Oakland robberies surge as investigations sputter

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-robberies-surge-as-investigations-sputter-4855014.php

by teamgb • 13 years ago

59 100 13 years ago

cobrausn• 13 years ago

So, after reading the article and seeing that smart devices are often targets... I have to ask, is there an app that would help in these kinds of cases?

I'm picturing an app with a button on the main screen. Press the button, device location is uploaded periodically to a server. For bonus points, make the device look like it is powered off (although I suppose there really isn't much you can do if they pull the battery).

After the fact, you might get lucky and the data reveals where the device went, which police might be able to use to track down who did it. Not sure if anything like this exists (don't have a smartphone), but it seems like something that might be useful if you live in an area where this happens a lot.

mikeash4• 13 years ago

It's pretty common. Apple builds this functionality into all of theirs, for example:

http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html

There are Android apps that will do the same thing.

The problem is getting the police to care about a relatively minor crime, and getting to the phone before the thief (or his fence) wipes it, or ships it to Vietnam or wherever.

mikeevans• 13 years ago

It's built into Android as well: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager

michael_michael• 13 years ago

You're describing "Find My iPhone". I was mugged for my iPhone twice in NYC. The thieves turned the phone off relatively quickly and reset it, which rendered Find My iPhone useless at the time. It was tied to the Apple ID rather than the device (not sure if that's since changed).

As of iOS 7, you can actually remotely render the phone unusable. I've heard NYPD is now handing out flyers advising people to update their iOS devices to iOS 7[1] so they can take advantage of this feature.

While most crime in NYC has declined, smartphone robberies are -- as in Oakland -- majorly up y/y.

[1]https://twitter.com/Hoffm/status/381564392602480640/photo/1

timcederman• 13 years ago

To reset the device or turn of Find My iPhone, you now need to enter your Apple ID password.

You've always been able to remotely disable.

BrainScraps• 13 years ago

This one is generally highly recommended. Didn't work for my laptop, but I think it was stolen by professionals that wiped it without ever powering it on.

http://preyproject.com/

not_rhodey• 13 years ago

Shameless plug here for Zones: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Zones

I was robbed in West Oakland over the summer while developing the app. Funny thing, I actually had the app installed on my phone at the time it was stolen and made a bunch of design and feature changes after the fact.

rhuppert2• 13 years ago

There are apps as you describe.

A better solution would be to render the device inoperable after it has been reported stolen. I hate to be a cynic, but it seems Apple, AT&T, Verizon and others are resistant to this not because it is difficult to accomplish, but due to lower revenue possibly.

Frankly, more people are getting assaulted and injured due to smart phone thefts, and while I do blame the perpetrators, I also find inaction on the part of smart phone vendors abhorrent.

FYI, I've lived in Oakland over 30 years and have not been robbed yet. Not to say it won't happen, but people on their phones are generally more oblivious to their surroundings than usual. Oakland has its problems, but it gets an inordinate amount of this type of bad press that greases the public fear wheel.

mikeash4• 13 years ago

I'm afraid your cynicism is at least partially misplaced. Apple has now made it so that iPhones can do exactly what you say. If it's protected with a passcode already, you can't wipe the device. If it's not, you can remotely lock it until and unless you recover it. See: http://www.apple.com/icloud/find-my-iphone.html

SiVal• 13 years ago

an inordinate amount of this type of bad press

So, what would be a more appropriate amount and type of press for the violent robbery capital of the country?

dkl6• 13 years ago

Android: Cerberus.

lwhalen2• 13 years ago

Not to be a complete schmuck about it, but Glock makes a wonderful 'app' for that. Unfortunately, California systematically denies its citizens the right to lawfully carry firearms concealed - and in many cases denies them the right to own at all. I would think that a straightforward fix for the robberies would be to enable 'self-service' self-defense and get the laws around legal gun ownership changed.

rdl8• 13 years ago

San Mateo is sort of ok, for the Bay Area. You need "heightened good cause", but the standard isn't absurdly high.

