Kaiser directs employees to stay in Oakland HQ for lunch over crime concerns

[Aquaman]

 

[Spartan]

Rising crime risks turning Oakland into a ‘ghost town.’ Newsom is sending in reinforcements

[Aquaman]

aath care ma cali is safe antunna @csrcsr

[Spartan]

Violent crime and other felonies fell in 2023 in America’s biggest cities. They increased in Oakland.

Robberies grew 38% last year in Oakland, according to police data. Burglaries increased 23%. Motor vehicle theft jumped 44%. Roughly one of every 30 Oakland residents had a car stolen last year, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis.

On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he was taking action, deploying 120 California Highway Patrol officers to Oakland and the surrounding area to conduct a law enforcement surge operation. The aim: to crack down on crime, including vehicle theft, retail theft and violent crime.

 

“What’s happening in this beautiful city and surrounding area is alarming and unacceptable,” Newsom said in a statement.

Business owners have been pleading for help for months.

Not giving up

Nigel Jones isn’t giving up on Oakland, even after Kingston 11, his community food center for low-income families, was vandalized and its glass doors smashed.

Jones immigrated to the United States from Jamaica when he was 16 and made his home in Oakland. The chef and restauranter currently owns two Jamaican restaurants, Calabash and Kingston 11. He says he is passionate about helping Oakland’s disadvantaged families.

 

Related article Air horns and moving trucks: How Oakland, California, residents are facing a surge in crime

But “residents and businesses have pulled back from the city,” due to a rise in crime and public safety concerns, he said.

In September, Jones and other downtown Oakland business owners walked off the job for a day to urge city and state leaders to improve safety in the area.

And last summer, Oakland police advised residents to use air horns to alert neighbors to intruders and add security bars to their doors and windows. The Oakland NAACP branch demanded elected leaders take action to ensure public safety, especially in predominately Black neighborhoods.

Cascading effect

Jones said there’s a vicious cycle playing out in Oakland.

Residents and businesses have pulled back from downtowns, in part due to public safety concerns. That has left fewer people on the street and created more opportunities for robberies and other crime.

“I don’t want people to be fearful and stay home because businesses need you to come out and the more people on the street, the safer it will be,” said Shari Godinez, the executive director of Koreatown Northgate, which represents businesses in Oakland. “If nothing changes, it’ll just start becoming a ghost town.”

It’s not just small businesses. National companies are also pulling out of Oakland and taking extra measures to protect workers.

In-N-Out is permanently closing one of its restaurants for the first time ever, saying that its Oakland location will soon shutter because of car break-ins, property damage, theft, and armed robberies targeting employees and customers. Denny’s is shuttering its only location in Oakland after more than 54 years, citing public safety concerns.

An exterior view of an In-N-Out in Oakland last month. In-N-Out is closing this location, citing crime.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Kaiser Permenente said a number of its employees working in its downtown Oakland offices were victims of armed robberies, vehicle theft and other crimes in the latter part of 2023. Kaiser reportedly issued a memo to employees recommending that staff stay in buildings for lunch. The company did not comment on the memo to CNN.

And Clorox said it hired uniformed security guards to chaperone employees to the office from public transit stations, parking garages, restaurants and coffee shops.

Why crime has increased

Homicide, gun assaults and most other violent crime fell in US cities last year, but they remain above pre-pandemic levels.

The number of homicides in 2023 fell by 10% compared to 2022, according to a study of crime trends in 38 cities by the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan criminal justice policy organization. (The study did not include Oakland.)

But other crimes have increased nationally.

Motor vehicle theft increased by 29% and, since 2019, motor vehicle theft has shot upward by 105%, the study found. Reported incidents of shoplifting, a crime that drew considerable attention from lawmakers and the media in 2023, jumped 22%.

“Big social and economic forces appear to have been behind the sharp trends that began in 2020, but now there is considerable variation between cities,” CCJ president Adam Gelb said in a statement. This variation “suggests local factors are becoming more significant.”

