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The Shock of an Oakland Shooting by Doniphan Blair
An artist's rendering of the shooter on 7th Street, across from the Bart Station, 6/1/23. illo: D. Blair
I SAW MY FIRST SHOOTING LAST
Thursday, June 1, in front of the BART station in West Oakland. It happened so fast, five shots in quick succession, there wasn’t time to be afraid, let alone hit the dirt. A guy in a white jacket and earbuds crossed the street without turning his head as the shooter blasted away behind him.
No one was hit but seeing my first muzzle flash at about 100 feet, across from a train station, at eight in the evening, with over 100 people milling about, was shocking and a bit traumatizing. Before that, I had only heard shots, sometime quite close but still not visible.
The young, hoodied shooter seemed to be “responding” to an altercation in front of a liquor store, although his attack was obviously premeditated, given the escape car at the ready, which peeled off after he leapt in. The cops arrived about five minutes later.
About 40 Oaklanders have been murdered so far this year, meaning we’re on track to equal or excel the 119 murders of 2022, almost double pre-pandemic years. Indeed, Oakland has been surfing some rough times since the pandemic.
There was the firing of yet another police chief—LeRonne Armstrong, whom I liked, and who grew up a dozen blocks from me—the clearing of West Coast’s biggest homeless encampment—Wood Street, a rough scene eight blocks from me—the loss of Oakland’s last sports franchise—the Athletics baseball team is moving to Las Vegas—and a ransomware attack. That crippled the city for almost two months.
Despite the difficulties, the brand-new, very young mayor, Sheng Thao, 37, previously a city councilor, is doing a good job, evidently drawing on insights gleaned from her disadvantages.
There’s no point in mentioning gender, given Oakland has had women mayors for the last 12 years, but Thao is a child of Burmese immigrants and suffered spousal abuse and homelessness. She’ll need all that and more to beat the next catastrophe: the budget shortfall, run up by her sisters-in-arms, the biggest in Oakland’s history.
Thao gave a spectacular interview recently to The SF Examiner (5/30/23). She didn’t mention Armstrong, whom she fired for not coming clean on a rogue cop investigation, a tricky choice, since the cop was part of the Chinese-American community and Armstrong was revered by African-Americans.
Nor did she mention the obscene murder rate, although she concluded, “That’s what keeps me up at night: to really figure out how we get more resources for young people. How do we make them feel special? How do we make them feel seen?”
Yes, it’s a rough situation motivated by boys wanting to role play men and sexual selection—there’s often a woman involved. From my perspective, it can only be abated by honest talk and action, in other words moving beyond ideological tropes to rational action.Posted on Jun 05, 2023 - 12:16 PM