Oakland Police are in trouble again. This video was posted on July 31st on YouTube, and captures an incident that happened in front of Awaken Cafe near 15th and Broadway.
According to the YouTuber bellaeiko, or Jessica Holley, (the same Jessica Holley who at one point said she was running for the Oakland City Council District Three Seat) the two men were just walking along, when the Oakland Police drove up and as you can see, drew a gun while asking each man to take specific steps back to the squad cars.
What upsets her is the scene of police drawing guns on two men who had no weapons at all. She was traumatised by the scene of of a police officer pulling a gun in public for no obvious reason.
I just saw this on a giant forum, and totally by accident. It’s generated 1,500 views already, and a ton of national talk that’s out of mainstream media view – this is social media.
But the video is powerful, and there’s more that one based on the camcorders I saw, so we’re seeing the anatomy of another OPD political problem.
In the video, the officer said the man was being detained, but not arrested – that upset the crowd because – well – it looked like they were just looking for something wrong with the men.
In reality they must be suspected for something – OPD brought something like five or six cars to the scene. There’s another story here, but there’s no question that it looks bad.
Now, having said that, the OPD officers did handle the video-blogger well. They asked her if she wanted to file a complaint and they were calm. They talked to her while the camcorder was running. That’s a far cry from the past.
I’ll have more on this soon.
Stay tuned.