Rising Murder Rate Dogs Oakland

The intersection of 85th Avenue and Holly Street explains everything there is to know about murder in this ambitious city, where crime is down but homicides are up.

Everything except why.

On one corner is an impromptu shrine to Latrell Wynn, 24, slain Aug. 11. Attached to a withered bouquet is a newspaper clipping about a double killing that happened in April just down 85th. Across Holly is a second shrine, devoted to the short life of Eric Estes, murdered July 31. Mourners point to a spot a block or so away, where James Gamble Sr., 65, was shot to death July 29.

Who is dying in this diverse city, a place that has been without a racial majority for more than a decade? Mostly black men.

Who is killing them? Mostly black men, according to police. People the victims know, like Estes’ own brother, like Gamble’s dominoes partner.

Where are they dying? Many of them in gritty East Oakland, especially around 85th and Holly in one of the city’s bloodiest precincts.

How many are dying? That’s the sticky question for city officials, from Mayor Jerry Brown on down, men and women straining to burnish Oakland’s image and lure 10,000 new residents to the pricey homes now being built in the long-struggling downtown.

They boast that crime dropped 20% between 1999 and 2000. At the same time, however, homicides rose 33%, from 60 to 80. If this year’s pace continues, 88 victims will probably die in 2001. Latrell Wynn was No. 52. Three more men were shot to death Tuesday in two unrelated incidents, and another was killed late Friday night, bringing the year’s total to 56.

Oakland, according to FBI statistics, is the only big city in California to celebrate a double-digit drop in overall crime while suffering a double-digit jump in homicides. It is the eighth-biggest city in the state but is No. 2 in murders. Los Angeles, California’s biggest city, has the most homicides, but fewer per capita than Oakland.

So it may be little wonder that Lavell Johnson drives up to Wynn’s scruffy shrine--a tangle of deflating balloons, empty liquor bottles, scented candles and memories--drops to his knees and prays.

Crime Reduction Priority for Brown

“What’s going on down here nowadays,” says the unemployed former drug addict and father of two, “it’s really scary.”

Ever since Brown ran for mayor in 1998, one of his priorities has been crime reduction. He brought in a new police chief, studied how New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani achieved his controversial crime cleanup, and had a new computer system installed to better track offenders.

Helped along by a healthy regional economy--the city has added 10,000 new jobs in recent years, home values have risen, and the downtown is a welter of construction--Oakland has largely succeeded in cutting crime.

“Oakland is a much safer city than it’s been in the last 30 years,” Brown declared early this year in his state-of-the-city address. The city has a full complement of police officers, he said, and each region is “supervised 24 hours a day by a particular lieutenant.”

“There was a bump up in homicides last year,” he acknowledged, “but it’s still less than the 30-year average.”

That was in January. By July, when 13 people were murdered in a single month and it was obvious that the “bump up” was continuing, Brown had a list on his desk with the name of every victim. That same month, the city instituted a homicide prevention unit.

Brown’s long explanation for the jump in homicides is very, very long, with a laundry list of culprits including “the school, the depressed neighborhood, the lower wages paid now for the lesser-skilled jobs compared to what was paid 25 years ago, the large number of people warehoused in prison and returned with no change in attitudes and skill levels.”

His short explanation is very, very short: “It’s bad guys killing bad guys.”

That sentiment is echoed by Lt. Paul Berlin, former head of homicide and now commander of the district that includes East Oakland, a neighborhood of chain-link fences and barking pit bulls, of abandoned businesses and storefront churches, where only liquor stores seem to thrive.

Berlin thinks the jump in homicides is “not significant at all.” What is significant, he says, is that Oakland is no longer plagued by the triple-digit murder statistics it racked up for more than 20 years, peaking in 1992 when 175 people were killed at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic.

When police officers talk about homicide here, they spend more time discussing the victims than the suspects. By the end of July, the department had solved only 24 of the 50 homicides that had occurred up to that point.

Police Critics See Victim-Bashing

In an interview between murders 51 and 52--Antron Crawford and Latrell Wynn--Berlin said that more than half of the victims were unemployed and on probation or parole and that nearly 90% had arrest records. Forty-four were black. “We’ve had, this year, maybe five homicides that were just ‘the guy comes home from work, is robbed and killed,’ ” he said.

