Oakland Police

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June 3, 2011 | 12:11 PM | By

Oakland Police arrest man who aimed shotgun at officer

Oakland Police Department

Tyrell Coulter is accused of menacing an Oakland Police officer with a shotgun on June 2nd, 2011.

19-year-old Tyrell Coulter of Oakland is in police custody this morning after he brandished a shotgun at a police officer while fleeing from a car stop.

According to OPD’s account of event,s two OPD officers pulled over two people in a car last night around round 8:07 PM on 67th and Bancroft Avenues to cite them for a violation of the vehicle code. Coulter, dressed in black jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt, jumped out of the car and ran eastward on Bancroft Avenue. An unidentified OPD officer pursued Coulter, who produced a shotgun from his clothing and aimed it at the cop.

The officer fired several shots at Coulter from his duty weapon, all of which missed. Coulter ran to a nearby yard and eluded police for roughly four hours before he was located by a police dog. Coulter’s shotgun was also recovered, and police were questioning him as of this morning.

Coulter will face charges of assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and unlawful possession of a firearm. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Police, Oakland, Oakland Police, Officer-involved shooting
May 23, 2011 | 11:57 AM | By

Three murders in Oakland last weekend

lawreports.co.uk

Three people were shot last weekend in Oakland, capping a violent week and bringing the city’s homicide count to 43 for 2011.

Last Wednesday, Oakland Police killed 30-year-old Fletcher Jackson and 23-year-old John Sloan on Curran Avenue in a joint operation with federal law enforcement. Michael Huerta, a 25-year-old Fremont resident arrested in a weapons sting Thursday five blocks away from the site of Wednesday’s police shooting, died in North County Jail in Oakland. The cause of his death has yet to be determined.

The same area of the Fruitvale neighborhood was the site of the weekend’s first killing. Around 1 PM on Friday afternoon, a group of four men shot 42-year-old Antonio Torres on 34th Avenue in an attempted robbery. OPD officers found the man unresponsive on the sidewalk. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital shortly thereafter. Investigators are trying to determine whether any other robberies in the area have involved a similar group of suspects. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Police, East Oakland, Fruitvale, murder, Oakland, Oakland Police
December 3, 2010 | 3:00 PM | By

Explainer: Oakland’s gang injunction evidence

Oakland City Attorney

Oakland's latest gang injunction covers part of the Fruitvale district.

Oakland’s proposed Norteño gang injunction for the Fruitvale neighborhood is gradually making its from the court of public opinion to the courtroom of Alameda Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman. A preliminary hearing yesterday was rescheduled for Wednesday, December 8th at 1 PM, where Oakland law firm Siegel & Yee will ask Judge Freedman to waive filing fees for all 40 defendants and ask for court-appointed attorneys for some named individuals. Another hearing to review the proposed injunction is expected to take place in mid-January.

As the case works its way through the judicial system, City Attorney John Russo has filed court papers detailing the alleged gang activity of the 40 defendants. These documents include the declarations of 139 law enforcement officers, largely from the Oakland Police Department. Because the City Attorney is pursuing a civil action, a “preponderance of evidence” is all that is required to find the 40 named individuals guilty of Norteño affiliation – a lesser burden of evidence than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard that applies to criminal law.

This is standard practice for gang injunction cases – similar documents are available for the North Side Oakland injunction and San Francisco’s four gang injunctions.

We’ve posted some of the filings below, but to save you the hours we spent poring over the documents, here are some critical points.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Courts, Gang Injunctions, ICE, John Russo, Norteno, Oakland, Oakland Police
December 2, 2010 | 12:53 PM | By

Oakland Police make two robbery arrests – both linked to shootings

Henderson Images

The few overworked Oakland Police detectives who staff the Criminal Investigative Division don’t often catch a break like this: 21-year-old Walter Sayles walked into OPD headquarters on Wednesday to report being shot at earlier in the day. Instead, he was arrested for taking part in over 30 robberies in Oakland, San Leandro, Hayward and elsewhere.

Sayles admitted to working with a partner as well as robbing people or businesses alone. His victims included gas stations, convenience stories, fast-food restaurants – Sayles also admitted to conducting a few street robberies as well.

Yesterday was a good day for OPD – 26-year-old Daniel Alem was arrested for robbing another 26-year-old man of his iPhone on Madison Street near Lake Merritt, and shooting the victim multiple times in the stomach after the man tried to get his phone back. The 26-year-old victim was reported to be in stable condition with gunshot wounds to the abdomen.

FILED UNDER: Police, Oakland Police
November 30, 2010 | 1:03 PM | By

Why won’t officials release info on police shootings?