allochthon4• 13 years ago

A Glock would not have helped in my case, when five or six young men attacked me at close range (in Oakland), unless I was Chuck Norris and willing to throw away my own life as well as theirs. More police on the streets, and more effective followthrough after the fact, would have helped, though.

niteshmehta• 13 years ago

PG please put a RFS for a crowd sourced security system for neighborhoods. Police forces are not scalable.

taybin3• 13 years ago

Yeah, let's disrupt this with private security forces! When I think of what I want the future to look like, it's private security forces for the wealthy.

robbiet4802• 13 years ago

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/security-patrol-for-lowe...

malyk3• 13 years ago

While I completely agree that this problem is the responsibility of the government you have to understand the frustration of the people whose houses are being broken in to on a regular basis. Ok, not the same house (usually), but the same neighborhoods over and over and over, week after week.

My neighborhood is considering hiring private security. The initial estimate is $15 a household per month given N neighbors sign up. I forget what N is, but it wasn't that many. So yes, it would be a real monetary sacrifice to a lot of the residents around me, but the alternative, given that the police can't really help right now, is to be at a very high risk of being burglarized with basically no chance of the perpetrators being caught.

Sometimes you have to take things into your own hands. I think oakland is making strides to hire and train more officers, but that's going to take a few years to get back to the 2010 level and we probably need more officers than we had then. Until then...what do we do? Keep getting robbed/burgled?

j_baker• 13 years ago

We're talking about robbery rates doubling in two years. As far as crime stats go, that's a huge increase. I wonder what the cause of it is?

potatolicious3• 13 years ago

Wild guess, but probably smartphones. Never before has something been so easy to take (it's just in your hand and not tied to anything, unlike a purse), worth so much money, is so easy to conceal, and is so universally demanded and easy to fence.

rhuppert2• 13 years ago

As a startup venture, this rate of increase does not pass a significant investment criterion -- for me, at least.

mmanfrin• 13 years ago

I think the article had a good hypothesis: the duality of gentrification (there is no way Oakland can't gentrify given the price of living in the City) and that the other half of people in Oakland were hit unreasonably hard by the recession. A little microcosm of growing economic inequality.

smtddr• 13 years ago

So in light of previous comments[1] I've made, I will say that this article is an example of unbias reporting highlighting core issues to try and explain the observations.

This kind of reporting allows one to think & reason about the issues & perhaps consider how to avoid(hopefully fix) the problem - instead of the blatant generalization like this[2][3] that only invoke fear and demoralize all the people in the city. Also, I support the headline change to match the article. The original headline is exactly what I'm talking about, just invoking fear. People who scan headlines will just memorize the headline instead of clicking into the article to understand why & how. We know far more people read headlines than read the whole article. We need more understanding about "why" and "how", not just "what".

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6448409

2. http://veryhilarious.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lion-kin...

3. http://www.joerizzo.com/broadcast/2012/images/stealing_oakla...

robbiet4802• 13 years ago

I live at The Grand, which is close to Broadway and Grand. In the last 6 months, I have heard one purse snatched and one assault and carjacking. Both happened in broad daylight, in heavily trafficked areas with people around. I was unable to assist OPD with the former case, but for the latter I ran down to give a statement. OPD never caught them last I heard, the car hasn't been recovered, and an elderly couple was very shaken.

I get the feeling that some elements inside OPD are trying to help the public, while others are cops for the power trip (see the Riders case of the early 2000's). OPD is absolutely stretched thin, but they are that way because Oakland is a big city and the command structure has previously had major run-ins with the DoJ (see Riders again) and therefore is very very careful about putting officers on the street. More so, they keep having issues with the DoJ (See Occupy Oakland, Scott Olsen), going so far as to the DoJ throwing down a threat of having the force taken over and reorganized, what would be a first for any organization in the US. We can't even keep a police chief for more then a few months, or days for that matter. Howard Jordan was around from 2011 until earlier this year. A day or two before another DoJ ruling/meeting, he suddenly retired due to a "medical condition", which he still hasn't disclosed. His replacement, Anthony Toribio, only lasted 2 days. Days. Not months. Days. The current interim chief, Sean Whent is still around, but we will see how much longer. We only have 637 officers as of last check. 637 for a town of 400,000 people.

