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What’s in a number?
Larry Reid, the president of the Oakland City Council and a member of the council for nearly the past quarter-century, took a moment to contemplate the question. And the number:
One hundred.
In Oakland this year, 100 homicides were committed before December even arrived. By the first week of 2020’s final month, 100 of them were classified as murders. At year’s end, the totals read 109 and 102, respectively.
“Insanity,” Reid said. “It means insanity on the streets of Oakland. And I think that insanity will continue. That scares me.”
Oakland’s deadliest year in close to a decade stood out as the most noteworthy East Bay crime trend in 2020, even as homicide spikes happened in other cities, and aggravated assaults — particularly from domestic violence — went up throughout the area.
Richmond’s homicide total was 22, its highest figure since 2016. Berkeley suffered five homicides, including the fatal shooting of a UC Berkeley student, one year after not recording any. Hayward police investigated 11 homicides, more than twice as many as the five they investigated in 2019.
Yet nowhere in the East Bay did the violence spike as ferociously as it did in Oakland, the Bay Area’s third-largest city with a population of more than 400,000 people.
“It’s been a lot of things,” Oakland police Lt. Frederick Shavies, the commander of the department’s homicide section, said. “And they’ve all made for a perfect storm.”
The result was the city’s first triple-digit homicide and murder total since 2012. The city recorded 131 and 126, respectively, that year. In 2019, there were 78 homicides and 75 were classified as murders. In 2020, Oakland recorded its 79th homicide in September.
“We haven’t seen this kind of pace,” said Oakland police Sgt. Barry Donelan, the president of the Oakland Police Officers Association, a 20-year veteran of the department. “Not like this.”
In the wake of the 100th murder, Donelan condemned Oakland’s City Council for what he called “ignoring” the violence in Oakland, and the City Council pushed back, saying it was doing all it could amid reduced revenue in the wake of the pandemic. The sniping cast a light on what Donelan, a 20-year-veteran, said is a “chasm” between the two sides that “doesn’t help. It’s always been there, but I’ve never seen it this way. What the council perceives and what it is that’s going on in the streets is as wide as its ever been.”
Still, law enforcement and city officials agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges they could not have foreseen at the end of 2019, including for the current and upcoming city budgets.
“We obviously have challenges in terms of funding this year because of the recession we’re in. And so everything is, you know, under a microscope because of the reduced revenue we have coming in, so that’s the reality,” Oakland Councilmember Dan Kalb said in a statement earlier this month. “But standing up to violent crime, attacking violent crime, reducing violent crime is the top priority among City Hall and those of us in the council, and we will continue to make it a top priority using a variety of strategies.”
Jurisdictions from throughout the East Bay have also noted that the number of guns available has skyrocketed in the past year. Shavies said Oakland police had a 30% increase in the recovery of guns used in crimes.
“We’ve had the real danger of the pandemic and all that it has entailed,” Shavies said. “Adding to that is the anxiety and dismay people are feeling as they lose work or lose their businesses. So there’s a real sense of desperation. Add to it that you’ve got more and more guns on the street.”
In recent years, the Oakland Ceasefire operation has helped take guns off Oakland’s streets and reduce the number of shootings by reaching out to people suspected or targeted in shootings, warning them of potential harm and offering them solutions. In 2020, the organization — composed of community groups, clergy and social workers who partner with police — earlier this month met for the first time since since February, Shavies said.
“It’s been hard to message folks the way we have in the past, especially those who are involved in group and gang violence,” he said. “That’s chiefly the pandemic at work.”
The pandemic also contributed to the overall rise in domestic battery and other aggravated assaults throughout the area. Aggravated assaults were up 19% in Oakland, and assaults with firearms were up 71% as of December 29. The same crime also was up 18% in Richmond and 10% in Antioch through November, as well as 17% in Berkeley through Christmas.
“I believe it’s the combination of everything,” Richmond Police Chief Bisa French said of the trend. “There’s a sense of hopelessness. People have lost their jobs and don’t have direction. There’s lots of idle time, and people are tired of being cooped up. It’s caused a lot of family disturbances.”
The hope, French and others said, is that COVID-19 will become a pandemic of the past in 2021, and that as life slowly returns to normal, it will have the domino effect of lowering violent crime.
Other observers believe it will not be so easy.
“A lot of these young people don’t have sense to respect their life, your life or anyone else’s life,” Reid said. “A lot of these people yell and scream anytime a police officer arrives at a scene, or they want to defund the police. We have council members that don’t understand what’s happening on the streets. Unless all of this changes, I worry that next year will be just as bad as this year.”
Staff writer Annie Sciacca contributed to this story.
