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.
HOW IT STARTED: Community groups pressure City Council members to defund Oakland police.
—ABC7 News, June 15th, 2020.
How it’s going: Three shot dead, TV crew robbed over violent weekend in Oakland.
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.
Riots for thee, but not for me: How many members of that ABC7 news crew were pro-defund the police in 2020?