Fourth Oakland officer involved in Saturday's shootings dies

Fourth Oakland officer involved in Saturday's shootings dies


(03-22) 12:15 PDT OAKLAND -- An Oakland Police officer shot Saturday during a series of gunbattles that claimed the lives of three other officers died this morning, Oakland police said today.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/22/MNCT16L53S.DTL&tsp=1

hte shootings that is

Oh, geeze.

fifteen years ago

The war has spread north, period

with first automatic pistols and finally with assault weapons

Been talking to people I know in law enforcement, they are seeing a radical uptick on assaults on police (part of many an initiation with the gangs), and the use of AW

That's why I have a bad feeling about this

Also there are neighborhoods in cities where the cartels operate that the cops don't go except en-force

Soon, and I pray I'm wrong, ambulances will also come under fire

All the gangs I've run into in Oakland are just gangs of kids who "came up together", same neighborhood, maybe loosely related, ran together in school... that sort of thing. And the 7400 block of MacArthur is not a Latino neighborhood. Not at all. It's a very black neighborhood, and few Latinos even seem willing to go to the high school 15 blocks up the road (because of things like a drive by shooting on a couple of Latino students there a couple of years back that forced the police to block off that very busy boulevard).
Not to say that the Mexican neighborhoods in Oakland aren't seeing an increase in gangs. A couple of years back it was all working class and day-laborers... now the kids hang out on the corners wearing their own "uniform" (It's like the dealers make a run to Target, pick up a family pack of XXXL white t shirts, and they hand them out amongst themselves. The shirts are so white they're practically blinding, especially in contrast with the dirty ass sidewalks that these kids are standing on.)
I have no idea what sorts of "initiations" they might have... but I have serious doubts that they involve attacks on the police.
The impression I've gotten from all the drug dealers, pimps, hookers, thugs, and assorted hustlers that I've ever been involved with is that altercations with the police are best avoided. If one gets into an altercation with the police it will usually be because the police did something that the "suspect" felt was over the line (and those lines can be very strange), or because the "suspect" is just plain stupid.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of stupid young thugs and such on the streets of Oakland. If stupid gets hold of a gun, stupid is as liable to use it on the police as any innocent bystander.

And Oakland's had a couple of neighborhoods in which the cops don't go except in force for years.
Ironically, the 7400 block of MacArthur is a short block and an abandoned shopping mall parking lot away from one of the biggest police substations in town.

I'd guess the gunman was either very stupid, or he had such a big pile of drugs in the car that he was afraid that whoever they belonged to were liable to kill him in jail or Kaiser Souse him and his whole family... so he went desperate, killed the sitting duck motorcycle cops (stupidest place ever for traffic enforcement by two motorcycle cops), made a run for it to unload the pile of drugs, then went and tried to find a place to hideout until he could think of what to do... and not being much of a thinker, the cops found him before he could come up with a single idea.
More of a tragic tale of the stupid than any great big conspiracy.

Law Enforcement tends to over-think their own importance in my opinion. The flip side of the stupid, I guess.

national and international gangs

M-13
Los Amigos
Bloods
Crips

Local gangs are one thing

These guys... whole different animal

M-13 works in particular with one of the cartels in Mexico

Crips with another

As to cops... as I said, I talked with a couple people I know... and they are worried

Oh and this is not just Aukland, but 230 + cities by the by

As to local gangs, local initiations usually involve a beat in... as in a beating...

M-13, killing cops, (or a firefighting if a cop is not available) is common

Two different animals

from the gang unit to a DEA project (or some such)... possibly a political move in preparation for his campaign for Attorney General.

It's been a couple of years since I was driving them around town... but if there's major gangs in town now, they're hardly ever on the streets.

Sounds like a couple of motorcycle cops got mighty (un)lucky.

But the end result has been, from what I've heard, that the gangs have been able to "blossom" while the DEA thing has diverted resources.

Of course, there has been plentiful drugs and violence in Oakland for a long time. The dot com boom actually seemed to lessen the violence, and I got lots of taxi business back in those days with dealers "commuting" to work. There was plenty of money everywhere you looked back then. The GWB "economic vitality" or whatever it's being called, never trickled into Oakland though... and year after year since '01 the tension and the violence and the competition have been on the upswing. By '04 or so even the dealers seemed to be running light on cash for taxis, and there were no more customers looking to be driven through West Oakland, or up and down the length of 23rd or 25th Avenue looking for dealers... hell, by '05 even the SSI recipients with walkers weren't using their money to run out to 98th Av for a rock or two on the way to the medical offices out near Foothill Square anymore...
The lean money makes everyone more frantic. It makes the City frantic to raise money with traffic stops (I think someone in Jerry Brown's administration actually explicitly said the budget gap could be met with increased enforcement of traffic laws... or at least that was the rumor at the cabstands). It also makes the dealers more frantic and protective of territories and the customers that "trull" those territories looking to buy (most buyers seem to have a favorite neighborhood that they like to go to, rather than a specific dealer that they go to... I could enumerate at least a dozen "market zones").
The gangs you speak of may be looking to expand territory. The gangs I've seen are probably largely the disposable street boys that move that product.
I'm still convinced, however, that the gangs you're speaking of don't carry out the "initiations" you're mentioning in Oakland. The violence in Oakland seems, according to what I've overheard in those taxis around town, mostly just between factions of dealers over street territory... or just a matter of "beefs" over "street cred" (my words in quotes, not sure what the terms they use in their own circles were...).

Later stories that've come to light about the idiot that shot the motorcycle cops, then SWAT, seems to suggest that dude was indeed... just dumb.

On the other hand... I'm not saying that what you're hearing about the big gangs moving into town might not change things... but I don't think it's happened yet.

Not unheard of for a traffic stop of such a person to end in such a manner.

that is all

many of those early shootings didn't have a wit to do with the current mess, but some did

So just watch for the pattern

My heart goes out to their families.

:hug: I'll turn it on in a while. Oakland just never seems to catch a break. It's so frustrating.

The reporting on this was so erroneous early on, I never was sure....

RIP, officers and may your families find peace. May Oakland find some peace as well.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the family. I contine to think of all those involved in this tragedy. I worry that there will be similar events elsewhere. There has been a lot of violence recently which is scary.

He probably knew he was going to be locked up again and made up his mind that was not going to happen.

I feel bad for the families of the slain officers.

Link: http://www.mercurynews.com/alamedacounty/ci_11972437

Just curious