Berlin’s message to Oakland residents?

“If you don’t associate with criminals, if you’re not out there purchasing drugs or you’re not out there disrespecting individuals associated with gangs and drugs between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m., you’ll live to be 100. If you’re unemployed, associate with drugs and gangs, there is a very good chance that you will have a physical--if not violent--confrontation with someone of similar attributes.”

Critics of the Oakland police, and these days they are increasingly loud, view such talk as classic victim bashing and wildly insensitive to the innocent residents of the city’s poorer neighborhoods. Maggie Aragon, a community organizer for the advocacy group People United for a Better Oakland, calls such comments “disturbing.”

“They’re turning the victims into criminals,” she complains. What the police are trying to do, Aragon figures, is reassure wealthy white people that Oakland is safe for them.

When asked about the overall drop in crime that accompanies the rise in homicides, she points to Department 11 of Alameda County Superior Court, where three Oakland police officers were arraigned Monday in a case described as a smaller version of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division scandal. A fourth officer remains at large and is believed to have left the country.

The veteran officers, who worked the graveyard shift in drug-ridden but gentrifying West Oakland, pleaded not guilty to various felony and misdemeanor charges ranging from kidnapping and assault to false arrest. During the preliminary hearing, two witnesses testified that they were taken to remote locations and beaten by overzealous officers intent on wiping out drug crime at all costs.

Deputy Dist. Atty. David Hollister described the so-called Riders as a rogue squad operating under little supervision. More than 70 convictions have been overturned as a result of investigations into the Riders’ actions.

Defense attorneys argue that the officers were acting at the direction of police brass.

William Rapoport, who represents former officer Jude Siapno, said the four policemen “were specifically told, not just by the chief, but by the deputy chiefs and the captains, to go and clean up this area. It was a blight on the city and the community, and they wanted arrests dramatically increased.”

The city vehemently denies the accusation.

Attorney John L. Burris has filed seven federal civil rights lawsuits on behalf of the Riders’ victims and most of the people whose convictions were overturned. The class-action suits have 78 plaintiffs total and name 18 police officers.

“As a black man and as a father of a 14-year-old son, I have a real concern about the marginalization of black men,” Burris said during an interview in his East Oakland office. “There is no concern when police abuse their constitutional rights. It’s under the guise of keeping people safe.”

“Safe” is a relative term in the scruffy confines of East Oakland--a neighborhood that looks like the now-departed economic boom never even made an appearance.

“It’s very bad, and it’s getting worse,” says John Henderson, who lives just steps from where Estes and Wynn were killed. “Unfortunately, these last two deaths were the decent guys. They looked out for my family, didn’t let drug deals go down near my house.”

Girl Shot in Back but Survives

Henderson heads the local crime prevention committee in East Oakland’s 34th Precinct. His daughter, Amanda, was shot in the back last September just a few blocks away, caught in the cross-fire of a retaliation shooting. Amanda, then 13, survived. The target wasn’t so lucky.

An unmarked police car cruises by, followed soon after by a black-and-white. Votive candles flicker at the street shrines. A radio plays. The small crowd keeps changing.

Vanetta Robinson remembers Latrell Wynn as a sweet, smiling family man. He died in front of her mother’s house.

“You mourn one person,” she says in amazement, “and the next week somebody else gets killed.”

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The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Death in Oakland

Crime is down overall in Oakland, but the number of homicides is up, and the city’s per capita murder rate is higher than those of Los Angeles and other large California cities.

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Cities With Most Number of Total City Pop. People per Murders Last Year Murders Population Rank Murder 1 Los Angeles 544 3,694,820 1 6,792 2 OAKLAND 80 399,484 8 4,994 3 San Francisco 59 776,733 4 13,165 4 San Diego 53 1,223,400 2 23,083 5 Long Beach 49 461,522 5 9,419 6 Sacramento 39 407,018 7 10,436 7 San Bernardino 32 185,401 18 5,794 8 Stockton 30 243,711 13 8,124 9 Fresno 24 457,652 6 17,819 10 Bakersfield 23 247,057 12 10,742 Inglewood 23 112,580 46 4,895

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Sources: Census 2000, FBI Uniform Crime Reports