My Journey to a Safer West Oakland Neighborhood

Lessons learned on how to engage neighbors, friends, family, police and city government to build a better community

How does a community ensure the safety of its residents? How do we develop a relationship with neighbors, the assigned public safety resources, and law enforcement that helps keep us and our families safe? Who is responsible for our safety within our homes? These questions can be complex, depending on where we live. We must start by looking within our own homes, neighborhoods, and communities, and by using our personal experiences and energy to bring impactful solutions. 

When I moved to West Oakland's Clawson-McClymonds neighborhood in the mid-2000s, crime rates were high, making the area uncomfortable and raising concerns about becoming a target or victim. The community faced challenges, including discussions of gentrification and affordability, adding to tensions between long-time residents and newcomers. Criminal activities, drug sales, property theft, porch piracy, were ongoing community issues. At that time, this included businesses being allowed to operate while causing known harms to the community without accountability or discussion with residents over the severity of those harms. And the City was still adjusting to federal oversight of the Oakland Police Department (OPD), which had been in place for five years following the 2003 OPD Negotiated Settlement Agreement to address the harms caused by the “Riders” scandal.

These challenges relate to a long national history of difficulties between police and Black communities. My own history with the relations between the Black community and law enforcement didn’t require a deep education; I grew up in Brooklyn, NY during the tenure of Frank Serpico in the 1970s; he exposed broad police corruption and forced the creation, under the Mayor John V. Lindsay Administration, of the Knapp Commission, which investigated citywide corruption of over 32,000 law enforcement officers. It was one of the country’s largest corruption cases ever reported.

My Brooklyn community was featured in Time Magazine in 2012 due to its crime issues, and then in the 2015 documentary The Seven-Five. This story about Officer Michael Dowd, and explosive corruption at the 75th precinct in East New York made the Riders case seem mild in comparison. When I heard about four OPD corrupt police officers, I did the comparison. The Knapp Commission's findings alleged as many as 75 percent of NYPD were revealed to be corrupt, and at least 25 percent were tied to the 75th precinct. While OPD had a handful of officers who were using methods of police practice that violated the rights of those arrested, New York had serious corruption that dismantled the entire force and the infrastructure of policing. Then during NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s tenure in the early 1990s, the implementation of stop and frisk was part of an approach that further harmed the public by using police to implement bad policies.  

Moving to West Oakland was a wonderful change, even with its reputation of crime and poor police engagement within the community. The large, beautiful Victorian and Craftsman-style homes were a sense of pride in this predominantly Black community. But having come from Brooklyn with its epidemic of crime, an underground economy used by residents for survival, and the police corruption that perpetuated it—I was not naïve to the problems under the surface and the toll it was taking on the lives and livelihoods of law-abiding neighbors. After all, so many said to me “Oakland is like Brooklyn”, which reminded me of what likely existed in West Oakland.

I immediately got to know what resources were available in West Oakland. I learned much from a neighbor about how to engage for the sake of public safety. My neighbor, a family whose patriarch was in his early 70s, had grown up in the house I just moved into. That meant I could trace back the roots of the property back to at least 1943.

I learned from those multigenerational Oaklanders the stories of Felix Mitchell who was the leader of the ‘69 Mob’, a nation-wide drug-cartel that was based in East Oakland. Seeing parallels to the drug trade back in New York City (e.g., using juveniles to deal drugs for adults to avoid adult prison sentences), I identified residents around me who were earning their living using organized crime tactics.

As part of learning and engaging with my new community, I also reached out to the police to get to know them. This was not an obvious or natural action. Growing up during the Civil Rights era, with both of my parents from the segregated South, my siblings and I were raised not to engage with law enforcement; the prevailing view in Black communities is that we can take care of our own. 

The community’s lack of trust comes from a long history in the United States of poor police treatment of people of color, and intense conflicts with police during the Civil Rights Movement and ever since. This includes present experiences of police violence within communities, such as those of Derek Chauvin, that were ignored when developing federal and local legislation within urban centers plagued by higher crime statistics.

Yet it is an unrealistic premise to disengage from police and dismantle policing, since (sadly) it's the behaviors of our neighbors that could draw their very presence into the community. Whether intentioned or not, cartel-organized drug dealing, domestic violence/street violence and debilitating property crime bring the need for a response from some form of law enforcement and accountability. We are a nation of laws after all. We cannot devolve into a land where people are forced to follow a castle doctrine, self-enforcing their rights and safety under the Second Amendment.¹  

The tension between the need for police to maintain public safety and the distrust of police causes splinters within the community—a deep ambivalence about an increased police presence in the community.² For example, a ‘stop-snitching’ paradigm existed as a result of these splinters. Residents don’t call cops for several reasons but most don't because either they simply don’t like them/had a negative personal experience with them (or know someone that has and sympathizes with it), or they're afraid of becoming a targeted witness or victim of retaliation. Residents must confront these personal beliefs and fears when making their decision to engage police or not when witnessing crime.

