around what led to the shooting or placing blame. While Sheriff Patrick Withrow has said that the department is confident the shooting was a targeted act, no arrests have been made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The day after the shooting, Mayor Christina Fugazi said it had been gang-related, but the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office did not confirm that allegation. They have not identified a motive.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“Our commitment has been and continues to be to show up with compassion,” Pastor Henry B. Phillips of The Open Door House of Prayer said. “False narratives can cause harm and deepen wounds. Our young people deserve care, not condemnation; they deserve understanding, not blame; And healing, not harm.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shooting led to tensions among city leaders this week, after Vice Mayor Jason Lee told the Stockton publication \u003ca href=\"https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_d22e5390-8402-4635-9344-cefac1a31720.amp.html\">\u003cem>The Center Square\u003c/em>\u003c/a> that other officials had delayed a vote to ban face coverings just days before the shooting. In the article, he was quoted as saying that not passing the ban allowed criminals to get away with violent crimes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fugazi appeared to respond to that claim during a council meeting on Wednesday, saying: “To blame me for the mass shooting, and council for the mass shooting, is reckless and irresponsible. The fact that because there was a ski mask involved, somehow taking that off … would’ve stopped that shooting? Does anybody think that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thursday’s speakers called on the city leaders to focus instead on providing funding and resources to youth communities and neighborhoods that have faced disinvestment in recent years to prevent violence before it starts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We have a choice,” said Bobby Bivens, the president of Stockton’s NAACP chapter. “Do we allow leadership and governance not to recognize that our community is hurting? We have elected officials who promised people that they were coming in to improve the quality of life, but that has not happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re calling on leadership in this community … to reach the young people that you see instead of ignoring our past. We’re calling on the Stockton community … to address the violence in our community,” he continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Stanford’s Aradshar Chaddar Dreamed Big — and Left a Lasting Impact",
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"content": "\u003cp>Aradshar Chaddar spent his life chasing big dreams — from debate halls and stages in Lahore to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/stanford-university\">Stanford University\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This spring, at 21, the Stanford sophomore was killed in a bike collision on campus, a death that stunned friends and family across two continents and cut short a life defined by ambition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His death — the first bike fatality on Stanford’s campus in nearly six years — rattled those who knew him as more than an accomplished student. To loved ones, Chaddar was someone who lifted up the people around him, carried the hopes of his family in Pakistan, and made others believe in the magnitude of their own dreams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the gravest blow,” his father, Sessions Judge Zafaryab Chaddar, said to KQED from Pakistan. “I would have gone to a grave before Aradshar, but life is very cruel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was so smart, he was so beautiful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s determination showed early. At 7, he was one of the top students in his school’s debate competitions. The topics for first graders were simple, but his peers could tell he was something special. Born in the United States and raised in Pakistan, he quickly stood out among his classmates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067143\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067143\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The intersection of Arboretum Road and Palm Drive, where 21-year-old Stanford sophomore Aradshar Chaddar was hit and killed in a bike collision this past summer at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Dec. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He was way ahead of everyone else around him,” said Ismail Iftikhar, his classmate and friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 13, Chaddar, known as Arad or Chad to friends and family, began going to Model United Nations conferences, where he came alive during long, winding speeches about world affairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could tell that beneath the words, there were larger dreams and visions of a world that’s better,” said Mustafa Khan, who attended the same high school as Chaddar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 18, he shot up to 6-foot-3 — a college student with glasses, neat dark hair, a wide smile and a glimmer in his eyes as he would rope his friend Léon Garcia to help him run the Stanford Democrats or into a last-minute trek to San Francisco’s Chinatown.[aside postID=news_12047968 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/250630-HUMANITARIANPAROLEDEEPDIVE-13-BL-KQED.jpg']“He would go out of his way to talk to people on the street whom he ran into, who he thought he could learn something interesting from,” Garcia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 21, Chaddar ran into his high school history teacher, Shaan Tahir, in Lahore, Pakistan. His teacher asked him: “Arad. Ambitious as ever?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sir. Is there any other way?” Chaddar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What are you aiming for?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“President of the USA,” he confidently responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tahir laughed, then remembered who he was talking to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t doubt it,” he said to his former student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Months later, at a memorial service at the high school, Tahir recalled the memory as he sat among a crowd wracked with grief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I knew that he meant it … He is possibly the most ambitious person that I’ve ever met in my life,” Tahir told KQED. “Extremely determined to be someone in life and be something in life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s story is “about dreaming,” Khan said. “Not just for yourself, but dreaming for other people. Recognizing other people’s dreams and making them feel like they’re capable of achieving them because they are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Chasing big dreams\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar was 7 when he met Chaddar, and the first impression was not positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought he was full of himself,” Iftikhar said, laughing. “I thought he was incredibly selfish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even then, he could tell Chaddar was ambitious and smart. They were among the top students at their school in Lahore, a city of over 14 million people and Pakistan’s academic center. Their friendly rivalry persisted until eighth grade, when Chaddar asked Iftikhar to join his Model United Nations team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067034\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067034\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chaddar once described himself as “an avid mountaineer.” In a 2023 Instagram post, he said he hoped to “summit all the eight thousander peaks.” \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ismail Iftikhar)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I realized that selfish is the last word I would use for him,” Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the type of friendship only two high achievers could have, one that endlessly pushed each other. They were prefects together and ran the Model UN club together. They poured over films together, diving into dialogue, politics and themes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t name a single thing he hadn’t seen,” he said. “There was basically nothing I could beat him in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s favorite directors were Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa. He devoured books. While it’s common for Americans to be fans of the 2015 biographical musical \u003cem>Hamilton\u003c/em>, it’s less common for a kid from Pakistan — and Iftikhar said that Chaddar knew the dialogue by heart. He commanded English and Urdu with ease. He had a course load that confounded teachers. He brought home awards and distinctions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vulnerability was hard for Chaddar, who felt deeply for the people around him, as if there was no separation between someone’s sorrow and his own. Their happiness was his.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes the emotions got to him. In high school, Iftikhar and Chaddar’s team lost a Model UN competition. Chaddar was “a really bad loser, because he wasn’t used to losing,” Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At home, after the rest of the team left, Iftikhar found Chaddar lying down on the couch. He was clearly distressed, almost on the verge of tears. Iftikhar walked over and hugged him. Chaddar cried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Later on, he told me that that was like his favorite memory of us,” Iftikhar, now 21 and living in Southern California, said. “It just holds a special place in my heart.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It felt natural that they would be the only two of their class to go to California for college — Iftikhar to Claremont McKenna College near Los Angeles, Chaddar to Stanford in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A life cut short\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Chaddar arrived at Stanford in fall 2023 on a scholarship, planning to study political science and international relations. He tried to convince Garcia, a fellow freshman, to drop physics and pursue the same path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was a big evangelist for the humanities,” Garcia said. “He believed that it was his job to lift up the people around him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Chaddar’s goal was to be president, spending time with him felt like being on the campaign trail. To Garcia, he was a “Don Quixote-style character.” When he wasn’t studying, Chaddar was pushing Garcia to leave the Stanford bubble and venture into San Francisco, where Chaddar knew people and places as if he lived in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067144\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A vigil for 21-year-old Stanford sophomore Aradshar Chaddar, who was hit and killed in a bike collision this past summer, sits under a tree at Terman Fountain at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Dec. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He kind of lived life in his own world, almost, and he brought everybody around him into that world,” Garcia said. “He was like one of the last true romantics.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He would spontaneously pop up at the San Francisco apartment of Khan, who graduated from Stanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His energy is quite infectious as well. Always having this cheeky grin on his face,” Khan said. “It was hard not to fall in love with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was hard to imagine someone so full of life being gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 31, Chaddar was riding an electric bike on the Stanford University campus when, around 3 a.m., he was struck by a car. He was taken to a hospital, where he died at 3:25 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had been crossing the intersection of Palm Drive and Arboretum Road in the dark, with limited visibility, when an Uber driver entered the intersection and hit him on his left side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a collision on campus results in an injury, CHP responds for an investigation and a report, said Bill Larson, public information officer for Stanford’s Department of Public Safety.