Oakland Assemblyman Rob Bonta, chair of the Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence in the East Bay brought three panels of local officials, youth counselors and pastors together Friday to discuss the continuing rise even in crime less than 24 hours after the city suffered two more homicides Thursday night. Thirty-seven homicides have occurred in Oakland this year.

Even as an ambitious package of gun control bills sponsored by Bonta, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner and State Sen. Loni Hancock wind through the Legislature, most panelists instead chose to focus on ideas that will foster hope, rather than the need to pick up a firearm and shoot.

Olis Simmons, a community organizer with Oakland’s Youth UpRising says gang activity — the often mentioned cause of gun violence — is not the issue. “It’s a clique issue,” she says, resulting from staggering unemployment in Oakland, especially in the black and Latino community, and fear. “They carry guns not because they’re a predator, but because they’re desperate to feel safe.”

“This is a public health crisis,” said Pastor Zack Carey of Oakland’s True Vine Ministries. “They’re shooting each other because there’s no jobs.”

Richmond’s charismatic director of Neighborhood Safety DeVone Boggan said he has heard many of the same solutions over the past two decades to no avail. The impetus should be on helping the youth make better decisions to avoid conflicts when they invariably occur on the streets, he said. “Help us to understand what is required to motivate you to put your gun down,” Boggan said. “When you truly want to live, you make better decisions.”

Salinas Police Chief Kelly McMillin, whose rapidly growing Central Valley city, like Oakland, has both high rates of crime along with a large minority population, says community policing has helped foster trust between residents and law enforcement, and forced those in need take advantage of various local social programs. You can’t rely on troubled residents to seek out the programs on their own, he says. Instead, his officers take the programs to their front door.

He also his instructs officers to immerse themselves in the community while eschewing zero tolerance strategies to create safe neighborhoods. When events necessitate the use of police force, McMillin says, the community is far more understanding if there is perception law enforcement had already done everything they could in the past. However, he says, “Some people are just too dangerous and need to be locked up.” McMillin realizes his strategy is also costly. “It is expensive. It’s a question of resources,” he said, “but it absolutely works.”

Many at Friday’s hearing agree the rise in gun violence would be better framed as a public health crisis. Dr. Randi Smith, a surgeon-in-training at Oakland’s Highland Hospital, says the vast majority of patients she sees in the emergency room are predominately black and Latinos consistently delivered from the same streets in Oakland. They are also repeat customers, she says.

Citing a national statistics, Smith says 44 percent of young blacks who experience a gunshot wound will likely receive another in the next five years. It is not uncommon, Smith says, for doctors treating patients for single-entry bullet wounds at Highland to notice previous gunshot wounds on x-rays. Sadly, Smith says, “There’s a revolving door of gun violence.”

Cross-posted to: http://www.ebcitizen.com/2013/05/community-leaders-says-gun-violence-is.html

Although Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner and State Sen. Loni Hancock targeted guns and residual violence in the media and video games at Friday’s Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence in the East Bay, it was freshman Assemblyman Bill Quirk who flashed the hottest rhetoric calling for more prohibitive gun control measures.

“We have a disconnect in the Legislature,” said Quirk of Republican colleagues who believe the use of firearms for personal protection and for sport are equal. “We know the best to get killed by a gun is to have a gun in your house for self-protection,” he said.

Quirk also applauded Skinner and Assemblyman Rob Bonta’s pending legislation to tax bullet sales. “You can’t shoot people if you don’t have ammunition,” Quirk said.

The best way to promote safety, Quirk said, is to prohibit guns, except for sport. But, the East Bay is mostly an urban landscape, he says. “In the area we come from guns are for killing people.” He also skewered conservative second amendment proponents for their strict constructionist beliefs over the right to bear arms. “They claim to follow the Founding Fathers,” Quirk said, “but they don’t.”

Skinner and Hancock agreed with Quirk’s interpretation of the second amendment and its adherents.

“It says a regulated militia,” said Hancock. “It doesn’t say anybody can carry anything anywhere they are.” She added, “Limiting access to guns is a part of the solution.”

Just the presence of guns in the home is a problem, said Skinner, who said, “I vary on notion on the second amendment.”

“The presence of guns in homes does nothing for public safety,” she said. Skinner also advocated for “limiting” the number of firearms and ammunition available. This year, Skinner advanced various gun control bills in the Assembly expressly aimed at slowing the proliferation of guns on the streets.

However, she said, “Legislation alone won’t be enough.”

