Oakland Police Chief Armstrong Appeals to Public in Wake of City's 100th Homicide; 'We Gotta Do the Work'
OAKLAND (CBS SF) -- Police in Oakland were investigating a Monday morning homicide that marked the city's 100th homicide after a deadly week, with Oakland's police chief expressing frustration over his repeated public appeals to stop the violence.
The fatal shooting near the Coliseum BART Station on San Leandro Street happened at around 10:40 a.m., according to reports.
Chopper 5 was overhead as responding police officers were taping off the scene. Police later confirmed the male victim had been shot multiple times.
So far, authorities have released no word on the motive, but police said the fatal incident marks the 100th homicide of the year, compared to 70 this time last year.
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An exasperated Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong addressed the recent spike in violence on his city's streets Monday afternoon, saying ten people were killed in Oakland in the space of a week.
"We can be vocal about certain things. I just don't understand why this community can't be vocal about a hundred lives lost," said a clearly frustrated Armstrong. "We can scream and yell about anything that the police department does wrong, but in this time, we cant speak up about what's plaguing all of us. And that's gun violence."
The chief acknowledged that he was repeating himself at many of these news conferences addressing the rising tide of violent crime in Oakland.
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"I just ask that everyone come together collectively to say that this has to stop. I say this every time we have a press conference," explained Armstrong. "I am tired of appealing before you; we gotta do the work."
Authorities also said there were 44 instances of gunfire in the past week. Officers recovered nearly two dozen firearms during that period. Additionally, officers investigated 17 robberies that happened in the past seven days.
"If this is not a calling to everybody in the community that this is a crisis, I don't know what is," added Armstrong, who started the briefing with 100 seconds of silence in honor of the city's homicide victims.
Armstrong said his department is struggling with a "severe staffing shortage" and that with its current 695 officers, it's the smallest department has been in years.
He also said 46 officers have left the department in the past four months.
"I hope that others in this city take the time to recognize the lives that have been lost and talk about solutions," he said. "This is not about finger pointing, this is not about political issues, this is not about should we have more officers or how we address gun violence. This is about a crisis in our community that is taking lives."
On Tuesday, the city council will take up a proposal from Councilmember Sheng Thao to add an additional police academy in fiscal year 2022-2023 and one from Councilmember Treva Reid to both declare gun violence a public health crisis and ask Alameda County to free up money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act to fund neighborhood violence prevention services.
The press conference came a week after Oakland experienced an extraordinary amount of violence in the space of 24 hours that started Monday afternoon with a double-homicide, an officer-involved shooting, a triple-shooting, and a stabbing, and ended with a fatal shooting early Tuesday morning.