[aside postID=news_12067175 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/250418-SFPDFile-46-BL_qed.jpg']Stanford data shows that from December 2018 to November 2025, there were 120 bike collisions on campus that resulted in a CHP investigation. Around 60% of those collisions were between a bike and a vehicle that resulted in an injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When expanding the dataset beyond collisions resulting in a CHP investigation, there have been almost 240 bike accidents on campus reported from September 2018 to October 2025. According to the Stanford Daily, some \u003ca href=\"https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/11/mapping-bike-accidents-on-campus/\">spots on campus\u003c/a> have a kind of notoriety for being dangerous for cyclists. For example, the roundabout near the school’s Clock Tower is called the “Circle of Death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of the roads at Stanford are not very well lit,” Khan said. “I am so afraid every time I drive through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar said around the time of the collision, speculation arose about what happened. It made sense that people were searching for more answers, he said, trying to understand the sudden death of someone so loved. But he wasn’t sure there was more to know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar learned about Chaddar at 7:20 a.m. on June 2, 2025, after getting a message from Chaddar’s mother. Iftikhar was working on the Claremont McKenna College campus that summer and was the closest of his friends to the Bay Area. He booked a flight the same day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s aunt from North Carolina also arrived. What followed was a succession of office visits. They went to the medical examiner’s office. They couldn’t see the body right away because the investigation was still ongoing. So they went to a funeral home and talked to the coroner. They signed documents and packed his dorm room. They attended a hastily organized vigil on campus, joining more than 200 students, staff and faculty as stories were shared and music played. Even more watched online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A courier company predicted it would take at least weeks to bring Chaddar home to Pakistan, citing logistics. Iftikhar worked with Chaddar’s aunt to expedite the process — filling out documents, contacting the U.S. State Department and the Pakistani embassy. In early June, Chaddar was able to be transported back to Pakistan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just was very restless,” he said. “I don’t know. I just ended up doing things, and that’s my way of dealing with things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The boys went to California together. Now they were going home together.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A life remembered\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While he went to school in Lahore, Chaddar’s family was from Mano Chak, a village three hours away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar was buried there, near his younger sister, who died a few years earlier. At the service, Iftikhar said he saw “more people than I’ve ever seen” in the village — all gathered for him. Friends from Stanford, including his girlfriend, also flew from California to see him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is survived by his father, mother and his 12-year-old sister.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067141\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067141\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hoover Tower at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Dec. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He was such a friendly baby,” his mother, gynecologist Sadia Chaddar, said. He had a sweet disposition and happily chirped, “Yes, I can do it, Mama!” whenever she needed his help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She laughed when remembering how the kids called him Mr. President.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to argue with him,” she said. “Ardi, there are many other options. Why do you want to be the President of the USA?’ But she supported him, no matter what. Whatever he wanted to do, she would be there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t get my baby out of my mind,” his mother said. “I just sleep with his thoughts in my mind. I wake up with his thoughts in my mind.”[aside postID=arts_13893843 hero='https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/guillaume-de-germain-Z_br8TOcCpE-unsplash-1020x681.jpg']She thinks of him when she looks at her daughter, Farazeen. She is just like her big brother – sharp, thoughtful, ambitious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s basically my motivation whenever I’m studying,” Farazeen said. “He was a role model for me growing up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s room – and library full of books he devoured – is preserved just the way it was when he would visit home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His father pores over his son’s writing, his debates, his speeches, his pictures, the tributes to him. His pride and love radiate as he talks about his eldest child; his grief immense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is not my personal loss. People claim that it is a national loss,” his father said. “Pakistan has lost a brilliant man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://theazb.com/does-the-american-dream-still-hold-true/#google_vignette\">June column\u003c/a> for an English-language online publication focused on Pakistan, Chaddar wrote that his middle-class background gave him opportunities not afforded to others in his village. When he was home, he said it was common to hear advice like, “There is nothing for you here,” and “Get out of here as soon as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite this, being from Mano Chak and Pakistan meant everything to Chaddar. He missed home fiercely, especially when coming to the United States, Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar knew his ambition would always take him away from home and the family he loved. He struggled with that, writing his thoughts out in his journal and sharing them with Iftikhar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The village was a place that offered a lot of peace, a lot of security,” Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is also where he drew his strength from. Chaddar wanted to be the best. Even more, his friend said, “He wanted to make his family proud.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Aradshar Chaddar, a 21-year-old Stanford student born in the U.S. and raised in Pakistan, died in a campus bike accident, leaving friends and family mourning his ambition and impact.",
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"title": "Stanford’s Aradshar Chaddar Dreamed Big — and Left a Lasting Impact | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Aradshar Chaddar spent his life chasing big dreams — from debate halls and stages in Lahore to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/stanford-university\">Stanford University\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This spring, at 21, the Stanford sophomore was killed in a bike collision on campus, a death that stunned friends and family across two continents and cut short a life defined by ambition.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His death — the first bike fatality on Stanford’s campus in nearly six years — rattled those who knew him as more than an accomplished student. To loved ones, Chaddar was someone who lifted up the people around him, carried the hopes of his family in Pakistan, and made others believe in the magnitude of their own dreams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the gravest blow,” his father, Sessions Judge Zafaryab Chaddar, said to KQED from Pakistan. “I would have gone to a grave before Aradshar, but life is very cruel.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was so smart, he was so beautiful.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s determination showed early. At 7, he was one of the top students in his school’s debate competitions. The topics for first graders were simple, but his peers could tell he was something special. Born in the United States and raised in Pakistan, he quickly stood out among his classmates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067143\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067143\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00717_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The intersection of Arboretum Road and Palm Drive, where 21-year-old Stanford sophomore Aradshar Chaddar was hit and killed in a bike collision this past summer at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Dec. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He was way ahead of everyone else around him,” said Ismail Iftikhar, his classmate and friend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 13, Chaddar, known as Arad or Chad to friends and family, began going to Model United Nations conferences, where he came alive during long, winding speeches about world affairs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You could tell that beneath the words, there were larger dreams and visions of a world that’s better,” said Mustafa Khan, who attended the same high school as Chaddar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 18, he shot up to 6-foot-3 — a college student with glasses, neat dark hair, a wide smile and a glimmer in his eyes as he would rope his friend Léon Garcia to help him run the Stanford Democrats or into a last-minute trek to San Francisco’s Chinatown.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“He would go out of his way to talk to people on the street whom he ran into, who he thought he could learn something interesting from,” Garcia said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 21, Chaddar ran into his high school history teacher, Shaan Tahir, in Lahore, Pakistan. His teacher asked him: “Arad. Ambitious as ever?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Sir. Is there any other way?” Chaddar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What are you aiming for?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“President of the USA,” he confidently responded.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tahir laughed, then remembered who he was talking to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I don’t doubt it,” he said to his former student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Months later, at a memorial service at the high school, Tahir recalled the memory as he sat among a crowd wracked with grief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I knew that he meant it … He is possibly the most ambitious person that I’ve ever met in my life,” Tahir told KQED. “Extremely determined to be someone in life and be something in life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s story is “about dreaming,” Khan said. “Not just for yourself, but dreaming for other people. Recognizing other people’s dreams and making them feel like they’re capable of achieving them because they are.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Chasing big dreams\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar was 7 when he met Chaddar, and the first impression was not positive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought he was full of himself,” Iftikhar said, laughing. “I thought he was incredibly selfish.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even then, he could tell Chaddar was ambitious and smart. They were among the top students at their school in Lahore, a city of over 14 million people and Pakistan’s academic center. Their friendly rivalry persisted until eighth grade, when Chaddar asked Iftikhar to join his Model United Nations team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar agreed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067034\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 1500px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067034\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1500\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED.jpg 1500w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Stanford-Student-Death-02-KQED-1152x1536.jpg 1152w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chaddar once described himself as “an avid mountaineer.” In a 2023 Instagram post, he said he hoped to “summit all the eight thousander peaks.” \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ismail Iftikhar)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I realized that selfish is the last word I would use for him,” Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was the type of friendship only two high achievers could have, one that endlessly pushed each other. They were prefects together and ran the Model UN club together. They poured over films together, diving into dialogue, politics and themes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t name a single thing he hadn’t seen,” he said. “There was basically nothing I could beat him in.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s favorite directors were Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa. He devoured books. While it’s common for Americans to be fans of the 2015 biographical musical \u003cem>Hamilton\u003c/em>, it’s less common for a kid from Pakistan — and Iftikhar said that Chaddar knew the dialogue by heart. He commanded English and Urdu with ease. He had a course load that confounded teachers. He brought home awards and distinctions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Vulnerability was hard for Chaddar, who felt deeply for the people around him, as if there was no separation between someone’s sorrow and his own. Their happiness was his.