Can Oakland Residents Sue the City for Murders Happening in the Streets?

I have been back from the town for a couple a weeks and I realized that I have not done my typical bay area/town recap.

I was in San Jose w/ my auntie and I came across these hood @ss, ^^^, Mac Dre T-Shirts.

Then there was also the typical hood death t-shirts.

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David Bell from Sony BMG sent me a link to the new Pack video.

I like the spirit they rep, but the song is okay.

I think its dope that they are fusing the skateboard world with the scraper world.

Next thing yo know, n*ggas will be trynna ghost ride the whip and skate board at the same time, lol.

My homie Dekka was suppose to direct that jawn, but I guess they will get up w/ him on the next project. (Dear Sony, Dekka is NICE w/ the visuals in addition to being both business and artistically inclined).

Lupe the Pack and NERD need to go on tour together.

They rep the same stee, plus it would be fun to see them cats perform together.

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Only in the town will you get Cajun Prawn Buritto. Mexico meets New Orleans, hunh!?!?!?!

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I went to my neice's Xmas pagent at Maxwell Park school in East Oakland. While sitting in the Cafeteria/auditorium I noticed that there were pen and paper dispenser machines w/ big @ssed locks on them. Here is a photo below.

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Too Short was in the Tribune because he is "giving back" to Oakland.
He feels that w/ all the murders going on, he should do something constructive to help the young bucks.

The startling jump in Oakland homicides, which has attracted national attention, has compelled Too to return home and find out just what was going on.

"I was a young adult in the early '90s, the last time the murder rate was this high," the rapper told me in an interview. "In my day, people were dying behind drug wars, and there were lots of spots where people were making a lot of money. Now, it's more of a war over attitude: 'You piss me off and I'll kill you.'

"That's a new element, and it's combined with the old feuds over family, neighborhood and longtime grudges."

The growing carnage on Oakland's streets has prompted a response from Too -- the adult. These days he is more likely to run into the children of his contemporaries, including one brief encounter that really stuck with him.

A young man in his late teens whose father had grown up with Too introduced himself at a video shoot a few months back. When the young man told Too his father's name, it rang a bell, "but I couldn't put a face with the name," the rapper said.

"Can you tell me what he was like?" the young man asked. "I never met him. He was killed."

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Apparently Oakland has one of the best emergency rooms in the country because of the number of shooting victims that they treat.

"There are people there I thought had no chance," Anderson said. "I had some bad luck to get shot in Oakland. But it was good luck I went to Highland."

Hospital officials, citing patient confidentiality law, declined to comment. The emergency room there is widely considered one of the best in the nation in part because the medical staff has so much experience with shooting victims.

Jones, who investigated nonfatal shootings before joining the homicide team, said Oakland police are often in awe of how the staff at Highland Hospital saves lives.

"They perform miracles at Highland," Jones said. ''There was a case where a guy was shot right in the middle of his forehead - I looked at him and thought, 'He's dead, that's homicide,' but they brought him back. I've interviewed the victim several times. He still suffers from his injury - how can you not? - but he walks and talks like nothing happened."

Why go to Iraq, when you can go to Highland?

On June 6, Anderson was walking into a hair salon at 45th and Market streets when a gunman surprised him from behind and demanded his gold chain necklace.

"When I turned, he shot me once in the chest," Anderson said. "He stood over me and tried to shoot me again, but the gun jammed. He grabbed my necklace and ran away."

Anderson couldn't move his legs or stand. But he didn't wait for an ambulance - a friend drove him to Highland Hospital in Oakland. The bullet cut an artery and damaged nerves along his spine, he said.

"I flatlined - I was dead for five minutes, but the doctors brought me back," Anderson said. "The bullet went through my stomach, tore up my liver, went through the main artery that pumps blood to my heart, and then it got my spine. I was unconscious for eight days."

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Someone needs to do an economic analysis of the impact of the number of murders has on Oakland's budget for public spending.

Perhaps the murders can be framed as a public finance issue.

For example, I wonder if the argument can be made that the murders in Oakland are sufficient to constitute a fiscal crisis because of the amount of money that tax payers spend on subsidizing the costs of having bullets removed from n*ggas backs.

Hear Toni Cook, Keith Williams and Olis Simmons talk about violence in Oakland.


Here is a CSI style map of all the murders in the town in 2006.

Even more interesting. Peep the overlap of the murders and the likker stores.

Which leads me to wonder if the people of Oakland can sue the City in a class action for allowing these stores to operate and create and sustain an environment that is conducive to crack and murder.
Peace to Gus D'Angelo for an amazing piece of graphic work.

This is one of the most powerful images that I have seen in a while.

Other than this one below from the SF ZOO.


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Wow. I just feel like I left a piece of my soul on the page.

How yall doing?

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