There’s no easy answer to explaining why crime has increased in Oakland. But the pandemic had a major impact, crime scholars say.

 

Related article ‘Everybody in this community has a gun’: How Oakland lost its grip on gun violence

“Pandemic-related changes in people’s daily activities and emotional and economic stress levels, changes in police practices and a rupture of public trust in law enforcement, and the suspension or reduction of social supports and programs are among the theories offered by crime scholars,” according to the Council on Criminal Justice study.

Police services and violence prevention programs have been cut in Oakland. With ever-rising housing prices in Oakland and across California, homeless encampments have multiplied on sidewalks and under freeway bypasses. The rise in the homeless population has also increased public safety concerns, although someone who is homeless is no likelier to be a criminal than a housed person, research shows.

Rising crime is causing some Oakland business owners to question whether they can continue to operate in the city.

Cindy Varela, the owner of Zona Latina Hn, a Latin American restaurant, said burglars have broken into the restaurant overnight and vandalized it.

“These people come here and they broke my windows,” she said. “I lost my money.”

Crime “is a big problem here” and she’s lost customers because people are scared to sit down to eat.

If conditions continue like this, she may have to close the restaurant.

Solutions

Police and law enforcement advocacy groups say more cops on the street are needed. Oakland has also been without a police chief for around a year.

Business leaders have called for tougher public safety policies in Oakland’s commercial districts, such as allowing police traffic stops for vehicles with illegally tinted windows, and more street police patrols.

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao said that since taking office last year, she has “pursued a comprehensive community safety plan” focused on investing in the police department, strengthening violence prevention, and leveraging technology to disrupt criminal networks.

Over the past two months, there have been reductions in property crimes in business districts across Oakland, she said. She also directed the police department to resurrect its “Ceasefire Strategy,” which Oakland walked away from in 2020 to focus on pandemic relief.

Nigel Jones, the restaurant, said that the city is “not going to arrest our way out of this problem.”

It will take partnership between businesses, the mayor’s office, elected officials and others to create safer neighborhoods and improve business conditions.

“I’m invested in making the city live up to its full potential,” he said. “It’s what America talks about, [what] it wants to be — Oakland is that.”

[Aquaman]

 

[Spartan]

Monna Christmas holidasy lo..  Newsom gadu Target store ki velladu...lunch time lo..

vadi munde okadu...dongatanam cheskuni potunte.. Newsom gadu store manager ni enduku apaledu vadini ani adigadanta...

Store Manager told.... ne valle ra yedava....ani...

veddu G muskoni mingesadu akkada nunchi...

@Vaaaampire @csrcsr

[Spartan]

Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone viral for shoplifting at Target. Well, sort of.

The governor didn’t actually steal anything. But as he tells it, he did witness someone blatantly walking out of a Sacramento-area store with an armload of stolen stuff, presumably right in front of his own intimidating-looking security detail. And when Newsom asked why no one was taking action, the clerk told him it was the governor’s fault.

Newsom has made it too easy to steal, he said the clerk told him — before realizing who he was and freaking out.

Newsom, who was Christmas shopping with one of his children at the time, said he was outraged. It’s just not true, he said he told the clerk. California has the tenth-toughest laws against retail theft in the nation, he lectured — in a way that must have seemed super weird until she deduced his identity.

 

“I said: ‘Why didn’t you stop him?’ ” Newsom said he asked the clerk.

“She goes, ’Oh, the governor’ ” — he broke off — “swear to God, true story, on my mom’s grave.” He added that the clerk had the temerity to tell him: “The governor lowered the threshold, there’s no accountability. … We don’t stop them because of the governor.”