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley appears to have done an about-face on her office’s transparency policies and is now withholding reports on officer-involved shootings that her office considered public eight months ago.

The document in question is a district attorney’s report – sometimes called a findings letter – that includes details of the incident, the account of separate reviews by police and district attorney’s investigators and a legal explanation of why the officer is not being charged with criminal conduct. These letters are issued only if the district attorney does not charge a police officer with a criminal offense – for example, Nancy O’Malley’s office filed a criminal complaint against Johannes Mehserle rather than issue a findings report.

On November 16, I submitted a request under the California Public Records Act for all the findings letters produced by the Alameda County DA for officer-involved shootings in 2010. The next day, I received a response indicating these records are exempt from disclosure under California Government Code section 6254(f). In plain English, O’Malley’s office considers these reports exempt from public disclosure because they are investigative reports prepared by a law enforcement agency.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Courts, Alameda County District Attorney, Nancy O'Malley, Oakland Police, Officer-involved shooting
November 19, 2010 | 2:35 PM | By

CompStat gives window into inner workings of Oakland Police

Henderson Images

Since arriving from Long Beach a little over a year ago, Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts has made a point of reaching out to community members and rebuilding the sometimes fractious relationship between residents and OPD. This priority was on full display last night at the department’s second public CompStat meeting, held at the Oakland Museum of California in front of a crowd of roughly sixty people.

CompStat is a computerized crime-tracking program made famous in the 1990s by the New York Police Department. The program has been hailed as one of the driving reasons behind New York City’s drastic crime reductions over the past 20 years – and it has also been blamed for pressuring NYPD officers to “cook the books” in order to produce favorable statistics.

We’ll have a complete breakdown of the meeting after the jump. For those who want the abridged version, here are the main points of note from last night

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Police, CompStat, Oakland Police
November 12, 2010 | 6:01 PM | By

Oakland Police identified officers in Derrick Jones shooting

Photo courtesy of Mario Hodge

Derrick Jones, shot to death on November 8th by Oakland Police Officers Eriberto Perez-Angeles and Omar Daza-Quiroz

Earlier today, the Oakland Tribune identified the two officers who fatally shot Derrick Jones on Monday evening as Eriberto Perez-Angeles and Omar Daza-Quiroz. Perez-Angeles has been with OPD for three years and is a member of the SWAT team; Dara-Querioz has been on the force for four years. Their identities had been withheld since the shooting.

Jones was unarmed when he was shot. Officers said they saw a metal object in his hands, which they believed was a weapon. This morning, Oakland Police identified the object as an electronic pocket scale.

Perez-Angeles and Dara-Quiroz were both involved in a previous shooting incident on July 19, 2008 that resulted in the death of Leslie Allen, according to records from the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County District Attorney.

A report authored by Assistant District Attorney John Jay describes the Allen shooting in detail. Perez-Angeles was on patrol around 81st Street and International Boulevard with his partner at the time, Jeff Camilosa. They noticed a gold Lexus pull up alongside two men at the intersection and decided to conduct a car stop because of high narcotics activity in the area. The Lexus, driven by Vernon Dunbar with Leslie Allen riding in the passenger seat, pulled over when the officers initially stopped him but sped off when they exited their patrol car. At several points during the ensuing chase, both officers saw bags of suspected narcotics tossed out the window, which Perez-Angeles told investigators he presumed were cocaine.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Police, Davis Street, Derrick Jones, Eriberto Perez-Angeles, Leslie Allen, Oakland, Oakland Police, Omar Daza-Quiroz
November 12, 2010 | 2:17 AM | By

Day of protests in East Oakland target gang injunctions, police shootings

Ali Winston

Protesters rallying against the shooting of Derrick Jones by Oakland Police shut down the Fruitvale BART station for an hour on Thursday

Community opposition to gang injunctions and police shootings took center stage at separate demonstrations in East Oakland yesterday. In the morning, a group of community advocates from the Fruitvale neighborhood denounced a gang injunction being pursued by City Attorney John Russo against the Norteños. A few hours later and less than two miles to the south, around 100 people gathered at Bancroft and Seminary Avenues to protest the shooting of Derrick Jones by Oakland Police on Monday night.

The actions come less than a week after a Los Angeles judge sentenced former BART officer Johannes Mehserle to two years in prison for the shooting of Oscar Grant, prompting another round of angry and occasionally violent protests in Oakland. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Police, Politics, BART, Derrick Jones, Fruitvale, Gang injunction, Gangs, Nortenos, Oakland, Oakland Police