Oakland has a broken government, including OPD and other services. It caused all of it's own problems, mostly due to OPD. Oakland won't get better until crime gets better or people start caring more about Oakland. I love my city, but I can't do much to help, other than helping the community (see OaklandWiki.org).

Maybe this is rambling, but whatever, it's out there. Oakland needs help, robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care.

Edited to add more details and color.

yapcguy5• 13 years ago

Oakland needs help, robbery and crime in general isn't going to drop until someone starts to care.

This.

Why have moderators changed the headline?

Oakland is #1 for robberies in the country. People need to know this. To accept it for what it is.

Sweeping the discussion away with a politically correct headline is part of the problem.

potatolicious3• 13 years ago

It's standard HN policy (and elsewhere, I might add) to only use the actual headlines of linked articles. This prevents editorializing in the headline and undue steering of the ensuing conversation.

The edited/new headline is the same as what's actually on the linked article. If you believe this headline is overly politically correct, take it up with the SF Chronicle.

I sympathize somewhat, but keep in mind that these rules are common throughout online communities, and only exist because submission headlines became massive soapboxes.

marknutter• 13 years ago

I've been noticing headlines change on HN more and more lately. It's very disorienting and kind of shakes my confidence in the content.

YuriNiyazov2• 13 years ago

I live in Berkeley. My girlfriend and I were robbed in Oakland at gunpoint in June. We reported everything to the OPD. My iPad was sending out information about its location for weeks. I forwarded that information to the OPD. The detective assigned to my case never called me back. We don't go to Oakland anymore unless it's passing through via BART, nice restaurants and other culture be damned. The amount of enjoyment I get from seeing your cool new funky band and trying your cool new food is dwarfed by the amount of shit feelings I get when dealing with having guns pointed at me and an unresponsive police department.

dkl6• 13 years ago

I used to live in Berkeley, and two people were robbed at gun point in my neighborhood. Shit like this happens everywhere. I don't think Berkeley is that much safer than Oakland. Just my opinion.

allochthon4• 13 years ago

This article gave me a necessary adrenaline rush. I live in Oakland and was mugged a year or so by a group of young kids walking through my neighborhood. They stole my phone and made a bunch of phone calls. I traced the phone calls back to individuals who no doubt knew the perpetrators and compiled a spreadsheet that I sent to the Oakland Police Department. They never called me back.

In the small apartment complex where I live, at least three other people were mugged at some point.

dkl6• 13 years ago

I'm right across the street (the office building next to Lukas). I walk to work and back every day. Been doing this for 10+ years. Never had a problem.

I remember a couple of years ago the guy that came to the Bay Area for the google interview and stopped in to see someone in Oakland the night before and was shot dead. Or, the old man that was killed by someone on the street hitting him so hard. Or, the kid that was paralyzed while getting a music lesson because some shot off a gun during a robbery.

In the past, the crime in the bad areas of Oakland didn't bleed out to the nicer areas. I predicted this after the 2008 crash. I knew once the economy crashed, it wouldn't take long for the very large numbers of uneducated, jobless, young men in the bad parts of Oakland to realize their meal ticket was walking around in the nicer areas of town. Piedmont, surrounded on all sides by Oakland, has been hit by an increase in robberies, many of which are home invasion style. I was talking with a friend the other day who knows a lawyer that is defending some of the people in the gang (Easy Money Team... what a name, but it gives you insight into their thinking). They're all 14-20ish, with parents about 14 yrs or so older than them.

There is a lack of opportunity, but the black community needs to address some of their problems, at least one of which is cultural: it is uncool for kids to succeed through academics, it is very cool for kids to succeed via sports or rap music or dancing. Until it is cool to do well in school, and that starts with the parents, this problem will only get worse.