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sometimes the emotions got to him. In high school, Iftikhar and Chaddar’s team lost a Model UN competition. Chaddar was “a really bad loser, because he wasn’t used to losing,” Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At home, after the rest of the team left, Iftikhar found Chaddar lying down on the couch. He was clearly distressed, almost on the verge of tears. Iftikhar walked over and hugged him. Chaddar cried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Later on, he told me that that was like his favorite memory of us,” Iftikhar, now 21 and living in Southern California, said. “It just holds a special place in my heart.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It felt natural that they would be the only two of their class to go to California for college — Iftikhar to Claremont McKenna College near Los Angeles, Chaddar to Stanford in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A life cut short\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Chaddar arrived at Stanford in fall 2023 on a scholarship, planning to study political science and international relations. He tried to convince Garcia, a fellow freshman, to drop physics and pursue the same path.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was a big evangelist for the humanities,” Garcia said. “He believed that it was his job to lift up the people around him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If Chaddar’s goal was to be president, spending time with him felt like being on the campaign trail. To Garcia, he was a “Don Quixote-style character.” When he wasn’t studying, Chaddar was pushing Garcia to leave the Stanford bubble and venture into San Francisco, where Chaddar knew people and places as if he lived in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067144\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067144\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDSTUDENTDEATH00786_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A vigil for 21-year-old Stanford sophomore Aradshar Chaddar, who was hit and killed in a bike collision this past summer, sits under a tree at Terman Fountain at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Dec. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He kind of lived life in his own world, almost, and he brought everybody around him into that world,” Garcia said. “He was like one of the last true romantics.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He would spontaneously pop up at the San Francisco apartment of Khan, who graduated from Stanford.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“His energy is quite infectious as well. Always having this cheeky grin on his face,” Khan said. “It was hard not to fall in love with.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was hard to imagine someone so full of life being gone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On May 31, Chaddar was riding an electric bike on the Stanford University campus when, around 3 a.m., he was struck by a car. He was taken to a hospital, where he died at 3:25 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had been crossing the intersection of Palm Drive and Arboretum Road in the dark, with limited visibility, when an Uber driver entered the intersection and hit him on his left side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When a collision on campus results in an injury, CHP responds for an investigation and a report, said Bill Larson, public information officer for Stanford’s Department of Public Safety.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Stanford data shows that from December 2018 to November 2025, there were 120 bike collisions on campus that resulted in a CHP investigation. Around 60% of those collisions were between a bike and a vehicle that resulted in an injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When expanding the dataset beyond collisions resulting in a CHP investigation, there have been almost 240 bike accidents on campus reported from September 2018 to October 2025. According to the Stanford Daily, some \u003ca href=\"https://stanforddaily.com/2020/02/11/mapping-bike-accidents-on-campus/\">spots on campus\u003c/a> have a kind of notoriety for being dangerous for cyclists. For example, the roundabout near the school’s Clock Tower is called the “Circle of Death.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of the roads at Stanford are not very well lit,” Khan said. “I am so afraid every time I drive through.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar said around the time of the collision, speculation arose about what happened. It made sense that people were searching for more answers, he said, trying to understand the sudden death of someone so loved. But he wasn’t sure there was more to know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Iftikhar learned about Chaddar at 7:20 a.m. on June 2, 2025, after getting a message from Chaddar’s mother. Iftikhar was working on the Claremont McKenna College campus that summer and was the closest of his friends to the Bay Area. He booked a flight the same day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s aunt from North Carolina also arrived. What followed was a succession of office visits. They went to the medical examiner’s office. They couldn’t see the body right away because the investigation was still ongoing. So they went to a funeral home and talked to the coroner. They signed documents and packed his dorm room. They attended a hastily organized vigil on campus, joining more than 200 students, staff and faculty as stories were shared and music played. Even more watched online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A courier company predicted it would take at least weeks to bring Chaddar home to Pakistan, citing logistics. Iftikhar worked with Chaddar’s aunt to expedite the process — filling out documents, contacting the U.S. State Department and the Pakistani embassy. In early June, Chaddar was able to be transported back to Pakistan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just was very restless,” he said. “I don’t know. I just ended up doing things, and that’s my way of dealing with things.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The boys went to California together. Now they were going home together.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A life remembered\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While he went to school in Lahore, Chaddar’s family was from Mano Chak, a village three hours away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar was buried there, near his younger sister, who died a few years earlier. At the service, Iftikhar said he saw “more people than I’ve ever seen” in the village — all gathered for him. Friends from Stanford, including his girlfriend, also flew from California to see him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He is survived by his father, mother and his 12-year-old sister.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067141\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067141\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251210-STANFORDFILE00607_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hoover Tower at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Dec. 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“He was such a friendly baby,” his mother, gynecologist Sadia Chaddar, said. He had a sweet disposition and happily chirped, “Yes, I can do it, Mama!” whenever she needed his help.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She laughed when remembering how the kids called him Mr. President.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to argue with him,” she said. “Ardi, there are many other options. Why do you want to be the President of the USA?’ But she supported him, no matter what. Whatever he wanted to do, she would be there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can’t get my baby out of my mind,” his mother said. “I just sleep with his thoughts in my mind. I wake up with his thoughts in my mind.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>She thinks of him when she looks at her daughter, Farazeen. She is just like her big brother – sharp, thoughtful, ambitious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He’s basically my motivation whenever I’m studying,” Farazeen said. “He was a role model for me growing up.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar’s room – and library full of books he devoured – is preserved just the way it was when he would visit home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His father pores over his son’s writing, his debates, his speeches, his pictures, the tributes to him. His pride and love radiate as he talks about his eldest child; his grief immense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is not my personal loss. People claim that it is a national loss,” his father said. “Pakistan has lost a brilliant man.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://theazb.com/does-the-american-dream-still-hold-true/#google_vignette\">June column\u003c/a> for an English-language online publication focused on Pakistan, Chaddar wrote that his middle-class background gave him opportunities not afforded to others in his village. When he was home, he said it was common to hear advice like, “There is nothing for you here,” and “Get out of here as soon as possible.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite this, being from Mano Chak and Pakistan meant everything to Chaddar. He missed home fiercely, especially when coming to the United States, Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chaddar knew his ambition would always take him away from home and the family he loved. He struggled with that, writing his thoughts out in his journal and sharing them with Iftikhar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The village was a place that offered a lot of peace, a lot of security,” Iftikhar said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is also where he drew his strength from. Chaddar wanted to be the best. Even more, his friend said, “He wanted to make his family proud.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "SF Filmmaker Kevin Epps Convicted of Manslaughter, Not Murder, in 2016 Shooting",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066373/murder-trial-of-sf-filmmaker-kevin-epps-will-swing-on-question-of-self-defense\">San Francisco filmmaker and journalist Kevin Epps\u003c/a> on Monday was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, nine years after he fatally shot his former partner’s ex-brother-in-law during an altercation at his family’s Glen Park home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While prosecutors initially charged him with first-degree murder, the jury concluded that Epps did not act with malice but was still not justified to act in self-defense when he shot Marcus Polk on Oct. 24, 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epps was also found guilty of two counts of possession of a firearm as a felon, since he was barred from possessing the gun due to a nonviolent felony on his record from 15 years prior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the verdict was read, Epps sobbed quietly into his hands. Some supporters also began to cry, and in the hallway outside, others alleged prosecutorial misconduct. They’ve said Epps was targeted for his race and background, and throughout the trial, urged District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to drop charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Outside the courtroom, Epps’ spokesperson Julian Davis vowed to appeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The prosecutor very deliberately misled this jury into drawing inferences that were not supported by the evidence at trial or facts known independently to him,” Davis said. “On appeal, there’s going to be very strong grounds for an overturning, even of this voluntary manslaughter conviction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067218\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12067218 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Filmmaker and journalist Kevin Epps (center) embraces children in his family at the Superior Court of San Francisco on Dec. 15, 2025, after a jury found him not guilty of the murder of Marcus Polk. A jury did find Epps guilty of voluntary manslaughter. