Oakland Report’s Newsstand is a daily roundup of Oakland news from across the spectrum — a one-stop destination for readers to keep abreast of what’s happening in The Town. “I got 5” features the top five headlines we found interesting or notable this week.
1. “Just drive around”: City to spend $150,000 on AI drones to find trash
Mayor Barbara Lee announced that the city will spend $150,000 on artificial intelligence-assisted drones to fly over the city looking for trash piles as part of its plan to clean up illegal dumping sites. The drones, from a company called Aerbits, will scan the streets with AI cameras that purportedly can identify the size and types of debris, distinguish them from other items in the street, then report their locations to city authorities for eventual cleanup. One observer on Instagram posted a video of multiple dumpsites and encampments around Oakland with the caption, “Just drive around.” Read more
2. Oakland’s data center moratorium battle, explained
City council is considering a 45-day pause on new approvals for “data centers” in Oakland, in response to organized advocacy efforts opposing Behring Companies’ proposal to convert the former Oakland Scientific Building at 415 20th Street into an “innovation campus” and supercomputing facility. The building previously housed a 20-megawatt supercomputing center leased by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Behring Companies bought the 83,000 square foot building in 2025 for $6.8 million — a fraction of its estimated pre-pandemic value. Activists have organized a “no data centers” opposition campaign, putting city council members in a bind as they seek to position Oakland’s downtown for revitalization and attract new industry to fill the city’s vacant commercial properties. Read more
3. Federal monitor says Oakland police have slipped on key compliance task
Court-appointed monitor Robert Warshaw told the federal judge overseeing the city’s decades-long consent decree that Oakland has fallen behind on investigations of serious police misconduct. Warshaw’s formal statement comes a few weeks before a hearing that could end decades of federal oversight of Oakland’s police department. In his statement to the court, Warshaw adds that “since the [police] department has, in fact, been previously compliant,” he is “confident that the capacity to meet the mandates of this Task is there.” Civil rights lawyer John Burris has recently said that Oakland’s police department has been positively “transformed” after the years-long reform effort. Burris and co-counsel Jim Chanin led the landmark 2005 federal civil rights lawsuit against the city in the wake of the “Riders” police abuse scandal. Read more
Share this roundup with someone you know.
4. West Oaklanders pay big money, lose street parking to prevent encampments, yet they remain
An Oakland resident posted a Reddit thread and photos describing how residents of a West Oakland apartment complex spent over $10,000 of their own funds to install concrete barriers and planters in their neighborhood’s streets to prevent “criminal RV, van, and panel truck dwellers from threatening their well-being.” Residents describe receiving gun threats, drug running and losing dozens of parking spots, according to the post. The post’s author laments what they describe as the city’s policy to “let RVs, panel trucks, vans… park almost wherever they want” and its tolerance for a “cat-and-mouse game” with RV and van dwellers who “ignore laws and degrade our neighborhoods.” The post sparked over 100 comments, with most echoing the author’s sentiment and others offering counterpoint views that illustrate the complexity of the issue. Read more
5. “They’re coming in at 2nd grade level”: Oakland high school principal
The principal of Oakland’s MetWest high school recorded an Instagram video sounding an alarm that Oakland Unified School District is sending children to high school woefully underprepared for the curriculum. (The video was posted by an education advocacy group.) In the video, the principal describes how many students enter her school “at a 2nd grade level, 3rd grade level” in reading and math. They explain that students who are that far behind when they reach high school possibly can be moved up one or two grade levels through intensive interventions, but that the expectation is akin to “turning water into wine.” Read more
Oakland Report’s Newsstand reviews over 200 publications for items that Oaklanders may want to know or find interesting — including local government, politics, public safety, business, schools, arts and culture. Headlines are refreshed by hand daily.
BECOME AN OAKLAND REPORT SUPPORTER
Oakland Report is an experiment in a new form of media. Our mission is to provide deep-dive, evidence-based reporting and analysis on government decisions that affect Oaklanders’ lives. Oakland Report’s Newsstand is our newest service to help Oaklanders stay informed in a fragmented media environment. If you value our services, please donate. We rely on your voluntary donations to continue our citizen-led nonprofit work.
Meanwhile, Becky Kaplan does....what? besides collect our hard earned money, which I'd guess most of us had to actually to our jobs to receive.
150k for drones and probably another $1m to hire people to operate them.
What's wrong with just driving around? You'd have to be blind not to see the mess everywhere. Or use 311 reports. Oh, that's right, that can't be used because it’s not equity oriented.