For those that want to label me a racist: there are studies that back up what I said. There was a prominent researcher that died recently, but not before writing a scathing article about this problem. There was an article about him and his research in the East Bay Express. I forget his name. It was eye opening.

colemanfoley• 13 years ago

The article is "Rich, Black, Flunking" by John Ogbu, a Nigerian American. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/rich-black-flunking/Co...

mathattack2• 13 years ago

It seems like crime follows income disparity. When you have a lot of wealth connected to a lot of poverty, and not many people keeping them apart, you have crime. It surprises me that Oakland is even worse than Detroit - perhaps because Detroit doesn't have the wealth?

I believe this bus fight video was also in Oakland. http://youtu.be/tYTO4P80q9k

jijji4• 13 years ago

Its worth noting that every city on the list is a city with very strict gun laws. You won't find the robbery rates high in cities and states which allow citizens to properly defend themselves when confronted by an attacker committing a felony on his or her person.

ffrryuu• 13 years ago

Stand your ground?

jijji4• 13 years ago

Self defense?

grannyg00se• 13 years ago

How does the proper defense scenario play out with a gun? Someone pulls a gun on you to rob you, and you then pull yours out without getting shot? Once you do pull out your gun, do you shoot the robber(s)? I find it hard to imagine any of this working out very well.

Or is the possibility that you may be armed supposed to act as a deterrent?

jijji4• 13 years ago

In states that have strict gun laws, the way it plays out is that the victim never has the opportunity to defend themselves. Read any story where an attacker tries to rob a person with a concealed firearm to figure out how it plays out when the victim is armed. It usually doesn't end up well for the attacker. So I guess we should just all be victims and never defends ourselves when attacked. It actually drives crime up when everyone plays the victim and doesn't defened themselves. The attackers feel emboldened to commit the act over and over and over again with impunity. Why should they stop? No one is preventing them they should continue to rob people, it is working for them.

rdl8• 13 years ago

It's sort of a deterrent from "herd immunity", but it's mainly so that if a crime escalates from property crime, you can defend yourself. I'd toss my wallet/cash/etc. in one direction and move to cover/flee/draw, depending on the circumstance. I'm fine with losing whatever cash/credit cards/etc.; I'm not fine with being under the control of an attacker and potentially moved elsewhere, taken to an ATM, kidnapped, shot, etc.

The bad thing about CCW is it turns any assault into a likely-to-end-in-someone-shot situation; if you're carrying and potentially will be knocked unconscious in an assault, or are being grappled, the attacker may grab your gun and shoot you; your correct course of action is to shoot him first.

mikeash4• 13 years ago

Is that true? For example, St. Louis, Missouri's violent crime rate is comparable to Oakland's, according to Wikipedia[1], but doesn't appear to have strict gun laws. Similarly Memphis and Atlanta; neither Georgia nor Tennessee are particularly well known for strict gun control, and I can't find any evidence that those particular cities are different.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...

jijji4• 13 years ago

Look at the concealed carry laws in each state in the top ten. You'll find it very difficult if not impossible for the average person to obtain a concealed carry permit in any of those states.

jmccree• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to compare actual crime rates, much less "crime risk for someone not engaged in an illegal enterprise" across cities. The FBI rates are calculated per city population, and fail to take into account metro size. St Louis and Atlanta are both relatively small in geographic size and population compared to their metro area.

Violent crime tends to be closely related to poverty, and much tends to be "criminal-on-criminal". As criminals do not follow carry laws, it's hard to know the true effect on stats. I do find it interesting that if you sort the list by property crime, the top cities are dominated by ones in gun friendly states. A quick comparison shows for example, Atlanta has a higher property crime to violent crime ratio than Oakland. If you say there's "base crime level" driven by socioeconomic factors, then Atlanta's more gun friendly laws could contribute to it having a smaller percentage of violent crime in the total crime pie chart. Criminals may choose to break into unoccupied cars, stores, and homes instead of muggings and home invasions.

tzs• 13 years ago

So how come Houston has 3 times the robbery rate of San Jose or San Diego? Why does St. Louis, Missouri, have a higher robbery rate than Washington, DC?