But the challenges that arise when Public Safety Officers (PSOs) don't properly engage within communities, or those that arise when community members don’t welcome their presence, are even more troubling. Our public safety systems are designed to follow the DOJ infrastructure. Response to the community's criminal activities require PSOs to engage within high-crime areas and with knowledgeable residents within those areas. When PSOs don’t have a way to assimilate within these communities, building trust with its residents to reduce crime, it magnifies an already-awkward relationship between law enforcement and residents—one rooted in and amplified by a history of mistrust, poor communication and poor engagement. This awkwardness can drive a downward spiral of crime, nuisance, and neighborhood decay. 

To restore and maintain the health of our neighborhoods, we must build back the balance between the dual needs for public safety and human rights—a balance where the institutions of public safety have a place in the community, and where the processes of law and order govern with fairness and respect for the people and the rule of democracy.  Achieving that balance depends on how we, as citizens and neighbors, engage those tools of governance. We can either facilitate its success, as did East Palo Alto in its remarkable turn-around, or we can accelerate its failures. 

To that end, I share these hard-learned lessons from my decades of successful engagement with local government, neighbors, friends, family and law enforcement to build a stronger community. 

Neighbors need to collectively design what we want our communities to look like. Cleaner shared spaces for recreation, entertainment, and even urban farming require us to become a part of the building blocks and participate in environment experiences. Our community’s life cycle is an exciting opportunity to explore the future but it needs us to engage to build it. 

Know your neighbor / know your neighborhood 

→ Take stock of your block, learning about your neighbors and understanding the neighborhood's history. For example, the concern from one of my neighbors of seeing young black males hanging outside the corner store was corrected when I adjusted her lens, pointing out these young men were that year’s neighborhood high school football team state-winning champions. Showcasing her hidden biases while noting that kids are kids, and not criminals, was a personal joy for me. I understood what she believed she saw, which was shaped by a long ago trauma or experience at the site where they were congregating. But jumping immediately to her perceived prejudices was just as incorrect for me. After all, every shooting that occurred at the site she was referencing was either retaliatory gun violence, drug-related or a strong-arm robbery.

In fact, those kids were more likely to be the victims of violence. Too often we have had shootings that harm innocent by-standers who were protecting their families from gun-violence. Collective outrage with these heinous crimes has brought neighbors, who knew one another from collaborating on previous community issues, to work together with law enforcement to cull senseless violence and demand community safety. 

→ Identify nuisance properties and engage with residents to address issues collaboratively. For example, while reviewing some ongoing West Oakland community issues with residents, we discovered in just one instance in 2017, there were over 500 police incident reports to the same address; an address we frequently complained about with each other. By utilizing communication channels like email and text message chains with neighbors who are reporting crime and experiencing these same nuisances, we enabled efficient reporting and education on the optics surrounding crime in the community. We were aware that each of us was reporting troubling and dangerous behaviors coming from the site, and we learned that these perpetrators didn’t all live in the neighborhood.

Our law enforcement is a data-driven department and these reports helped us and them identify that it was the same house perpetrating nuisance behaviors. We collaboratively reached out to the property owner, addressing the activities of their tenant(s) and raising awareness of how these activities hide in plain sight. 

The ongoing police activities highlighted that the gun violence occurring in our community right outside our front doors needed our attention and involvement. And our community-driven intelligence efforts helped OPD investigate the sources of this criminal behavior and its tentacles spreading into neighboring communities.

Know your area’s Law Enforcement / Public Safety Officers 

→ Law Enforcement Officers have a job to do in our communities and they need our support to do it. They work hard to get it right and they are there to address crimes that degrade our communities, and harm us and our neighbors. We may not even be aware of the causes that bring them to our communities since many crimes are hidden in plain sight (e.g., human trafficking, cartel-organized drug dealing, and the fentanyl crisis in encampments). Getting to know why they are there is how we can keep safe.

Police officers are our brothers, sisters, sons and daughters; they come from all backgrounds. Our fear belongs to us as much as it belongs to them; the voices in our heads, which create experiences that we personally did not experience, are as much to blame as the history of policing. We want police to respond when we need them; psychologically allowing someone else's experience to represent our own is not a route to positive experiences, and it’s not a solution on how to investigate and resolve the experiences of crimes on our streets. 