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Epps shot Polk in the left arm and torso shortly after Polk entered the Glen Park residence of his ex-wife’s sister, Maryam Jhan. She lived in the home with her and Epps’ two children. Polk was unhoused and recently out of jail at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defense attorneys said Epps, Jhan’s partner, also lived in the home, though prosecutors suggested during the trial that he had moved out months prior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The house was a gathering place for Jhan’s extended family — her sister, Starr Gul, and the three children she had with Polk were often present. Prosecutors said Jhan also allowed Polk to come over to visit his children, take showers and watch television on a fairly regular basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The night before the shooting, Polk showed up at the home late, banging on the door, before Epps turned him away. He returned the next day, high on methamphetamine and cannabis, and was again told to leave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, he entered the house.[aside postID=news_12066373 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251120-KEVIN-EPPS-TRIAL-ADE-02-KQED.jpg']Defense attorney Darlene Comstedt said Polk had barged into the home, acting “erratically” and threatening to “air out” Epps. He’d just gotten in a verbal altercation with maintenance workers out front. She argued that Epps was acting in self-defense when he opened fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Polk is a registered sex offender and had prior convictions for domestic abuse against Gul, lewd acts with a child, second-degree robbery and drug possession. But his criminal record was not permitted to be revealed to jurors after prosecutors argued that it did not have bearing on whether he was likely to commit homicidal violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During trial, prosecutors said that Polk didn’t pose an immediate threat of danger because he wasn’t armed, and that he was faced away from Epps when he was shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than fear, Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Schmidt argued, Epps had been motivated by a simmering dispute between the men over Polk’s frequent visits to the house. Schmidt described Polk as a part of the family and said he had a friendly relationship with Jhan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epps’ arrest in connection with the shooting in 2016 was a shock for many San Franciscans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had risen to local fame in the early 2000s for his series of documentaries on the experience of Black San Franciscans, including \u003cem>Straight Outta Hunter’s Point, \u003c/em>about the neighborhood where he grew up. He went on to work on a later film with acclaimed director Spike Lee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Days after the shooting, then-District Attorney George Gascón elected not to charge Epps, saying there was insufficient evidence, but in 2019, he was arrested again and charged with murder and illegal possession of a firearm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067217\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067217\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Filmmaker and journalist Kevin Epps (right) gets emotional while talking to press outside a courtroom at the Superior Court of San Francisco on Dec. 15, 2025, after a jury found him not guilty of the murder of Marcus Polk. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The charges were based on new three-dimensional computer-generated re-creations of the shooting that appeared to show Polk could have been facing away from Epps when he shot, throwing into question his self-defense claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The images were ultimately withdrawn over objections from the defense, but Gul — the sole witness of the shooting — corroborated the possibility in a preliminary hearing that year. During trial, her testimony was key to the prosecutors’ case, though under cross-examination, Comstedt questioned a number of changes to her recollection of the event over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epps was granted bail in 2020, which is highly unusual in a murder case, after more than 600 people petitioned the court; a dozen others, including Jhan and Supervisor Matt Haney, wrote letters urging his release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has been out of custody most of the time he was awaiting trial. He currently serves as the executive editor of the \u003cem>San Francisco Bay View\u003c/em>, a publication focused on the Black community. Earlier this year, he won the Northern California Society for Professional Journalists’ Silver Heart Award for his work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How long of a sentence Epps will face depends on the jury’s decision on several aggravating sentencing factors that the district attorney’s office plans to argue later Monday. A prior conviction could also double his sentence if it’s deemed a strike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voluntary manslaughter carries a sentence of up to 11 years in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Dec. 17: This article was updated to clarify the relationship between Kevin Epps and multiple members of his family.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066373/murder-trial-of-sf-filmmaker-kevin-epps-will-swing-on-question-of-self-defense\">San Francisco filmmaker and journalist Kevin Epps\u003c/a> on Monday was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter, nine years after he fatally shot his former partner’s ex-brother-in-law during an altercation at his family’s Glen Park home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While prosecutors initially charged him with first-degree murder, the jury concluded that Epps did not act with malice but was still not justified to act in self-defense when he shot Marcus Polk on Oct. 24, 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epps was also found guilty of two counts of possession of a firearm as a felon, since he was barred from possessing the gun due to a nonviolent felony on his record from 15 years prior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the verdict was read, Epps sobbed quietly into his hands. Some supporters also began to cry, and in the hallway outside, others alleged prosecutorial misconduct. They’ve said Epps was targeted for his race and background, and throughout the trial, urged District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to drop charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Outside the courtroom, Epps’ spokesperson Julian Davis vowed to appeal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The prosecutor very deliberately misled this jury into drawing inferences that were not supported by the evidence at trial or facts known independently to him,” Davis said. “On appeal, there’s going to be very strong grounds for an overturning, even of this voluntary manslaughter conviction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067218\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12067218 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00239seqn_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Filmmaker and journalist Kevin Epps (center) embraces children in his family at the Superior Court of San Francisco on Dec. 15, 2025, after a jury found him not guilty of the murder of Marcus Polk. A jury did find Epps guilty of voluntary manslaughter. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Epps shot Polk in the left arm and torso shortly after Polk entered the Glen Park residence of his ex-wife’s sister, Maryam Jhan. She lived in the home with her and Epps’ two children. Polk was unhoused and recently out of jail at the time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defense attorneys said Epps, Jhan’s partner, also lived in the home, though prosecutors suggested during the trial that he had moved out months prior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The house was a gathering place for Jhan’s extended family — her sister, Starr Gul, and the three children she had with Polk were often present. Prosecutors said Jhan also allowed Polk to come over to visit his children, take showers and watch television on a fairly regular basis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The night before the shooting, Polk showed up at the home late, banging on the door, before Epps turned him away. He returned the next day, high on methamphetamine and cannabis, and was again told to leave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, he entered the house.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Defense attorney Darlene Comstedt said Polk had barged into the home, acting “erratically” and threatening to “air out” Epps. He’d just gotten in a verbal altercation with maintenance workers out front. She argued that Epps was acting in self-defense when he opened fire.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Polk is a registered sex offender and had prior convictions for domestic abuse against Gul, lewd acts with a child, second-degree robbery and drug possession. But his criminal record was not permitted to be revealed to jurors after prosecutors argued that it did not have bearing on whether he was likely to commit homicidal violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During trial, prosecutors said that Polk didn’t pose an immediate threat of danger because he wasn’t armed, and that he was faced away from Epps when he was shot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rather than fear, Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Schmidt argued, Epps had been motivated by a simmering dispute between the men over Polk’s frequent visits to the house. Schmidt described Polk as a part of the family and said he had a friendly relationship with Jhan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epps’ arrest in connection with the shooting in 2016 was a shock for many San Franciscans.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had risen to local fame in the early 2000s for his series of documentaries on the experience of Black San Franciscans, including \u003cem>Straight Outta Hunter’s Point, \u003c/em>about the neighborhood where he grew up. He went on to work on a later film with acclaimed director Spike Lee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Days after the shooting, then-District Attorney George Gascón elected not to charge Epps, saying there was insufficient evidence, but in 2019, he was arrested again and charged with murder and illegal possession of a firearm.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067217\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067217\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251215-kevinepps00174seqn_TV_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Filmmaker and journalist Kevin Epps (right) gets emotional while talking to press outside a courtroom at the Superior Court of San Francisco on Dec. 15, 2025, after a jury found him not guilty of the murder of Marcus Polk. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The charges were based on new three-dimensional computer-generated re-creations of the shooting that appeared to show Polk could have been facing away from Epps when he shot, throwing into question his self-defense claim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The images were ultimately withdrawn over objections from the defense, but Gul — the sole witness of the shooting — corroborated the possibility in a preliminary hearing that year. During trial, her testimony was key to the prosecutors’ case, though under cross-examination, Comstedt questioned a number of changes to her recollection of the event over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Epps was granted bail in 2020, which is highly unusual in a murder case, after more than 600 people petitioned the court; a dozen others, including Jhan and Supervisor Matt Haney, wrote letters urging his release.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He has been out of custody most of the time he was awaiting trial. He currently serves as the executive editor of the \u003cem>San Francisco Bay View\u003c/em>, a publication focused on the Black community. Earlier this year, he won the Northern California Society for Professional Journalists’ Silver Heart Award for his work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How long of a sentence Epps will face depends on the jury’s decision on several aggravating sentencing factors that the district attorney’s office plans to argue later Monday. A prior conviction could also double his sentence if it’s deemed a strike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Voluntary manslaughter carries a sentence of up to 11 years in prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Dec. 17: This article was updated to clarify the relationship between Kevin Epps and multiple members of his family.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>An Alameda County judge granted the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066680/alameda-county-da-moves-to-drop-charges-against-officer-for-2020-fatal-shooting\">Alameda County District Attorney’s request\u003c/a> to drop charges against a former San Leandro police officer who shot and killed a man in a Walmart store in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deputy District Attorney Darby Williams argued Friday that the office didn’t believe it could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that former Officer Jason Fletcher was not justified in using deadly force in self-defense when he shot Steven Taylor, 33.