A violent weekend in Oakland left three dead and one injured, underscoring the city’s struggle with rising crime.
On Saturday, police responded to two shootings within four hours on opposite sides of the city, a spokesperson confirmed in an email to The Standard.
The first shooting, shortly before 4:30 p.m. on 23rd Street east of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way, left two dead on the spot. A third victim managed to get to a hospital and was listed in stable condition.
Just after 8 p.m. Saturday, officers responded to reports of a shooting at E Street east of 105th Avenue and found a person suffering from a gunshot wound. That person was declared dead at the scene.
Oakland police did not identify the victims, citing the need for next-of-kin notification. However, an East Bay Times report said the fatalities were a 29-year-old Oakland woman and a 50-year-old Berkeley man, and the surviving victim was a 55-year-old man. The Times learned the solo shooting victim was a 50-year-old Stockton man.
Adding to the weekend’s turmoil, an ABC7 news crew was robbed at gunpoint around 5:30 p.m. Saturday while reporting near 44th and Market streets, according to a statement from the Oakland Police Officers Association.
According to that statement, three suspects brandishing firearms pushed a crew member and took her backpack before stealing equipment and a security guard’s handgun and fleeing east along 44th Street in an old-model gold Toyota Camry 4D. Oakland police did not share information about the robbery when asked, and ABC7 declined comment late Sunday morning.
In the statement, Sgt. Huy Nguyen, president of the Oakland Police Officers Association, criticized city leadership for the spike and blamed “staffing shortages in the police department and … policies that fail to hold criminals accountable” for increasing crime rates.
These incidents come amid a spike in Oakland’s crime rate. An East Bay Times report said the city’s overall crime rate in 2023 was higher than at any time in the past two decades, up 100% since 2020.
According to the report, car thefts in Oakland rose 114.5% from 2022 to 2023, hitting a rate of roughly one car stolen for every 27 residents. The report also revealed that Oakland’s violent crime rate in 2023 increased by 174% since 2020, while property crime rose 90% in the same period.
Amid the spike in car thefts, as well as a similar situation in San Francisco, and complaints about officer response times, officials and organizations have pursued various strategies.
Gov. Gavin Newsom sent 120 CHP officers to Oakland to battle rising crime in early February in a temporary “surge,” as state officials described it, that they say yielded 71 arrests, the recovery of 145 stolen vehicles, and the seizure of four “crime-linked” firearms.
In March, Newsom announced plans to install hundreds of surveillance cameras in Oakland and other cities to help CHP investigators track suspects’ vehicles.