Later, Skinner faulted the federal government for failing to pass meaningful gun control legislation in the aftermath of the Newtown, Conn. shootings last December that killed 20 elementary school children and six adults.

Although Friday’s assembly hearing was chaired by Bonta, who represents Oakland, San Leandro and Alameda, he offered none of the heated rhetoric of his fellow lawmaker other than to promote a discussion on how to find solutions to lower crime in Oakland, including its perception of lawlessness, seen by many in the surrounding East Bay.

Cross-posted to: http://www.ebcitizen.com/2013/05/east-bay-legislators-call-for-stringent.html

African-American youth filled the first two rows of chairs lining the congregation room of the Acts Full Gospel Church in Oakland on April 27, clad in white T-shirts reading “OAKLAND NAACP Youth Leadership Conference.”

Some held slips of paper from an earlier exercise in their hands, with their colleges of choice written on them: Stanford, Yale, Berkeley. Other youth, about knee-high, still looked forward to the first grade.

Most of the older youth arrived as early as 8 a.m. to help set up the event, then waited patiently for the headliner at noon.

Looking down on them from center stage sat former Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, OPD Lieutenant Kirk Coleman, Assistant District Attorney Terry Wiley and the president of the Black Youth Leadership Project, Loreen Pryor. The NAACP representative expected to join them on the panel was absent.

“No adults can speak to this panel!” facilitator Martin L. McWilson said to the grown-ups in the audience. McWilson is a trustee for Area 2 of the Alameda Board of Education. “Youth, this is your chance to ask us questions and tell us what concerns you, what you think about us.”

Questions trickled in, at first. A boy no more than 8 years old was the first to speak up.

“What can young people do to stop the violence?” he asked.

Coleman was the first to respond to most of the questions, including this one.

“You have to communicate with your friends,” he said. “Let them know that violence is not acceptable in your community.”

Meanwhile, the meeting rooms in the front held teen contestants for the NAACP’s “ACT-SO” program. “ACT-SO” stands for Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics and several teens at the event had their creative performances evaluated for the upcoming program.

The competitive air of the evaluations matched that of the panel. Many of the teenage students had questions for Jordan, who resigned from his 19-month position as Oakland Police Chief on May 8.

“Where I grew up, kids thought violence was cool, too,” he said. Jordan shared an anecdote about his adolescence at Stone Mountain High School in Georgia, when he and a friend, by some stroke of callousness, brought a gun to school.

“That’s what we thought was cool, long before violence had gotten to the place it was today,” he said. “So how am I sitting on this panel today? One day, I made a choice. To say, ‘Y’know what? This is stupid.”

His best friend, the other man with the gun, ended up in prison at 22, serving 25-to-life.

When asked about the possibility of officer-enforced youth curfews in Oakland, Jordan stressed the importance of a community consensus.

“We [the police] can’t enforce what the community won’t,” Jordan said.

Debra Carter-Kelly, an author and speaker at the event, described the audience of young people as “blessed” to have aspirations towards higher education and a meaningful, straight-laced career. Her husband, Kevin Kelly, elaborated on her feelings.

He said that many kids who live in disenfranchised communities like East Oakland, as he did, hardly have the opportunity to see beyond their block or street. For these kids, even Laney College can seem like a faraway option.

“College isn’t for everyone,” he said. “But the option for college is.”

Cross-posted from Laney Tower.

The Youth Peace Festival, called “Turn Up for Peace” will take place on Saturday, June 1 at Unity High School in East Oakland. There will be workshops and performances at the event all focused on the theme of creating a more peaceful community.

Although other Silence The Violence Day events will take place all around the country, it all had its start right here in Oakland.

In the summer of 2006, when Oakland was experiencing a spike in violence, Urban Peace Movement founder Nicole Lee and Rudy Corpuz Jr. from United Playaz (SF) sounded a call to action that was heard across the Bay Area. The idea and message was simple – coordinated simultaneous vigils calling for an end to urban violence.

What started out as a call for three vigils across Oakland, blossomed into 21 simultaneous vigils across the Bay Area. This annual summer event has evolved into a national day of action with cities across the country participating.

Together, with our partners, we are helping to activate hundreds across the nation to Silence The Violence and create a hopeful, positive message that everyone has a role to play in ending urban violence. You can hear PSA’s about Silence The Violence Day right now on 106KMEL and you can take a Pledge to Silence The Violence at www.urbanpeacemovement.org.

Assm. Rob Bonta with Councilmember Libby Schaaf

Cities like Oakland cannot pass or enforce laws where State or Federal laws pre-empt them.