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have reviewed every single shred of evidence … we simply, factually cannot meet our burden [of proof],” Williams told Superior Court Judge Clifford Blakely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Blakely told the courtroom that after weighing the evidence with the community’s interest in seeing Taylor’s case go to trial, “the balance falls in favor of granting [the dismissal] motion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move has sparked outrage from Taylor’s family and their supporters, who say they have been waiting nearly six years for justice in the case slated to go to trial next month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, a different judge denied a motion by Fletcher’s defense to dismiss the case over alleged prosecutorial misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Addie Kitchen speaks to the press after the case against Jason Fletcher was dismissed at Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson filed the motion to drop the charges, writing that Fletcher “was left with no reasonable alternative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fletcher, in a confined space, was confronted by Taylor, who was armed, refused to comply with verbal commands, was tased twice without appreciable effect, and had verbally indicated an intention to force Fletcher to use physical force up to and including his firearm,” the motion reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On April 18, 2020, Fletcher was the first to respond to the scene after Walmart security guards reported Taylor attempting to shoplift. Cell phone and body camera footage from the day shows Taylor carrying a metal baseball bat by the store entrance.[aside postID=news_12066680 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/251023-MAYOR-LEE-PRESSER-MD-06_qed.jpg']The officer approached Taylor and attempted to take the metal bat from his hands. Then, Fletcher used a taser twice before shooting Taylor with a gun. The entire altercation spanned just 40 seconds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s grandmother, Addie Kitchen, asked the judge not to throw out the case on Friday, alleging that Jones Dickson violated her rights as the victim’s representative to timely notice that it would be dropped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said Jones Dickson told her, for the first time just before filing the motion on Tuesday, that the case was old and she didn’t believe it was winnable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let the jury make the decision,” Kitchen said. “If that was their decision that the officer wasn’t guilty, at least the people in Alameda would make that decision. Not the DA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move is the latest in a series by the DA’s office to rollback progressive reforms made under former \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/pamela-price\">District Attorney Pamela Price\u003c/a>, who was recalled last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since taking office, Jones Dickson has also dismissed charges against law enforcement officers in multiple other high-profile cases, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053158/alameda-da-drops-charges-against-8-involved-in-maurice-monk-case\">the 2021 deaths of Maurice Monk\u003c/a> and Vinetta Martin, who were both found dead in Santa Rita Jail cells in separate incidents. She’s also dropped efforts to resentence some death row inmates \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066093/recalled-alameda-county-district-attorney-pamela-price-says-shes-running-again-in-2026\">after Price revealed that the DA’s office\u003c/a> had covered up efforts to exclude Black and Jewish jurors from their cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>An Alameda County judge granted the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066680/alameda-county-da-moves-to-drop-charges-against-officer-for-2020-fatal-shooting\">Alameda County District Attorney’s request\u003c/a> to drop charges against a former San Leandro police officer who shot and killed a man in a Walmart store in 2020.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deputy District Attorney Darby Williams argued Friday that the office didn’t believe it could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that former Officer Jason Fletcher was not justified in using deadly force in self-defense when he shot Steven Taylor, 33.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I have reviewed every single shred of evidence … we simply, factually cannot meet our burden [of proof],” Williams told Superior Court Judge Clifford Blakely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Blakely told the courtroom that after weighing the evidence with the community’s interest in seeing Taylor’s case go to trial, “the balance falls in favor of granting [the dismissal] motion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move has sparked outrage from Taylor’s family and their supporters, who say they have been waiting nearly six years for justice in the case slated to go to trial next month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, a different judge denied a motion by Fletcher’s defense to dismiss the case over alleged prosecutorial misconduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12067066\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12067066\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-JASONFLETCHERDISMISSED-04-BL-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Addie Kitchen speaks to the press after the case against Jason Fletcher was dismissed at Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland on Dec. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On Tuesday, District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson filed the motion to drop the charges, writing that Fletcher “was left with no reasonable alternative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fletcher, in a confined space, was confronted by Taylor, who was armed, refused to comply with verbal commands, was tased twice without appreciable effect, and had verbally indicated an intention to force Fletcher to use physical force up to and including his firearm,” the motion reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On April 18, 2020, Fletcher was the first to respond to the scene after Walmart security guards reported Taylor attempting to shoplift. Cell phone and body camera footage from the day shows Taylor carrying a metal baseball bat by the store entrance.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The officer approached Taylor and attempted to take the metal bat from his hands. Then, Fletcher used a taser twice before shooting Taylor with a gun. The entire altercation spanned just 40 seconds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s grandmother, Addie Kitchen, asked the judge not to throw out the case on Friday, alleging that Jones Dickson violated her rights as the victim’s representative to timely notice that it would be dropped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said Jones Dickson told her, for the first time just before filing the motion on Tuesday, that the case was old and she didn’t believe it was winnable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let the jury make the decision,” Kitchen said. “If that was their decision that the officer wasn’t guilty, at least the people in Alameda would make that decision. Not the DA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The move is the latest in a series by the DA’s office to rollback progressive reforms made under former \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/pamela-price\">District Attorney Pamela Price\u003c/a>, who was recalled last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since taking office, Jones Dickson has also dismissed charges against law enforcement officers in multiple other high-profile cases, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053158/alameda-da-drops-charges-against-8-involved-in-maurice-monk-case\">the 2021 deaths of Maurice Monk\u003c/a> and Vinetta Martin, who were both found dead in Santa Rita Jail cells in separate incidents. She’s also dropped efforts to resentence some death row inmates \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066093/recalled-alameda-county-district-attorney-pamela-price-says-shes-running-again-in-2026\">after Price revealed that the DA’s office\u003c/a> had covered up efforts to exclude Black and Jewish jurors from their cases.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Three people who required immediate hospitalization after an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066809/gas-explosion-in-bay-area-damages-homes-6-taken-to-hospitals\">explosion near Hayward\u003c/a> are stable on Friday as federal, state and local authorities investigate the blast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The explosion, which seemed to originate from a damaged natural gas line, rocked the 800 block of Lewelling Boulevard in the unincorporated community of Ashland around 9:38 a.m. Thursday, destroying three buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Transportation Safety Board told KQED that a team of four investigators will be on the scene on Friday to document the area and examine the pipeline and equipment involved. Though the federal agency usually investigates transportation accidents, it also has jurisdiction over pipelines and incidents involving hazardous materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Public Utilities Commission also confirmed that it is investigating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to the three people who required immediate transport, three others suffered minor injuries, according to Alameda County Fire Department spokesperson Cheryl Hurd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The injuries noted include burns to an unknown degree, respiratory issues and bone fractures,” Hurd said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066965\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066965\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alameda County police officers and Search and Rescue access the aftermath at the site of the explosion on the 800 block of East Lewelling Boulevard, on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Hayward, California. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Two of the victims were being treated at the Bothin Burn Center at UCSF Health Hyde Hospital as of Friday afternoon, the university confirmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTotv7YBnSw\">Doorbell camera footage\u003c/a> shared with ABC7 News caught the moment that the explosion blew a roof apart, propelling debris and smoke into the air and causing at least one worker nearby to flee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian said the utility company was first notified at 7:35 a.m. that an unaffiliated third-party construction crew struck an underground gas line.[aside postID=news_12066892 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251212-Tenderloin-Apartment-Fire-01-KQED.jpg']In response, the utility company sent its own workers to the scene to isolate the damaged line and stop the flow of gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Firefighters arrived on scene soon after the broken gas line was reported, around 7:50 a.m., but were cleared about five minutes later, according to the Alameda County Fire Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next hour or so, PG&E crews identified two damaged areas releasing gas, Sarkissian said — one was stopped at 8:18 a.m. and the second was stopped at 9:25 a.m., but the explosion happened roughly 10 minutes later. Three of those injured were PG&E employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E will be conducting an extensive investigation around potential cause and will support other investigations that may take place,” Sarkissian said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the explosion triggered a three-alarm fire, 75 firefighters responded to the scene, said Hurd, the Fire Department spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Three people who required immediate hospitalization after an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12066809/gas-explosion-in-bay-area-damages-homes-6-taken-to-hospitals\">explosion near Hayward\u003c/a> are stable on Friday as federal, state and local authorities investigate the blast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The explosion, which seemed to originate from a damaged natural gas line, rocked the 800 block of Lewelling Boulevard in the unincorporated community of Ashland around 9:38 a.m. Thursday, destroying three buildings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The National Transportation Safety Board told KQED that a team of four investigators will be on the scene on Friday to document the area and examine the pipeline and equipment involved. Though the federal agency usually investigates transportation accidents, it also has jurisdiction over pipelines and incidents involving hazardous materials.