OAKLAND, Calif. — Minutes after the city’s police chief wrapped up a press conference Monday decrying a grievous run of violence across the city, yet another person lay dead in West Oakland in what appeared to be the 100th killing so far this year.
The apparent homicide marked a grim milestone for Oakland, signaling the third straight year of triple-digit killings the city — a run of violence not seen in more than a decade.
The bloodshed has left city and state officials grasping for ideas to temper the violence.
Appearing Tuesday at a forum on gun violence by the Prosecutors Alliance of California, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called for a “holistic” approach to combating the problem that included including increased policing and enforcement of the city’s laws, along with a continued focus on intervention efforts through the city’s Office of Violence Prevention.
“The legitimacy of our laws are hanging in the balance right now,” Schaaf said. “And people’s choices about whether or not to abide by laws — to trust government justice or to take justice into their own hands — is a choice that we are seeing more and more horrifically in front of us.”
Her comments came hours after the city’s most recent killing, the 101st investigated as a homicide by Oakland police this year. A 60-year-old man was fatally shot at about 4:05 a.m. in the 4000 block of Everett Avenue in Oakland’s Glenview neighborhood, authorities said.
Officers responded to the area to investigate reports of a catalytic converter theft when they received word of the shooting. Police did not say immediately whether there was a connection between that robbery and the shooting.
Speaking ahead of Schaaf at Tuesday’s forum, California Attorney General Rob Bonta — a former Alameda County state assembly member — called the killings “unacceptable” and decried gun violence as “a disease unique in the world to America.”
In particular, Bonta highlighted the recent deaths of two teen brothers, Jazy and Angel Sotelo Garcia, who were killed Saturday night when two gunmen opened fire at a birthday party filled with teenagers at an Airbnb rental in North Oakland. And he lamented the shooting last week at King Estates education campus in East Oakland, which left six people injured in what police say was a gang-related hit on someone at the campus.
On Monday, Oakland police released video of two people entering the campus’ front entrance while holding handguns and fleeing moments later. He highlighted how both were mass shootings — which the Gun Violence Archive defines as an incident that leaves at least four people killed or injured.
“Every bullet has the power to leave a victim and in recent days what once felt like a flood has turned into an ocean of gun violence, hate and heartbreak for survivors and their families,” Bonta said.
It has been more than a decade since Oakland has experienced such levels of violence. Oakland police investigated more than 100 homicides annually during a stretch from from 2006 through 2009. But that violence slowly eased over the next decade, as killings dropped to between 75 and 78 from 2017 through 2019.
But in 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, homicides investigated by Oakland police jumped to 109 — part of a national trend that saw a spike in violent crime in cities across the country. That trend continued in 2021, when police responded to 134 homicides in Oakland — the most since 2006, when 148 people died here.
The city’s first homicide of 2022 came just 21 hours into the new year, when 28-year-old Cameron Windom died in an altercation 1400 block of 34th Street. Since then, the killings have continued at a rate of about once every two and a half days. And while the pace of killings has been slightly slower than in 2021, it is still far ahead of pre-pandemic levels.
It all comes amid a general surge in gun violence seen across California and the city of Oakland. Last year, for example, assaults with a firearm were nearly double their pre-pandemic averages, hitting nearly 600. Those figures have since started to ease slightly in 2022, though they remain well above 2019 levels.
Brenda Grisham, who started the Christopher Lavell Jones Foundation as a way to combat violence in Oakland after her son was killed here in 2010, said the city’s somber milestone highlighted situation called for an all-hands-on-deck approach to combating the violence, starting with parents.
“It’s got to be a point where everybody feels like they can play a part,” she added. “As far as everybody doesn’t see the mission, it’s going to continue.”