→ If you want a different relationship with law enforcement, try taking the initiative to provide that change. As one neighbor once said to me: “I want less police in the community. ” My response: “So do I; I also don’t want to have to live in a police state triggered as a response to uncontrolled violence in our community”, which was exactly the case at that time and continues up to and through today.

Attend community meetings / know your city representatives

→ Stay informed about local processes and engage in community efforts to address concerns. The dialogue of change can happen at these meetings and the best part is you aren’t alone in that dialogue. You can forge a coalition that can actually make a broader community impact. Not all residents attend City Council or Board of Supervisor meetings, but the community meetings frequently make those representatives come into our spaces to meet on our turf and territory.

For example, in 2016 and 2018 Alliance Recycling and Santos Moving and Hauling, both in West Oakland, were closed as a result of the direct engagement by concerned community members who became victims of their poorly managed businesses. By violating their Conditional Use Permits (CUPs) and operating with impunity, they brought not just crime but also environmental pollution. While attending community meetings, I learned about the over-30-year conflict with Alliance, and how other long-time residents in the community had been fighting for change this whole time. Many residents also worried about what would happen with these closures, including the loss of income and services for some. In addition to succeeding to force the business closures, the community also stepped up to support the transition to alternatives once the businesses relocated or closed for those who utilized Alliance’s services. The hyperbolic reports and disruptive threats of ‘what will happen if Alliance closes’ did not play out in our community.    

→ Learn who is ‘with’ or ‘against’ your efforts. The community meetings helped us identify that our then district Council Member was willing to work with both sides to reach a compromise, even while the At-Large Council Member worked against it. It also helped immensely that our prior Council Member (still living in the West Oakland community but now retired) had a broad and knowledgeable perspective about what had been going on for the past 30 years. Her influence and knowledge was key to ensure a real conversation without biases and politicizing the issues.

Engage with diverse communities 

→ Connect with people of different backgrounds and ages to foster real understanding to build a broader, deeper and stronger community. The richness of diverse backgrounds and experiences builds better and more lasting solutions. What you think you’re seeing and learning needs all perspectives, and good ideas come from diverse audiences and partnerships.

Build our future together

As neighbors, we need to collectively design what we want our communities to look like. Cleaner shared spaces for recreation, entertainment, and even urban farming require us to become a part of the building blocks and participate in the environment and experiences. Our community’s life cycle is an exciting opportunity to explore the future but it needs us to engage to build it. 

By having open conversations and building trust, with your neighbors and your public safety resources, communities can reduce crime and improve safety. While there may be no miracle answers, engaging with city resources designed to address problems is essential. By working together, communities can ensure the safety, security, and well-being of all residents, improving everyone’s quality of life.

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Editors’ Note: Carol Wyatt is a 25-year resident and community leader in West Oakland. She has served on the Oakland Community Policing Advisory Board and the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force.

Carol’s article is the first community contribution to Oakland Report and our first Perspectives article. The Perspective section is dedicated to sharing the voices of our neighbors across the City, so that we can better understand their lives, their views, and their vision for the future. As with all our work, Oakland Report seeks to ensure these Perspectives stimulate a respectful, reasoned, and evidence-based dialogue.

1. Our gun culture is less “recreational" and more occupational in communities like West Oakland, where unfortunately, there are a lot of guns that police face in response to calls for service. The saying ‘Bringing a knife to a gun fight’ has more meaning when the person using the gun for crime and violence meets the similar tools of law enforcement. Law enforcement officers bring their guns as a part of their uniform, and their job to ‘protect and serve’. It is a necessary response to crime and the people perpetrating it, and to protect themselves in their performance of their duties. 

2. I am old enough to have experienced violence in my community first hand during the Civil Rights movement and ever since. Even though I didn’t live in West Oakland back then, I lived in a deeply violent urban center. Historically, the violence inevitably causes a legislative reaction in the form of tougher crime laws. These laws often over-react, leading to punitive impacts beyond their intended aims. 

As an example, it is worth examining how our local laws aligned with federal laws, and how these became a difficult and punitive response, during the complex history of the Clinton Administration’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. It is a case study in how the criminal activities and legislative reaction played out within our communities. This was the ‘The Crack Era” and that bill was a too-little/too-late response.

We may disagree about the punitive nature of legislation. But regardless, we must ask why these laws were being enacted, and we must listen fully, rather than selectively about what this means in communities like West Oakland.  Back then, even the Congressional Black Caucus members voted for the law; they are hardly a conservative bunch of legislators. But listen closely and you will hear the effort to balance our need to face the crime we were facing with a fair and resolute response, while also getting us to a place where communities didn’t feel their residents had to engage in criminal activity in order to feed their families and survive.