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The California Public Utilities Commission also confirmed that it is investigating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In addition to the three people who required immediate transport, three others suffered minor injuries, according to Alameda County Fire Department spokesperson Cheryl Hurd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The injuries noted include burns to an unknown degree, respiratory issues and bone fractures,” Hurd said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066965\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066965\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/HaywardExplosionAP2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alameda County police officers and Search and Rescue access the aftermath at the site of the explosion on the 800 block of East Lewelling Boulevard, on Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025, in Hayward, California. \u003ccite>(Minh Connors/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Two of the victims were being treated at the Bothin Burn Center at UCSF Health Hyde Hospital as of Friday afternoon, the university confirmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTotv7YBnSw\">Doorbell camera footage\u003c/a> shared with ABC7 News caught the moment that the explosion blew a roof apart, propelling debris and smoke into the air and causing at least one worker nearby to flee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>PG&E spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian said the utility company was first notified at 7:35 a.m. that an unaffiliated third-party construction crew struck an underground gas line.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In response, the utility company sent its own workers to the scene to isolate the damaged line and stop the flow of gas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Firefighters arrived on scene soon after the broken gas line was reported, around 7:50 a.m., but were cleared about five minutes later, according to the Alameda County Fire Department.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the next hour or so, PG&E crews identified two damaged areas releasing gas, Sarkissian said — one was stopped at 8:18 a.m. and the second was stopped at 9:25 a.m., but the explosion happened roughly 10 minutes later. Three of those injured were PG&E employees.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“PG&E will be conducting an extensive investigation around potential cause and will support other investigations that may take place,” Sarkissian said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After the explosion triggered a three-alarm fire, 75 firefighters responded to the scene, said Hurd, the Fire Department spokesperson.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "alameda-county-da-moves-to-drop-charges-against-officer-for-2020-fatal-shooting",
"title": "Alameda County DA Moves to Drop Charges Against Officer for 2020 Fatal Shooting",
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"content": "\u003cp>Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson has moved to dismiss manslaughter charges against the former San Leandro Police Officer who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840071/mental-health-and-racial-justice-why-advocates-want-to-get-police-out-of-crisis-responses\">fatally shot a man in a Walmart store\u003c/a> nearly six years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Family members of Steven Taylor, 33, who was shot and killed in 2020, have been waiting years for the trial of former officer Jason Fletcher, whose case has been handed back and forth between county and state prosecutors amid a revolving door of district attorneys in Alameda County in recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s supporters said Jones-Dickson’s motion to drop manslaughter charges against Fletcher, 55, abandons “one of the only police accountability cases in Alameda County history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This decision is a slap in the face to Steven’s family, to the community, and to the fight for justice,” supporters wrote on social media on Wednesday. “We will not be silent while the DA shields killer cops from accountability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On April 18, 2020, a Walmart security guard alerted police officers that Taylor, who had schizophrenia and bipolar depression, was allegedly attempting to leave without paying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fletcher, who was the first to arrive on the scene, moved toward Taylor, who was carrying an aluminum baseball bat. The officer tried to grab the bat and used a taser before shooting Taylor in the chest with a gun, all within 40 seconds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055752\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055752\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Addie Kitchen (center) and Sharon Taylor (center right) chant Steven Taylor’s name at a rally in front of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland on Sept. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then-District Attorney Nancy O’Malley brought manslaughter charges against Fletcher, marking the first time her administration elected to prosecute a police officer for a death, according to Cat Brooks, the executive director of the Anti-Police Terror Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After former District Attorney Pamela Price took office in January 2023, Fletcher’s lawyer, Mike Rains, argued that his client didn’t stand to have a fair trial under the former progressive prosecutor’s administration, and a judge turned the case over \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12036569/alameda-county-da-retakes-police-manslaughter-case-from-state-after-prices-recall\">to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s family and supporters, though, have long advocated for his case to be tried in the district where it occurred, and earlier this year, Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon returned jurisdiction to Alameda County’s district attorney after Price was recalled from office last November.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Fletcher’s defense moved to dismiss the case, citing prosecutorial misconduct. He said prosecutors under Price had shopped opinions from several police use-of-force experts who concluded Fletcher’s actions were not criminal, and failed to disclose those opinions to the defense.[aside postID=news_12064150 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2021/05/RS49486_005_Oakland_APTPGeorgeFloyd_05252021-qut-1-1020x679.jpg']During the hearing, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Casey Bates acknowledged misconduct in the office and, in an unusual move, appeared to refuse to oppose the motion, despite continued questioning from Reardon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I agree that there has been outrageous prosecutorial misconduct,” Bates said during the hearing. “I don’t know if it rises to the level of dismissal. I think that’s for the court to decide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reardon \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12064150/judge-rejects-bid-to-toss-case-against-former-san-leandro-officer-jason-fletcher\">rejected the bid to drop charges\u003c/a>, but now, a month later, Jones-Dickson has filed a motion to dismiss the case altogether, saying her office cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Fletcher’s actions were criminal and out of line with lawful self-defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fletcher, in a confined space, was confronted by Taylor, who was armed, refused to comply with verbal commands, was tased twice without appreciable effect, and had verbally indicated an intention to force Fletcher to use physical force up to and including his firearm,” the motion reads. “Fletcher was left with no reasonable alternative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Addie Kitchen, Taylor’s grandmother, said Jones Dickson told her Tuesday that the case was old and she didn’t believe it was winnable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let the jury make the decision,” Kitchen, who filed a letter asking a judge not to let the charges drop, said. “If that was their decision that the officer wasn’t guilty, at least the people in Alameda would make that decision. Not the DA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since taking office, Jones Dickson has undone many of Price’s more progressive reforms and dismissed charges against other law enforcement officers in multiple other high-profile cases, including the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053158/alameda-da-drops-charges-against-8-involved-in-maurice-monk-case\">2021 deaths of Maurice Monk\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/da-drops-charges-against-2-alameda-county-sheriffs-deputies-over-santa-rita-jail-suicide\">Vinetta Martin\u003c/a>, who were both found dead in Santa Rita Jail cells in separate incidents. The District Attorney’s office dropped charges against eight jail staffers in connection with Monk’s death, and three staffers continue to face charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055753\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055753\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cat Brooks speaks at a rally in front of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland on Sept. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It is no surprise then to learn that Ursula [Jones] Dickson, who has vowed to undo every single progressive accountability measure around law enforcement … is making a motion to dismiss,” Brooks said during a press conference outside the Oakland courthouse on Wednesday. She accused the DA of filing the motion while Reardon, who she said has “kept [the case] in the court system,” is on vacation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is egregious, it is vile, it is vicious … it is an affront to what the DA’s office is supposed to do, which is represent the people,” Brooks continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her letter opposing the motion Wednesday, Kitchen said her constitutional rights had been violated since she wasn’t given timely notice. She said she’s asking for the judge to deny or strike the motion and allow Reardon to rule on it later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A motion to dismiss a homicide case is the most consequential proceeding possible for a victim’s family,” she wrote. “The Constitution does not allow such a motion to be filed, argued, or granted without first giving the victim a meaningful opportunity to be heard. I was not given that opportunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kitchen said she and other advocates requested to meet with the DA and reached out to the office multiple times since last month’s hearing, but were left in the dark about the fate of Taylor’s case until Tuesday, just before the motion was filed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, a hearing on the motion to dismiss is set for Friday. Kitchen has requested to be heard as the victim’s advocate before any decision on the matter is made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dailycal.org/users/profile/ayah%20ali-ahmad/\">\u003cem>Ayah Ali-Ahmad\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Alameda County District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson has moved to dismiss manslaughter charges against the former San Leandro Police Officer who \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11840071/mental-health-and-racial-justice-why-advocates-want-to-get-police-out-of-crisis-responses\">fatally shot a man in a Walmart store\u003c/a> nearly six years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Family members of Steven Taylor, 33, who was shot and killed in 2020, have been waiting years for the trial of former officer Jason Fletcher, whose case has been handed back and forth between county and state prosecutors amid a revolving door of district attorneys in Alameda County in recent years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s supporters said Jones-Dickson’s motion to drop manslaughter charges against Fletcher, 55, abandons “one of the only police accountability cases in Alameda County history.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This decision is a slap in the face to Steven’s family, to the community, and to the fight for justice,” supporters wrote on social media on Wednesday. “We will not be silent while the DA shields killer cops from accountability.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On April 18, 2020, a Walmart security guard alerted police officers that Taylor, who had schizophrenia and bipolar depression, was allegedly attempting to leave without paying.