BeoShaffer• 13 years ago

As someone from the St.Louis area I'd like to point out that the official crime rates are largely an artifact. The municipality called the City of St.Louis only covers a small amount of the actual city and includes most of the high crime areas.

saalweachter• 13 years ago

New York City is also pretty far down the list for robberies, even though robbery is one of the few things trending up in NYC (or so I hear).

akgerber• 13 years ago

What are the 'very strict' gun laws in Cleveland and Cincinnati? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Ohio

rdl8• 13 years ago

To be fair it's never really clear what is cause and what is effect with gun laws in the USA -- places with high crime of certain kinds (urban/black, with liberal or anti-gun politicians) tend to go for anti-gun laws. Places with low crime and lots of anti-gun people also go for anti-gun laws. Places with high crime and a more pro-gun culture resist those laws. It's hard to say passing a law pro or anti gun changes crime; you'd really need something equivalent to a "twin study" in bio, where two otherwise-identical cities at the same time pass different laws.

sixQuarks2• 13 years ago

Not enough police enforcement. How much does the city pay in pension obligations? That's what's killing a lot of cities.

genwin• 13 years ago

Bingo. Likely many more cities and counties will go bankrupt. Mid-level employees across the land have been promised a retirement payout the equivalent of $1M+. It would take $1M+ to buy the annuity that would cover their pension.

sanskritabelt• 13 years ago

Too much police "enforcement", you mean: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/investigation-reveals-east-bay...

sixQuarks2• 13 years ago

so ridiculous. The problem is that voters, as soon as they hear BS about police officers and teachers being laid off, blindly support rises in the budgets, unaware that so much money is being wasted and not being put to good use.

leokun• 13 years ago

This lady:

Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who represents West Oakland, said joblessness is a big factor in the city's robbery rate.

I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job.

"We have a lot fewer jobs for adults so kids experience a lot more lack, so they are not able to get things," she said, noting that some turn to robbery to get money. "Really what they are after is really basic things - shoes, jackets. The things these kids are buying with money from stolen things are not flashy things.

She goes on like this, defending criminals and criminal activity and blaming the system. The system may suck, but resorting to guns, scaring people out of their lives and taking things from them that belong to them is not excusable. It's criminal, and she's a terrible person for commenting this way, and a terrible official.

mattzito2• 13 years ago

I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job.

Of course not, neither am I. Of course, I'm a white-collar professional, in an in-demand industry, with savings, and consequently, even if I had to really scale down my career level to make ends meet, I could definitely find a job.

On the flip side, if I was largely unemployable aside from menial jobs with long hours, low pay, and lousy job security, and then I lost my job, I'd have a lot fewer options. I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low.

Why is it so crazy to think that some people who steal would do something else if they were given the opportunity for real advancement?

twoodfin6• 13 years ago

I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low.

You would? Do you think of respecting others, their property and the law as some kind of luxury you could do without if you were sufficiently needy?

We could have a philosophical discussion about free will and the irresistible forces of circumstance, but in order to have a civil society we have to at least pretend that people are responsible for their own actions and will respect the law even if they might not get caught breaking it. And indeed, most poor people aren't thieves.

rdl8• 13 years ago

I can sort of understand people turning to non-violent crime in extreme circumstances. I don't agree with it, and don't think it's the best choice for them, but if someone is poor and is a thief (vs. armed robber), economic circumstance could be a factor in his decision, and maybe better economic opportunities would deter him.

Armed robbery and violent assault are in a different class, and the solution is better enforcement. If someone pulls a gun on you in a robbery, it's not a property crime -- it's a violent crime against your life, and you're in immediate and reasonable fear for your life. The property is at that point not even secondary in concern. Similar to how rape isn't really about sex.

rhizome3• 13 years ago

Highly tone-deaf. Why don't they just learn Rails, right? Growth-hacking knows no race nor economic strata!

yapcguy5• 13 years ago

Shameful guerilla marketing... or real-life 'Trading Places'?

