Recent Comments
Re: “Oakland Police Union Official Implicated in Kayvan Sabeghi Beating”
"… the sergeant was nowhere present when Uu was beaten." Surely you mean when Sabeghi was beaten. Anyhow, kudos to you and East Bay Express for at long last spelling Mr. Sabeghi's surname correctly.
Re: “The Books We Loved in 2012”
Readers interested in Oakland's contemporary history and/or East Bay radical politics might consider my newest volume, published earlier this month: the first book about Occupy's most militant franchise. "Occupy Oakland: The Little Revolution That Couldn't" is available at Amazon.
Re: “Oakland Police Officer-Involved Shooting of Alan Blueford Raises Questions”
Just an update, if I may, to Cynthia Morse's September 26 comment. The 110 pages of crime scene reports, published on the City of Oakland's website this week, help us understand how Alan Blueford could've been taken to Highland Hospital by a Paramedics Plus ambulance, yet the hospital would have no record of him being there. The fact is, OPD did not determine the suspect's identify until hours later. When he was transported to the hospital it was as John Doe, and his body would've subsequently been released to the coroner under said alias. Thus Highland would have no record under the name Alan Blueford.
Re: “Federal Raid on Oaksterdam Sapped Police Response to Oikos University Massacre”
"It's pretty damned obvious," Mitchell Colbert writes, "that if priority calls were stacked that priority call would be one of them, does it not?"
No, it's not obvious. You're asking us to accept an absurd premise, namely that when OPD received the first report of a gunman shooting people at will on the campus of a university in Oakland—shootings that left 7 dead and 3 wounded—the dispatcher would simply stack that call behind others. If you have evidence of such an outrage, please share it. Otherwise your inferences are as useless and self-indulgent as your pot smoking.
Re: “Federal Raid on Oaksterdam Sapped Police Response to Oikos University Massacre”
Mitchell Colbert, it goes without saying that OPD has limited resources. It's also true that the Oaksterdam raid, as Kevin Wiley's 2:26 p.m. email to Jeff Israel complains, resulted in "several priority calls being stacked." However, you lose me when you infer, based on nothing more than supposition, that priority calls relating to the Oikos shooting were among those that were stacked. Where is evidence of this?
Also, you now tell us that the shooter was apprehended in Alameda because OPD "was too busy to respond." In fact, One Goh fled the carnage at Oikos immediately after creating it, and drove to the South Shore Center, about five miles from the school. As KGO-TV reported, "A security guard approached Goh because he was acting suspiciously; the guard said Goh told him he needed to speak to police because he had shot several people. The security guard then called Alameda police and Goh was taken into custody without incident. He was later transferred to Oakland police custody." Goh's arrest in Alameda had nothing to do with priority calls being stacked in Oakland or with OPD allegedly being "too busy to respond."
I understand why you, as a member of Occupy Santa Cruz and an employee of the medical cannabis industry, are so anxious to fault the police. All I'm asking is for one bit of evidence—not inferences, assumptions or conjecture—that OPD's response to the Oikos tragedy was tardy.
Re: “Federal Raid on Oaksterdam Sapped Police Response to Oikos University Massacre”
Mitchell Colbert, I asked for evidence. Instead you offer only inferences, assumptions and conjecture. The fact remains: there has not been a shred of evidence to show that the Federal Raid on Oaksterdam "sapped" OPD response to the Oikos massacre.
Re: “Proposed OPD Settlement Doesn’t Go Far Enough”
Thanks for this insightful and informative opinion piece, Mr. Gammon—although I think Detroit's police reforms are like the proverbial lipstick on a pig (no pun intended). Today in The Detroit News, columnist Daniel Howes says Michigan's governor is preparing to guide the state's largest city through filing under Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code. "The working concept," writes Howes, assumes that "Mayor Dave Bing and City Council would be unable to push through overdue restructuring, and that the process would culminate in appointment of an emergency financial manager under Public Act 72."
Police chief Ralph Godbee Jr. may have, as you put it, "completely changed the culture of Detroit PD." But that city is far from an enviable model of enlightened and capable urban governance.
I do, however, agree with your take on attorneys Burris & Chanin's insistence that the proposed Oakland compliance director is a receiver under another name. Clearly, the compliance director won't be running OPD; he'll merely be offering recommendations—to the City, to OPD, and to Judge Henderson. It's a position with only a veneer of bureaucratic authority and, worse, no direct responsibility to the people of Oakland.