Posted on 12/07/2008 12:06:12 PM PST by CE2949BB
Susan Gluss may be one of the most recent Oakland residents to move on to safer, saner confines in the Bay Area, but she is by no means alone in her decision to call it quits.
Gluss, and countless others like her, are the collateral damage - the civilian fallout - from the city's timid efforts to stem a series of crimes that have terrorized residents much of this year.
The steady increase in crime since 2006 has raised residents' concern about personal safety and security to the level where that now vies with the city's underperforming school system as a legitimate reason to move out of Oakland.
In 2007, there were more than 125 murders in the city, including the assassination of journalist Chauncey Bailey in broad daylight on a downtown street.
And at the end of the year, then-state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, was carjacked at gunpoint as he was stopped in his state-leased red 2006 Dodge Charger at a red light in North Oakland.
Less than two weeks later, on Jan. 10, the man suspected of stealing Perata's car allegedly fired shots in a gas station robbery on Piedmont Avenue, one of which pierced the wall of a piano studio across the street and paralyzed a 10-year-old boy taking a lesson.
In the merry-go-round of crime in Oakland, Chris Rodriguez, the boy hurt in the shooting, is yet another victim of collateral damage.
Gluss' experience in Oakland - two car break-ins and a home burglary in less than a year - is a familiar scenario of hope, rationalization, denial and finally, surrender. It's a path that many ex-Oakland residents have traveled before her.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
| Oakland Pride |
Nice job by their Communist no-show Mayor.
Like socialism, white flight is better when it’s spread around.
I live in Oakland and we are moving as soon as we can.
The problem with the SF Chronicle is that is always dances around the white elephant in the room.
I read that over 80% of children in Oakland public schools qualify for free breakfast and lunch, so of 21 meals in a week (7 x 3) the Government provides 10 of them, so half of your schoolage kids are fed by the dole and I have read that many kids elect to not even eat the food and elect for candy and chips.
Can anyone reference the frontal lobe article I read yesterday from UC Berkeley, it seems to apply.
And that flight also signals the death spiral of an Urban Area, look at Detroit for what that eventually becomes.
Ehh, you get what you settle for, no more, no less.
It can’t be THAT bad! There are still FOUR cities with more crime!
</sarcasm>
Bush’s fault. Obama will fix.
Does the SF Chronicle ever discuss the high crime rate in SF that Michael Savage is always talking about?
I so wish SF would secede and become a part of Canada, then maybe we could swing a deal and get the province of Alberta.
No worries. Obama will soon be president and all the criminals will see the hopenchange he is bringing and peace will break out in our major urban centers.
Gee, I wonder how come there is so much crime in Oakland? Anyone want to hazard a guess?
Mona Charen, interviewing Michael Medved on C-SPAN yesterday, commented on how much of the free food given to kids as breakfast and lunch in the public schools gets thrown away.
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