We all remember a recent dramatic illustration of this principle when federal authorities raided licensed, tax-paying medical marijuana dispensaries in Oakland that were legally permitted under city and state law, but purportedly violated federal laws.

A pre-emption issue I’ve been working on is around gun control. Cities like Oakland can’t have their own gun licensing and registration laws because California law preempts it.

Our Assemblymember Rob Bonta took up my suggestion to allow Oakland to have a special emption from this rule. Oakland has a unique problem among California cities with unacceptably high levels of violent gun crimes, many of which are committed with stolen guns.

Bonta’s AB180 would allow Oakland to have stricter gun licensing and registration laws than the limited ones currently imposed by state law. Hopefully, this will result in less violence committed with stolen guns and by people who shouldn’t be allowed to possess guns in the first place (referred to as “prohibited persons” in gun control laws).

Assemblymember Bonta – a recent panelist at my Safe Oakland Speaker Series – has authored several laws intended to curb gun violence. I was honored he invited me to provide the testimony in support of AB180 last Tuesday before the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee.

I explained Oakland’s urgent need to address gun violence – with more than 4,000 gun-related crimes last year alone. AB180 would allow Oakland to quickly remove firearms from prohibited persons and better identify criminals involved in illegal gun trafficking.

Not only did the committee pass the law on to the assembly floor for a full vote, but Oakland’s other Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, signed on to serve as a co-author!

Bonta issued the following statement after the measure passed, “Across our state, communities are suffering from a devastating combination of budget cuts to public safety and coinciding increases in violent crime. No one can deny that Oakland is suffering from among the worst gun violence in the state and in the nation. Oakland suffered from 131 homicides in 2012 – 21 more than 2011 and the highest in six years. Twelve of those victims were children.”

Local law-makers like me may be constrained by the principle of pre-emption, but we can bring these challenges to our allies at the State and Federal level to remove those blocks. In Oakland, we’re lucky to have supportive colleagues like Assemblymembers Bonta and Skinner, who are committed to helping Oaklanders to live under laws that better reflect our local values.

Note: Assemblymember Bonta chairs the Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence in the East Bay, which will hold its first hearing on Friday, May 17, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Auditorium of the Elihu M. Harris State Building in Oakland (1515 Clay St., in Oakland). Please attend this important hearing.

Editor’s Note: This piece reflects an individual opinion and is not a reported story from Oakland Local. Oakland Local invites community residents to share their views about events and issues in Oakland. For guidelines, see: http://oaklandlocal.com/tos

The Council voted 8-0 to set a timeline for City Administrator Deanna Santana to complete the transfer of citizen complaints against OPD from the police’s discretion to her office.

Under the Negotiated Settlement Agreement, a court-ordered series of reforms that were mandated 13 years ago in the wake of the Riders Case, the city was supposed to have already undertaken the effort to move the Office of Inspector General and the public complaints process to under the city administrator’s authority.

The City Council’s vote on Tuesday was an attempt to hurry the administration along. The Council’s motion set an Oct. 15 deadline for the transition, as well as directing city staff to present a monthly progress report to the public safety committee of the Council.

Santana blamed the delay on a shrunken city staff and changes in the way that the city obtained approvals from the federally appointed compliance director, retired Baltimore police chief Thomas Frasier.

But as has been the case for years as the police reform process has dragged on, several City Council members and community activists accused the administration of intentionally delaying the effort.

“The fact that it hasn’t happen yet is a matter of concern,” Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan said. “What we’re talking about doing should yield improvement in the quality of complaint intake and getting boots on the ground.”

Rashida Grinage, the founder and executive director of PUEBLO in East Oakland, was skeptical of Santana and Mayor Jean Quan’s excuse that the delay was a result of the NSA and the difficulties in getting approval from compliance director Henderson.

“The compliance director was well aware of this,” Grinage said. “If he had been opposed to it, he could have told the city to stop.”

Councilwoman Desley Brooks also noted the recent court order from U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson that admonished the city for constricting Thelton’s attempts to monitor the reforms. Henderson accused the city of being “misguided.”

“The court issues this order – which should be unnecessary – to clarify its orders mean what they say,” Henderson wrote.

Though only a few audience members remained when the vote was cast – it was finally taken after 10 p.m., fours hours into the meeting – the ones who remained were jubilant.

“We were extremely satisfied,” Grinage said. “We weren’t sure of the kind of moxy the City Council was going to have in the face of some overwhelming arguments from the city administrator, but they showed real leadership.”