Newsom told the story this week to a group of mayors from around the state who had gathered on Zoom for a news conference on his mental health initiative, Proposition 1. He and the mayors were chatting among themselves while waiting for San Francisco’s London Breed and San Diego’s Todd Gloria to log on. After relating the anecdote, the governor added that he hoped the two mayors weren’t the only ones not yet signed into the Zoom. “Hopefully, all the reporters weren’t on,” he said.

Too late. The exchange, posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) and then picked up by television and print outlets around the state, quickly went viral — catnip in the heated debate about retail theft and Proposition 47, which reduced some thefts and drug offenses to misdemeanors to reduce mass incarceration. Some critics have blamed Proposition 47 for the rise in thefts.

 

Newsom himself came out last month calling for legislation to crack down on “professional thieves” without amending Proposition 47, noting that one of the wine stores he owns in San Francisco was robbed at least three times in 2021. He pointed out that Texas’ threshold for felony theft is among those that is higher than California’s.

But those points did little to calm the viral story. The chairwoman of the state Republican Party, Jessica Millan Patterson, quickly jumped into the fray, writing on X: “Shout-out to this store clerk for saying to the governor’s face what every Californian has wanted to say: that he and his radical @CA_Dem buddies are to blame for CA’s surging crime. Sadly, Newsom still didn’t seem to take the hint.”

Newsom’s office declined to identify which Target the encounter occurred at, to keep the media from mobbing the store. They did say the encounter took place in the Sacramento area, around Christmastime, while the governor was shopping with one of his children.

 

The exchange, the governor said, ended with an attempt at a photo-op.

As the governor was explaining how strict California’s retail theft laws actually are, the clerk, he said, “looks at me, twice. She freaks out. She calls everyone over, wants to take photos.”

“I said, no, I’m not taking a photo,” Newsom said. “We’re having a conversation. Where’s your manager? How are you blaming the governor?”

He added: “Why am I spending $380? Everyone can walk the hell right out.”

[Aquaman]

1 minute ago, Spartan said:

Monna Christmas holidasy lo..  Newsom gadu Target store ki velladu...lunch time lo..

vadi munde okadu...dongatanam cheskuni potunte.. Newsom gadu store manager ni enduku apaledu vadini ani adigadanta...

Store Manager told.... ne valle ra yedava....ani...

veddu G muskoni mingesadu akkada nunchi...

@Vaaaampire @csrcsr

csr anna ki  eni chepinna nammadu anna.. cali is safe antadu

[Spartan]

1 minute ago, Aquaman said:

csr anna ki  eni chepinna nammadu anna.. cali is safe antadu

 

@Sucker

[Thokkalee]

When criminals have more rights than common people, this is what happens!!

Police has no incentive to catch the thieves if they know that the criminals will not be prosecuted and released without any punishment.. 

Malli crime is at an all time low ani support cheskuntaaru… there are no cases filed anymore for petty crimes.. police just ignore the crimes that they see.. 

Cali is becoming like Gotham in Batman movie.. 

[Thokkalee]

 

[Spartan]

14 minutes ago, Thokkalee said:

When criminals have more rights than common people, this is what happens!!

Police has no incentive to catch the thieves if they know that the criminals will not be prosecuted and released without any punishment.. 

Malli crime is at an all time low ani support cheskuntaaru… there are no cases filed anymore for petty crimes.. police just ignore the crimes that they see.. 

Cali is becoming like Gotham in Batman movie.. 

[Sucker]

26 minutes ago, Spartan said:

 

@Sucker

Anna mee CA la pay cheyyakunda povacha ila vachi 

 

[Sucker]

Nenu akkadiki vachinappudu frnds cheppedhi never go to Hayward Okland and be careful in SF downtown

[Thokkalee]

6 minutes ago, Sucker said:

Nenu akkadiki vachinappudu frnds cheppedhi never go to Hayward Okland and be careful in SF downtown

This is not new anna.. Oakland always had that reputation.. nenu Bay Area lo 10 yrs back unnapudu, same situation.. people always used to tell to avoid Oakland area and not even stop there for gas..