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fletcher, who was the first to arrive on the scene, moved toward Taylor, who was carrying an aluminum baseball bat. The officer tried to grab the bat and used a taser before shooting Taylor in the chest with a gun, all within 40 seconds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055752\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055752\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-03-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Addie Kitchen (center) and Sharon Taylor (center right) chant Steven Taylor’s name at a rally in front of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland on Sept. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then-District Attorney Nancy O’Malley brought manslaughter charges against Fletcher, marking the first time her administration elected to prosecute a police officer for a death, according to Cat Brooks, the executive director of the Anti-Police Terror Project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After former District Attorney Pamela Price took office in January 2023, Fletcher’s lawyer, Mike Rains, argued that his client didn’t stand to have a fair trial under the former progressive prosecutor’s administration, and a judge turned the case over \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12036569/alameda-county-da-retakes-police-manslaughter-case-from-state-after-prices-recall\">to California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taylor’s family and supporters, though, have long advocated for his case to be tried in the district where it occurred, and earlier this year, Superior Court Judge Thomas Reardon returned jurisdiction to Alameda County’s district attorney after Price was recalled from office last November.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last month, Fletcher’s defense moved to dismiss the case, citing prosecutorial misconduct. He said prosecutors under Price had shopped opinions from several police use-of-force experts who concluded Fletcher’s actions were not criminal, and failed to disclose those opinions to the defense.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>During the hearing, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Casey Bates acknowledged misconduct in the office and, in an unusual move, appeared to refuse to oppose the motion, despite continued questioning from Reardon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I agree that there has been outrageous prosecutorial misconduct,” Bates said during the hearing. “I don’t know if it rises to the level of dismissal. I think that’s for the court to decide.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Reardon \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12064150/judge-rejects-bid-to-toss-case-against-former-san-leandro-officer-jason-fletcher\">rejected the bid to drop charges\u003c/a>, but now, a month later, Jones-Dickson has filed a motion to dismiss the case altogether, saying her office cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Fletcher’s actions were criminal and out of line with lawful self-defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Fletcher, in a confined space, was confronted by Taylor, who was armed, refused to comply with verbal commands, was tased twice without appreciable effect, and had verbally indicated an intention to force Fletcher to use physical force up to and including his firearm,” the motion reads. “Fletcher was left with no reasonable alternative.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Addie Kitchen, Taylor’s grandmother, said Jones Dickson told her Tuesday that the case was old and she didn’t believe it was winnable.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Let the jury make the decision,” Kitchen, who filed a letter asking a judge not to let the charges drop, said. “If that was their decision that the officer wasn’t guilty, at least the people in Alameda would make that decision. Not the DA.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since taking office, Jones Dickson has undone many of Price’s more progressive reforms and dismissed charges against other law enforcement officers in multiple other high-profile cases, including the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053158/alameda-da-drops-charges-against-8-involved-in-maurice-monk-case\">2021 deaths of Maurice Monk\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/da-drops-charges-against-2-alameda-county-sheriffs-deputies-over-santa-rita-jail-suicide\">Vinetta Martin\u003c/a>, who were both found dead in Santa Rita Jail cells in separate incidents. The District Attorney’s office dropped charges against eight jail staffers in connection with Monk’s death, and three staffers continue to face charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12055753\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12055753\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/250912-JASON-FLETCHER-HEARING-MD-05-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cat Brooks speaks at a rally in front of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland on Sept. 12, 2025. \u003ccite>(Martin do Nascimento/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“It is no surprise then to learn that Ursula [Jones] Dickson, who has vowed to undo every single progressive accountability measure around law enforcement … is making a motion to dismiss,” Brooks said during a press conference outside the Oakland courthouse on Wednesday. She accused the DA of filing the motion while Reardon, who she said has “kept [the case] in the court system,” is on vacation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is egregious, it is vile, it is vicious … it is an affront to what the DA’s office is supposed to do, which is represent the people,” Brooks continued.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her letter opposing the motion Wednesday, Kitchen said her constitutional rights had been violated since she wasn’t given timely notice. She said she’s asking for the judge to deny or strike the motion and allow Reardon to rule on it later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A motion to dismiss a homicide case is the most consequential proceeding possible for a victim’s family,” she wrote. “The Constitution does not allow such a motion to be filed, argued, or granted without first giving the victim a meaningful opportunity to be heard. I was not given that opportunity.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kitchen said she and other advocates requested to meet with the DA and reached out to the office multiple times since last month’s hearing, but were left in the dark about the fate of Taylor’s case until Tuesday, just before the motion was filed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, a hearing on the motion to dismiss is set for Friday. Kitchen has requested to be heard as the victim’s advocate before any decision on the matter is made.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.dailycal.org/users/profile/ayah%20ali-ahmad/\">\u003cem>Ayah Ali-Ahmad\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>A hearing in the case of pro-Palestinian protesters arrested for breaking into and vandalizing the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/stanford-university\">Stanford University\u003c/a> president’s office was marked Tuesday by heated discussions over the word genocide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the court session focused on pretrial motions — which attorneys and the judge use to lay out the ground rules for a trial — a debate over whether the term genocide should be allowed during the proceedings elicited the most impassioned arguments from defense attorneys and a deputy district attorney alike.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point, defense attorneys and the county prosecutor verbally sparred over whether Israel’s actions in Gaza being characterized as a genocide is a settled fact.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Using the word genocide is the same as saying the sky is blue. It is what it is,” Leah Gillis, a defense attorney in the case, said in court.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Robert Baker, the prosecutor heading up the case for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, said Gillis’ comment was offensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s absolutely absurd. And I think there’s people who were murdered in World War II that would probably think that the word genocide is a lot different than just the word blue,” Baker said, raising his voice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The flashpoint between attorneys in court stemmed from discussions on Tuesday about one of the central fights in the case thus far: the motivations of the protesters during their action on June 5, 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066600\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066600\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Robert Baker listens during a Dec. 9, 2025, pretrial hearing in San José in the case of a group of pro-Palestinian protesters charged with vandalism and conspiracy for breaking into the Stanford University president’s office last year. \u003ccite>(Joseph Geha/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gillis and other defense attorneys representing the five former and current Stanford students in the trial have emphasized in court filings and in court on Tuesday that their clients’ actions were motivated by what they believe is a genocide in Gaza, and their protest was aimed at saving Palestinian lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prosecution has questioned the validity of those arguments and has tried to limit the scope of what the jury could be influenced by during the trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very clear the whole point of this argument is to prevent the defense from blaming a country that is currently litigating that very point,” Baker said of Israel’s dispute over its actions being labeled as genocide. “It is currently the subject of litigation in the United Nations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Hanley Chew ultimately agreed to allow the use of the word genocide, he asked defense attorneys to be “very judicious” about it, and warned that if he felt they overused it, he would change his mind.[aside postID=news_12064351 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/251117-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-7_qed.jpg']“I’m not going to exclude the use of the word genocide, but I don’t want the word genocide paraded throughout this trial. And if it is, I will exclude it,” Chew said. “As all of you have pointed out, the word genocide is very powerful and is very politically charged. And if I feel that the parties are exploiting that word with their own use … I will exclude its further use.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The courtroom at the Hall of Justice in San José was packed with several dozen people on Tuesday, nearly all of whom appeared to be supporting the protesters and donning keffiyehs, patterned black and white scarves that have become a visible signifier of Palestinian solidarity and resistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group of what was 12 protesters said on social media at the time they entered the university offices that they wanted Stanford leaders to “address their role in enabling and profiting from the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The action came amid a series of larger campus demonstrations aimed at pressuring the school to divest from companies that support Israel’s military bombardment in Gaza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defense attorneys emphasized that international bodies and experts, such as the International Association of Genocide Scholars and an independent United Nations commission, have labeled Israel’s actions genocide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using a word like genocide is “setting the stage” for what was in the minds of their clients when they took their actions, Gillis said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062229\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of Hoover Tower on the Stanford University campus in Stanford on Oct. 29, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The prosecution asked the court to bar all use of the word genocide, arguing it is “inflammatory” and could prejudice the case, and also sought to exclude explanations of the motives of the protesters during testimony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Baker said the motives of the protesters are irrelevant to a jury trying to decide whether they are guilty of felony vandalism and conspiracy charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they were protesting the Gaza War, if they were protesting the 2020 election, if they were protesting President Biden, if they were protesting President Trump, it makes no difference,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re going to transform this trial into a political forum rather than a search for the truth and determinative facts,” Baker said. “I think there needs to be significant limitations to sanitize what is presented to a jury.