Today, Mayor Quan acknowledged and takes full responsibility for the inaccurate statistic. “I was given incorrect data last year regarding areas with a high concentration of homicides in our city. I have been using that data to describe the 100 Blocks Initiative. As Mayor I should have taken more time to analyze and verify the data and its accuracy as it related to the concentration of violent crime in our community. This is regrettable and I take full responsibility for the error.” said Mayor Quan.

Although the statistic used was incorrect, the premise of the public safety strategy is sound and has merit. “It is the Right Strategy and it is the Right Plan to address one of our City’s most significant challenges.” Stated Mayor
Quan. The areas chosen to focus on have been identified in numerous reports and analyses as being the right neighborhoods and the right beats in the city with the highest concentration of homicides. We must focus our
efforts on reducing crime in the neighborhoods that historically and persistently suffer from the most violence and have the least hope.” stated Mayor Quan.

Various analyses of data on shootings and homicides conducted by a number of researchers over a number of years* have revealed a recurring and consistent pattern: violent crime is concentrated in particular geographic
areas of Oakland.

The team that Mayor Quan has selected to lead the public safety effort—including Police Chief Howard Jordan and City Administrator Deanna J.Santana—are aligned in their strategic vision for public safety and their
commitment to assign law enforcement and other City resources in support of this strategy.

“Our successful collaboration with other law enforcement agencies to extend the reach of policing strategies is showing results. This year we have employed strategies to remove approximately 300 guns associated
with crimes from the streets and worked to remove offenders from our streets,” said Assistant Police Chief Anthony Toribio. “We are working with finely tuned crime data on a daily and weekly basis to target the
highest crime areas, respond to crimes when and where they are happening, and make vital arrests.”

In addition to law enforcement, the City is seeking ways to support the violent crime-reduction strategy with other City resources. “For many years, the Oakland Police Department has held sole responsibility for addressing the City’s public safety challenges,” said City Administrator Deanna J. Santana. “We know that the police department alone cannot reduce the high levels of violence in our community; they must have the
support and resources of every City agency and department.”

Santana has charged city department directors to think about service delivery with an aim toward crime reduction. “Parks & Recreation, Public Works, libraries and other City departments are seeking new ways to
provide resources to reduce crime in the most impacted areas,” she said. “This is a new approach for City agencies, and will take time to take hold.”

The Mayor also focused on the need to provide real opportunities to the young people in these neighborhoods to reduce crime long-term. “Our summer jobs program for youth will begin July 16th for kids in the most
distressed areas providing an opportunity for them to learn skills that will be useful throughout life” said Mayor Quan. We cannot begin to turn the tide on violent crime, unless we are all working in concert on a united vision. “We have the right team, the right strategy, and we are focused on the right areas,” said the Mayor.

Oakland’s school board has ordered a formal investigation of a church school, a school board member confirmed today, following a meeting last night where angry parents of former students accused the school of exploiting and abusing children.

The Oakland Unified School District board directed its general counsel to investigate whether St. Andrew Missionary Baptist Church’s private school inflated its enrollment numbers to get more taxpayer funding from the district, according to board member Noel Gallo.

If the investigation finds any violations, the district will cut off funding immediately, Gallo said, and any evidence of criminal conduct will be referred to the district attorney.

“There was unanimous concern by the board and there was a unanimous vote to direct the legal counsel to
do it,” Gallo said in an interview.

A district spokesman said he could not comment on closed-session action, but acknowledged an investigation has begun.

“We are investigating and this is a priority, but what our actions might be in the future depend on what the investigation uncovers,” said spokesman Troy Flint.

The board made its decision in closed session, after a rowdy meeting during which mothers and a grandmother of former students spoke out, claiming the school mistreats its students. The West Oakland school requires students to solicit donations at BART stations most weekday evenings.

“They pimp their kids out, they beat their kids, and they do not teach their kids,” said Kelly Corbitt, who pulled her daughter out of St. Andrew this year. “I’m disgusted to see that those people are still in business and you guys give them money all the time for grants when they don’t do anything for the kids.”

A California Watch investigation found that school leaders, including Lacy Jr., receive taxpayer money based on the school’s claimed enrollment of 195 students, 61 of them identified as low-income children eligible for special federal funding. Former students and government inspections, however, indicate that the actual number of students attending is fewer than 30. An Oakland fire inspector determined the school’s classrooms can’t hold more than 58 people.

