Editorials

Last week, Verlon Bourd was shot and killed at 1001 Chester St. in Oakland, making him the sixth young black man to be murdered in Oakland this month and rounding out a recent spat or similar murders in the last month. 

The total so far this year is 39, substantially higher than in recent years. 

“This is not normal – it’s a lot,” said Officer George Phillips of the Oakland Police Department. 

Police say they are not surprised by the increase, considering the depressed economy. 

“If the economy is down and joblessness up, we see an increase in crime — there is a direct correlation,” Phillips said. 

In 1992, which set a record with 175 murders, Oakland’s unemployment rate was more than 10 percent. In the next few years both unemployment and murder rates dropped, reaching a low of 68 murders in the dot-com boom year of 1999. 

Now that the bubble has burst, murders are back on the rise. In the last year, unemployment in Alameda and Contra Costa counties has almost doubled, and murder rates are climbing to pre-boom levels. 

“It’s getting scarier – our streets are getting worse,” said Sherry, who works at the Prescott Family Resource Center, which is just a few blocks from the site of several of the recent murders. “The drug dealers come out at 6:00 in the evening, when we are leaving. We’re trying to help the community get better, we’re trying to get this to stop.” 

Most murders in Oakland this year were drug-related, police said. 

“The majority of our homicides are related to narcotics,” said Phillips. “The three most popular are heroin, crack cocaine, and marijuana.” 

Phillips noted that people with few job opportunities are more likely to turn to riskier ways of making ends meet. 

“In this city there is a large population of African American males who are unemployed and undereducated – they’re more inclined to sell narcotics,” he said. 

Berkeley’s murder rate is also higher than normal: less than half-way through the year, the city has already seen more murders than in an average year. 

“This year we’ve had four, and since 1996 we’ve averaged about three or four a year, so it’s kind of high,” said Detective Bill Badour of the Berkeley Police Department. 

Like in Oakland, most of the Berkeley murders were related to drugs. All of the victims were black, Badour said. 

“It’s getting scarier – our streets are getting worse,” said Sherry, who works at the Prescott Family Resource Center, which is just a few blocks from the site of several of the recent murders. “The drug dealers come out at 6:00 in the evening, when we are leaving. We’re trying to help the community get better, we’re trying to get this to stop.”