"Option #1: I will give you $100 in cash.

Option #2: I will return tomorrow with a basic laptop and three books to learn to code. I will then come an hour early before work and teach you to become a software engineer."

https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/ae059ddffd2e

How I taught a homeless man to build an app in a week

Software developer takes on vagrant and helps him develop his own business.

Patrick McConlogue came up with the idea after passing the homeless man every day on his way to work.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2436371/Homeless-man...

hackinthebochs7• 13 years ago

I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job.

I honestly don't buy this, but even if you would personally starve to death rather than steal to obtain food, the vast majority of people would not. Crime rates increase as legitimate ways to make money dry up; the statistical trend is real and the implications for human nature cannot be ignored. Wishful thinking about human nature and just teaching people not to be bad will get you nowhere.

It is a politicians job to see things at an aggregate level and address public health issues at that level. Discussing the lack of jobs and legitimate avenues for making money is exactly the appropriate response that a politician should have. If people need a moral kick-in-the-pants, perhaps their pastor should provide it.

jskonhovd• 13 years ago

Crime shouldn't be justified due to poverty.

twoodfin6• 13 years ago

I honestly don't buy this, but even if you would personally starve to death rather than steal to obtain food, the vast majority of people would not.

Nobody in Oakland, or the U.S. generally, needs to steal to obtain food. This is not Dickensian England. Government social programs and private charities may not be perfect, but they are more than enough to be sure anyone capable exercising a minimum amount of effort and self-control will not be in danger of starving to death. Obviously there are continuing problems with the mentally ill, but those are not particularly relevant unless you think they're disproportionally committing crimes.

dkl6• 13 years ago

Did you come from the ghetto? If so, I might believe you. If not, you have no idea what you're talking about.

mejarc• 13 years ago

In my seventeen years living in Oakland, I've grown exasperated with the Sixties-leftover, anti-cop rhetoric that has left us with a disproportionately small police force. We voted in a measure to hire more officers, but lose some every year to retirement and attrition.

I really doubt mere straight employment would turn around the robbing creeps who gang up (usually three to a car--one to drive, the others to mug) on their victims. Thousands of other Oaklanders contend with desperate poverty without resorting to felonies. Until we have a fully staffed police force, though, we're all on our own.

pvdm• 13 years ago

I'm not going to turn to robbery if I lose my job.

You need to walk a mile in someone else's shoes before you judge.

wehadfun2• 13 years ago

I've had an iPhone stolen in Dallas. I tried to show them iPhone "Find my phone" feature they would not send an officer to investigate claiming that the number was only accurate to 500ft.

bsimpson• 13 years ago

Part of me thinks that it's obvious that high-end bikes need a GPS-enabled anti-theft system, and is flabbergasted that there are still barely any options for that. (The only one I'd buy is Helios, but it requires new handlebars that wouldn't fit my bike.) That said, I've also wondered about the efficacy of such a system. If the bike was still moving, you'd have a decent chance of finding it, but if it was stashed in somebody's apartment waiting to be sold, how would you know where, precisely, to find it? It's a hard problem, especially considering housing is probably pretty dense in the places most thieves live.

Maybe a camera and/or an alarm would be helpful, but good thieves would learn where the cameras are and to cover them up. An alarm would give itself away before you'd have a chance to find it, and would probably entice the thief to destroy your bike. Maybe there's a way to echolocate the bike, using a frequency outside the range of human hearing:

- The owner goes to the rough location of the stolen item, as determined by GPS.

- The owner sends a signal to the anti-theft inside the stolen item to start emitting a signal that the thief can't hear.

- Using his phone (and maybe a friend's to aid in triangulation), the owner deduces where the signal is coming from, and is better able to recover his item.

