If I were to name 3 of the potentially scariest places in California I would likely name Oakland, Compton and maybe Watts, 2 of which are in southern California. But then, to clarify there are wealthy safer sections to Oakland one of which is called Piedmont where there are million dollar homes too.
So, as you watch on the news about all the problems of Oakland and it's police chiefs being fired by the mayor to make sense of this you might want to see how many people are killed there in gangs etc. every year in the Gang ridden sections of Oakland which isn't far from UC Berkeley either.
Here is a true story from when I was a counselor to juvenile offenders in San Jose and one of the boys in my charge then was a 15 year old African American boy from Oakland.
So, to me, this tells you all you need to know about Oakland right here.
One day a new boy bigger than the Oakland boy was moved into the facility and he was Ayrian Nation which means he was a White Supremicist in our charge. This was a problem because he immediately told this Oakland African American boy he was going to kill him. The African American boy from Oakland because he was much smaller and 2 years younger than the White Supremicist boy took the bar out of the weight lifting equipment to defend himself and ran across the street and called his cousin to kill the White Supremicist boy before he killed the Oakland boy. The next few hours as counselors we had to move a lot of paperwork to get the white supremicist moved to another facility before the cousin of the Oakland boy came with a gun to kill the white supremicist boy. Luckily, we got the white supremicist boy moved in time to prevent his death or anyone's death.
So, when the Oakland boys cousin arrived to kill the white supremicist he was already gone and the Oakland boy could send his cousin home without killing him so we prevented one or more deaths that day as counselors in this touchy situation.
I asked the Oakland African American 15 year old how he felt about being in the counseling facility for boys with 7 felony convictions not related to guns and this is what he said, "I'm glad I'm here because if I was in Oakland I would be killed by a rival gang."
I think this story is all you need to know about how difficult Oakland can be for gang members and for the police there.
It isn't surprising to me that the 18 year old girl who was a sexual plaything for several police there and likely a gang member too eventually fingered them having had sex with her and blowing this whole thing up.
If you multiply the story I told you by 1000 or more these are the kinds of things the Oakland police are dealing with every single day. So, to be an Oakland policeman you have to sort of be an adrenaline junky in that you have to be prepared to die on the job every single day.
This wouldn't be like the small town coffee and donuts police out in the country in the U.S.
Your life is on the line every single day as a policeman and in a way you would have to be a little crazy to work in a town as scary as Oakland. This is what I think.
Because I was intuitive enough I didn't die doing this job in the early 1990s. However, when I took away 6 shanks (knife like devices) from a single boy who was 15 (not the Oakland boy) in a single day I quit after he held a butcher knife up to my back and I had to disarm him. I didn't want to have to kill a teenager next time because I wasn't a policeman only a Counselor for Juvenile Offenders with 7 felonies without a gun being used. Within the next 6 months there in San Jose 2 counselors doing what I did were murdered by the boys they were counseling so I got out of there just in time to stay alive myself. Even when I was there I knew I could only save maybe 25% of them because most already were life long criminals. You could tell when you spoke with them who these boys were. I could only save the ones not committed to a life of crime yet who were mostly between the ages of 12 to 15. Most over 16 to 17 were already gone. The only ones who might save them would be a girlfriend or their mother or father at that point.
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