On February 7 an Oakland Police Department officer shot at — but missed — a man who was reportedly having a mental health crisis. Later that day, Oakland city officials bragged in a press release that OPD had not shot anybody for twenty months. However, in the last thirteen months five people have been shot and killed by law enforcement in Oakland, it just happens that they were not killed by members of the Oakland Police Department. Jacorey Calhoun was shot and killed by an Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy in August of last year.

Since January 2014, people in Oakland have been shot and killed by the CHP, Alameda County Sheriff, private security, San Leandro Police Department and most recently by the Emeryville Police Department. It would seem that nearly every local law enforcement agency — if private security can even be placed under that label — that operates in Oakland have killed somebody since last January.

In August of last year, an unarmed African-American man was shot several times and killed by a white law enforcement officer who later claimed the man was reaching into his waistband. His lifeless body was left for hours in a puddle of his own blood and the police would later claim that the man was suspected of a robbery. This incident describes the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, but it also describes the killing of Jacorey Calhoun who was shot and killed by an Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy in Oakland six days earlier.

Read More