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Chew took a middle stance in his ruling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062228\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062228\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students walk and bike past the fountain outside Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University in Stanford on Oct. 29, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’m not going to do a blanket prohibition on defendants speaking about their motivation. However, I will severely limit that ability to speak about motivation,” Chew said, noting he would ban any hearsay evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chew also decided to exclude, for now, testimony from a professor of human rights whom Gillis argued the defense should be able to use during the trial as an expert witness, to help establish facts around “Palestine and the genocide and the motivations of these young people in their request to Stanford to divest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point during the hearing, some people in the audience of the courtroom chuckled, sighed or let out brief comments in response to arguments from Baker, prompting Chew to later issue a warning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the court, and you should act in accordance with the fact that you are in a courtroom. If there are any additional outbursts, I will clear this courtroom. You understand that?” Chew said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hunter Taylor-Black, one of the defendants, said the trial amounts to “political persecution.”[aside postID=news_12065375 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/240508-Berkeley-High-File-MD-03_qed.jpg']Taylor-Black said the case from prosecutors feels “meant to discourage future student activists from acting on the things they believe in in the ways that student activists have acted in the past.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While students at campuses across the country were arrested last spring for Gaza-related demonstrations, few of those arrests resulted in felony charges or trials, making the Stanford case unusual. And defense attorneys argued earlier this year that the District Attorney’s office was overcharging the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The five defendants chose to go to trial last month, after six other protesters who were charged in the case entered into mental health diversion programs, or indicated they would take a court-offered deal that would include pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges, with a pathway to potential dismissal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One other protester, Jack Richardson, served as a witness for prosecutors in a grand jury indictment and is now enrolled in a youth deferred entry of judgment program. Such programs allow young people to eventually have a charge dismissed if they do not commit crimes while free, and often include rehabilitative requirements like counseling and community service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Germán González, also a defendant in the trial, said after the court hearing that it was disheartening to hear “genocide denialism” in the courtroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Throughout this sort of fear and anxiety that I do feel in the courtroom, I am just reminding myself that it is a privilege,” González said. “Nothing that happens in a courtroom or what happened to me is as severe as what’s happening to the Palestinians, who are facing genocide right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More pretrial conferences are scheduled this week, including a hearing over whether or not the provost of Stanford, Jenny Martinez, will be called to testify as a witness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jury selection in the trial is set to begin in early January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Robert Baker, the prosecutor heading up the case for the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, said Gillis’ comment was offensive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s absolutely absurd. And I think there’s people who were murdered in World War II that would probably think that the word genocide is a lot different than just the word blue,” Baker said, raising his voice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The flashpoint between attorneys in court stemmed from discussions on Tuesday about one of the central fights in the case thus far: the motivations of the protesters during their action on June 5, 2024.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12066600\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12066600\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/12/251209-STANFORDTRIAL-JG-4_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Robert Baker listens during a Dec. 9, 2025, pretrial hearing in San José in the case of a group of pro-Palestinian protesters charged with vandalism and conspiracy for breaking into the Stanford University president’s office last year. \u003ccite>(Joseph Geha/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Gillis and other defense attorneys representing the five former and current Stanford students in the trial have emphasized in court filings and in court on Tuesday that their clients’ actions were motivated by what they believe is a genocide in Gaza, and their protest was aimed at saving Palestinian lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prosecution has questioned the validity of those arguments and has tried to limit the scope of what the jury could be influenced by during the trial.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s very clear the whole point of this argument is to prevent the defense from blaming a country that is currently litigating that very point,” Baker said of Israel’s dispute over its actions being labeled as genocide. “It is currently the subject of litigation in the United Nations.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Hanley Chew ultimately agreed to allow the use of the word genocide, he asked defense attorneys to be “very judicious” about it, and warned that if he felt they overused it, he would change his mind.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I’m not going to exclude the use of the word genocide, but I don’t want the word genocide paraded throughout this trial. And if it is, I will exclude it,” Chew said. “As all of you have pointed out, the word genocide is very powerful and is very politically charged. And if I feel that the parties are exploiting that word with their own use … I will exclude its further use.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The courtroom at the Hall of Justice in San José was packed with several dozen people on Tuesday, nearly all of whom appeared to be supporting the protesters and donning keffiyehs, patterned black and white scarves that have become a visible signifier of Palestinian solidarity and resistance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group of what was 12 protesters said on social media at the time they entered the university offices that they wanted Stanford leaders to “address their role in enabling and profiting from the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The action came amid a series of larger campus demonstrations aimed at pressuring the school to divest from companies that support Israel’s military bombardment in Gaza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Defense attorneys emphasized that international bodies and experts, such as the International Association of Genocide Scholars and an independent United Nations commission, have labeled Israel’s actions genocide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using a word like genocide is “setting the stage” for what was in the minds of their clients when they took their actions, Gillis said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062229\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062229\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-6-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A view of Hoover Tower on the Stanford University campus in Stanford on Oct. 29, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The prosecution asked the court to bar all use of the word genocide, arguing it is “inflammatory” and could prejudice the case, and also sought to exclude explanations of the motives of the protesters during testimony.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Baker said the motives of the protesters are irrelevant to a jury trying to decide whether they are guilty of felony vandalism and conspiracy charges.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they were protesting the Gaza War, if they were protesting the 2020 election, if they were protesting President Biden, if they were protesting President Trump, it makes no difference,” Baker said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re going to transform this trial into a political forum rather than a search for the truth and determinative facts,” Baker said. “I think there needs to be significant limitations to sanitize what is presented to a jury.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Judge Chew took a middle stance in his ruling.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12062228\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12062228\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/10/20251029_STANFORDFILE-_GH-3-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Students walk and bike past the fountain outside Memorial Auditorium at Stanford University in Stanford on Oct. 29, 2025. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I’m not going to do a blanket prohibition on defendants speaking about their motivation. However, I will severely limit that ability to speak about motivation,” Chew said, noting he would ban any hearsay evidence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chew also decided to exclude, for now, testimony from a professor of human rights whom Gillis argued the defense should be able to use during the trial as an expert witness, to help establish facts around “Palestine and the genocide and the motivations of these young people in their request to Stanford to divest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one point during the hearing, some people in the audience of the courtroom chuckled, sighed or let out brief comments in response to arguments from Baker, prompting Chew to later issue a warning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is the court, and you should act in accordance with the fact that you are in a courtroom. If there are any additional outbursts, I will clear this courtroom. You understand that?” Chew said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hunter Taylor-Black, one of the defendants, said the trial amounts to “political persecution.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Taylor-Black said the case from prosecutors feels “meant to discourage future student activists from acting on the things they believe in in the ways that student activists have acted in the past.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While students at campuses across the country were arrested last spring for Gaza-related demonstrations, few of those arrests resulted in felony charges or trials, making the Stanford case unusual. And defense attorneys argued earlier this year that the District Attorney’s office was overcharging the case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The five defendants chose to go to trial last month, after six other protesters who were charged in the case entered into mental health diversion programs, or indicated they would take a court-offered deal that would include pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges, with a pathway to potential dismissal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One other protester, Jack Richardson, served as a witness for prosecutors in a grand jury indictment and is now enrolled in a youth deferred entry of judgment program. Such programs allow young people to eventually have a charge dismissed if they do not commit crimes while free, and often include rehabilitative requirements like counseling and community service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Germán González, also a defendant in the trial, said after the court hearing that it was disheartening to hear “genocide denialism” in the courtroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Throughout this sort of fear and anxiety that I do feel in the courtroom, I am just reminding myself that it is a privilege,” González said. “Nothing that happens in a courtroom or what happened to me is as severe as what’s happening to the Palestinians, who are facing genocide right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More pretrial conferences are scheduled this week, including a hearing over whether or not the provost of Stanford, Jenny Martinez, will be called to testify as a witness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jury selection in the trial is set to begin in early January.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"mindshift": {
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
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"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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