The problem with bolt-on antitheft (like the BikeSpike) is that once thieves realize what a GPS beacon looks like, they'll destroy it ASAP after stealing the bike. Therefore, options like Helios where the GPS is hidden in the bicycle itself are the much preferred option, but even then, the thief can hide the stolen goods in a basement or a Faraday cage where any signals the device emits can't reach the outside world.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that if your bike is stolen, you are basically screwed.

rdl8• 13 years ago

Bait bikes seem like the solution to bike theft.

wehadfun2• 13 years ago

I have not scientific, references, ... but I think if 10% of the money/effort that has gone into the drug war went into robberies it would be stamped out.

It cant be hard to find a cell phone, it has a connected GPS, mike, and camera.

ddlatham• 13 years ago

Some interesting numbers and quotes from the article when you put them together:

"As of July 31, Oakland had 626 officers - still far less than the 800-plus officers the city had in 2010."

2010: 2917 robberies

2013: 5311 robberies (pace through Sept. 22)

"In early 2013, police Lt. Chris Bolton analyzed robberies across the city and found that roughly 75 percent involved a smartphone."

"So far this year, crime, as a whole in Oakland is stagnant. Shootings are down. Homicide has dropped by 13 percent...But robberies are up. A lot."

yapcguy5• 13 years ago

Smartphones are just one more thing to rob, along with cash and jewellery.

With smartphone penetration on the rise, it's pretty obvious that more robberies would involve smartphones, but it wouldn't necessarily mean that smartphones are responsible for a rise in robberies.

Having said that, waving a $700 smartphone around in public will mark you as a potential target, rather than the person next to you with an old-school flip-phone.

mathattack2• 13 years ago

Freakonomics discussed crime decreasing in New York. A lot of it was just due to more police.

rdl8• 13 years ago

I live in Oakland now (although I plan to be in Issaquah or Bellevue WA by the end of 2013, thank god). I'm not really a good robbery candidate (which should be obvious just by appearance), but I'd never use a cellphone, laptop, etc. in public (including in cafes) in Oakland. I leave my house by car. I'm more than adequately armed and secured at home.

I've never had a problem with crime in Oakland personally, perhaps due to this level of precaution, but I know a lot of people who have (generally females walking or using public transit, in the afternoon or at night, in uptown and affiliated areas). Think about how much your laptop/phone/ipad/mifi/etc. together are worth, and whether you want to be displaying that on the street, at a bus stop, etc.

The weird thing is Oakland rents in the Grand/Broadway/Adams Point/etc. area are starting to approach ~2004 SF rents; a 1BR is about $1800-2k, up from about $1200 a couple years ago. I'm not sure if increasing rents will lead to less crime, since most of the people moving to Oakland are "hipsters" or "young single people", who generally don't prioritize security as much as families or older people.

(The huge amounts of crime in Oakland, which largely influence the stats, and most of the violent crime, are in the large gang/etc. areas where no hn reader would be likely to go. A friend of mine lived in a warehouse in one of those areas, and I ended up having to drive and walk through active ~50 cop police raids on the neighbors to get to her place several times. It was pretty lulz; I would not recommend it.)

If Alameda became as "issue on good cause" as the San Mateo County Sheriff, I'd more seriously consider living here again.

allochthon4• 13 years ago

I don't think one needs to be flashing anything to be assaulted. Just be at the wrong place at the wrong time -- perhaps walking through a transitional neighborhood near a BART station in the late afternoon.

rdl8• 13 years ago

Not necessary, but it helps. Being aware of your surroundings does generally help, not obviously burdened by bags, etc.

malyk3• 13 years ago

I live in Northwest oakland (near san pablo and stanford/powell) and the amount of robberies/burglaries that have happened in the greater neighborhood is kind of crazy. It's rarely more than a couple of days between reports of a break in on our Nextdoor neighborhood group. It's quite shocking how frequent the crimes are.

What seems to be happening is what seems like a standard burglary scenario. Someone walks around the neighborhoods checking out places, identifies a few and candidates and takes a closer look, and then the burglary happens. The officer in the article caught a couple of people in the act after being notified about a casing incident, which is great, but it's a drop in the bucket.

Oakland robberies surge as investigations sputter

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