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In response to vocal concern about a rapidly rising crime rate in North Oakland neighborhoods, the chief of the Oakland Police Department admitted last week that his office “made a mistake” in diverting elite officers from North Oakland and West Oakland last summer. 

Chief Richard Word told an audience at Oakland Councilmember Jane Brunner’s regular monthly Community Advisory Meeting at Peralta Elementary School that he cut North and West Oakland patrols of the Crime Reduction Team (CRT) in half in order to control nuisance youth auto “sideshows” in the city’s eastern neighborhoods.  

In a followup interview, Sergeant Peter Sarna, Chief Word’s chief of staff, said that during the summer, the North Oakland and West Oakland CRT patrols diverted to East Oakland on Friday and Saturday nights, leaving them in North Oakland only on Wednesdays and Thursdays. 

Councilmember Brunner, a New York native, said that violence in North Oakland this year was the worst that she’d seen since she came to the city. Violent crime is up sharply in North Oakland in the past year, with homicides alone rising 200 percent. Berkeley police believe that some of the North Oakland murders may be connected with South Berkeley homicides, and may be part of what has been described as a possible “turf war” crossing the boundary of the two cities. 

A furious daylight gunbattle last August on Sacramento Street in Berkeley came one day after the shooting death just on the Oakland side of Shattuck Avenue. It followed similar, back-to-back, Berkeley/Oakland shootings in June. 

Oakland’s CRT units are roving patrols designed to concentrate on the city’s street level drug-dealing and felony crime trends. The city operates six such teams, each assigned to patrol its respective district each night from Wednesday through Saturday. Police Lieutenant Lawrence Green, who heads up the North Oakland CRT, reported to the Brunner meeting that his unit was responsible for 1,000 arrests, including six homicide arrests over the past 13 months. Green said that his unit has been “working closely with the Berkeley Police Department on the Shattuck corridor shootings.”  

Oakland’s sideshows are loosely defined as late-night, roving gatherings of youth and young adults who commandeer intersections to do car stunts. Because they are spontaneous gatherings and because there is no clear or legal definition as to what constitutes a sideshow, there is considerable controversy among Oakland residents as to how much violent or illegal activities can be attributed to the events. 

Chief Word told the Brunner meeting last weekend that “sideshows have resulted in two deaths.” However, earlier this summer, Word told a meeting sponsored by East Oakland Councilmember Desley Brooks that no deaths had occurred at sideshows. The discrepancy may be in the difference between “resulted in” and “at.” Two automobile accident deaths in Oakland have occurred in the last two years after drivers fled from police who were breaking up sideshows. 

Participants at the Brunner meeting broke up into groups to discuss proposed suggestions for a crime reduction program in North Oakland. Brunner said that the suggestions would be compiled into a single document and presented to the police department at a later date.