California Watch observed 15 students enter the school one morning last month, and only six the following morning.

Oakland Unified allocated $50,000 in federal funds this year based on the school’s enrollment figures and paid $173,500 during the previous four school years, according to information provided by the district. Most of the money has gone to Carrie Banks, a St. Andrew teacher who married the elder Lacy in 1999, and to Lacy Jr.

Several former students have said Lacy Jr. hit, kicked and threw objects at students. Lacy Jr.,known by students as Rev. Robert, has said he has no history of hitting children.

At the meeting, Catherine Joiner told the board that her son was once locked in a room as punishment at St. Andrew and fell two stories trying to climb out of the window to go to the bathroom. Her son, Charlos Stewart Jr., now 12, recounted a time he was robbed while asking for donations.

“I didn’t know what to do,” said the boy, who appeared nervous and at a loss for words.

“Someone robbed him and there wasn’t an adult (on) the present premises to even have seen it,” Joiner said. “That’s not OK.”

Board member Gallo said today that he has asked the superintendent to look into the larger question of how the district distributes federal funds to private schools and provide recommendations “on how we won’t let St. Andrew’s happen again,” he said.

Gallo said Oakland Unified used to issue the funds to third-party contractors, who in turn provide services to schools like St. Andrew, instead of letting the private schools pick who gets paid with the funds.

Federal law requires that consultants hired with the money be “independent of such private school and of any religious organization.”

William Nownes, Oakland Unified’s administrator of the private schools program, said in a previous interview that Lacy Jr. could be considered independent because he is not the principal and doesn’t have the ability to hire and fire employees.

“It’s been one of those areas where we’ve slipped,” Gallo said today. “We haven’t paid attention to it the way we used to.”

In the meeting, Marilyn Lawson told the board that St. Andrew officials kept her 5-year-old granddaughter at school until late in the evening while other students were sent out to ask for money at BART stations.

“I’d just really like to know what’s going to be done about this school,” she said, “because children are being exploited.”

Deborah Carney said her daughter witnessed physical abuse of children at St. Andrew when she attended a couple of years ago.

“We already know what’s happening,” she said. “We already know they’re pimping the kids.”

Board member Alice Spearman drew shouts from the crowd when she told the parents that other than looking at the funding, the district has limited options.

“I don’t know of anything I can do – it’s a non-public school,” she said. “Oakland Unified doesn’t have anything to do with opening or closing that school.”

“When we all heard about Trayvon and the tragic way he was killed, none of us could avoid thinking about Oscar Grant,” said Rabbi David Cooper of the Kehilla Community Synagogue on the Oakland Piedmont border, speaking from the platform where Occupy holds its general assembly meetings.

Trayvon Martin was the unarmed 17-year-old African-American boy in Florida who was shot dead three weeks ago while walking home to his father’s house in a gated community. The gunman was a self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman. Oscar Grant was, of course, the young man from Oakland who was shot dead while he lay, unarmed, on a BART station floor. The gunman was a BART police officer.

Rev. Phil Lawson, a Methodist minister and retired Interfaith Director of the East Bay Housing Organization, said, the killing of young Trayvor Martin was nothing short of lynching, “the lynching that we thought we had put behind us.”

Interfaith Occupy groups from around the country have been meeting at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley in recent days for a National Occupy Faith Conference. They had already planned to gather in Oakland at the site of the Occupy tent city and then the tragic slaying in Florida became the focus of the prayers and speeches.

Unitarian Universalist Minister Rosemary Bray-McNatt from New York told the approximately 150 people at the plaza that New York’s Union Square Park was also occupied. There, several thousand people gathered to march for Trayvon Martin.

In Oakland, as in New York and elsewhere, faith groups participated in the Occupy movements and often acted as buffers between police and protesters, trying to keep things peaceful. Still, the interfaith tent dwellers in Oakland and in most cities have been told to pack up and go away like other Occupy settlers.

Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock, Director of Oakland-based Faith Voices for the Common Good, said that although the Interfaith Tent at Occupy Oakland was the last tent standing for a while after the Occupy site was dismantled, they too were told to go. They came back with umbrellas until authorities again told them to leave.

“Even though they made us take our tent away, some of us came down here with our occu-brellas. Then they said we couldn’t even stay here under our occu-brellas,” said Brock. ”So, we are back with our illegal occu-brellas and we are not going to leave,” she said, as she and many others at the gathering held umbrellas over their heads even though it was not raining. They also assembled a canopy that they said was a sacred space and religious sanctuary.