Bay Area

CalTrans Enforces Clearance in Oakland, Protestors Help Some Residents Stay

“They posted signs saying everyone had to get off the property”

Published

4 years ago

February 5, 2021

Kiki

Four protestors crouch behind and hold shields on a tract of CalTrans owned land next to Mosswood Park in North Oakland on January 28. Another protestor, Annmarie Bustamante (right), stands next to the shield holders. A homeless resident (back center right) gathers his belongings during a clearance. Photo by Zack Haber.

While facing intense rain and protests on January 27 and 28, California Highway Patrol officers and California Dept. of Transportation (CalTrans) workers cleared tents, trash, broken branches, and homeless people from a tract of CalTrans-owned land that sits between Mosswood Park and the 580 Freeway in North Oakland.

CalTrans referred to the operation as a cleaning. Activists, local civil rights lawyers, and the site’s residents called it an eviction. Two residents successfully resisted being removed from the site and stayed on the tract of land.

“They posted signs saying everybody has to get off the property,” said Osha Neumann, a lawyer with the East Bay Community Law Center who was at the tract on January 27. “To me, that’s an eviction. There’s no question the intent was to displace people.”

CalTrans posted a NO TRESPASSING notice on January 25. Printed words stated the site was scheduled for cleaning on January 27. The date “1/28/21” was also added in blue pen ink.

In an e-mail to Oakland resident Charlotte Ashlock, who inquired about the operation, CalTrans Deputy District Administrator Cheryl Chambers claimed a resident was tapping into a CalTrans electrical panel, which affected 30 streetlights in the area and initiated the clearance.

“During the pandemic, CalTrans is only moving people…if there is an emergency to life or infrastructure as happened with the electrical tap at Mosswood” she wrote.

Caltrans public information officer Janis Mara told The Oakland Post that the cleaning was done because “illegally compromising electrical components poses a fire hazard to those in the area and threatens the integrity of the infrastructure.”

Neumann believes, despite the illegal tapping, CalTran’s actions were not fair to the residents. “Making everybody leave because somebody tapped into electricity is like requiring everybody in an apartment complex to vacate because one tenant is running an illegal extension cord out the window to a socket in the basement,” he said.

By January 29, the vast majority of the tract’s residents moved about 40-60 feet away into Mosswood Park. Mara reported that “Caltrans requested assistance from the City of Oakland to provide social services and outreach in advance of this removal,” but no residents reported being offered alternative shelter.

Two residents, who lived in a small home they had made mostly out of recycled wood and plastic, remained in their home and on the site despite the order to leave. John, who lives in the home, thinks it is not a threat to CalTrans or public health.

The Caltrans-owned tract of land where John’s home sits is smaller than the tennis court it rests behind and is forested with pine and acacia trees. John said he has been on the site on and off for five years because it’s “out of the way.” During the warmer months, thick foliage often makes the area invisible to those outside of it.

On January 27, John and his roommate told CalTrans workers and CHP Offices that they did not plan on leaving. About a half dozen protestors supported them that day.

“I’ve just had them move me around enough,” John told The Oakland Post. “They play musical chairs with everybody, give 5% of the people housing, then take it away a few months later.”

John had been cleared from the area before, but he and his roommate stood firm during this operation and protestors aided them. On January 28, about 20 protestors showed up despite heavy rain. Ten of them held colorful wooden shields. Six of the shield holders stood outside. John and his roommate’s home while four others stood outside another resident’s red tent as he gathered his belongings. About a dozen and a half CalTrans workers gathered and cleared trash and tree branches from the area. Occasionally, workers fell in the slippery mud. A few CHP officers monitored.

The resident who lived in the red tent, who asked not to be named for fear of police retaliation, did not resist the clearance. But the protestor’s presence allowed him extra time to clear his possessions. In the past, CalTrans had destroyed possessions he wished to keep in similar operations.

“This has been one of the best times in terms of being able to salvage my possessions because of the help of the volunteers,” he said. “It was nice to have advocates have our back.”

“They’re clearing debris but also some belongings,” said a protestor while holding a shield January 28. They also asked not to be named due to fear of police retaliation.

“We just want to be sure they don’t touch people’s structures. Threatening people’s ability to shelter themselves at a time like this is appalling.”

CalTrans has a documented history of destroying homeless residents’ belongings during clearances. They agreed to pay $5.5 million in February 2020 to settle a lawsuit that Neumann worked on, Sanchez V CalTrans, which accused the department of illegally destroying homeless people’s property during sweeps in Oakland, Berkeley and Emeryville between December 2014 and October 2019. At least 1,200 people in Oakland, Emeryville and Berkeley said CalTrans destroyed their possessions and have filed claims.

According to John, there had been 20 people living on the CalTrans tract, but most left on January 27 due to feeling intimidated. A protestor, Annmarie Baustamente, who was on the track during both days of the clearance said that some residents were absent during the clearance. She saw CalTrans bag and store people’s items that appeared to be worth more than $50 but worried about residents losing other items that had sentimental value. Bustamante, along with several residents, also expressed worry about a resident who uprooted herself and all her belongings due to the clearance days after her partner died. Neumann said he talked to a resident who lost personal artworks and art supplies that were important to him.

Andrea Henson, a lawyer with the Oakland’s Eviction Defense Center who was on the tract on January 28, said she was appalled to see CalTrans throw away a hand-washing station. “If they were doing a cleaning, then shouldn’t the handwashing station have been moved aside or replaced?” she asked.

Caltrans Public Information Officer Janis Mara’s claimed the wash station was “inoperable and beyond repair.” In her e-mail, CalTrans Deputy District Director Cheryl Chambers said the department allowed one resident “to remain onsite due to his health concerns.” Both lawyers who were onsite, Henson and Neumann, said they thought the reason John’s home was not torn down was the protestors’ presence and John and his roommate’s determination to stay.

“The only reason that the house wasn’t torn down was the protest,” said Henson.

During the clearance, Neumann spoke to the commanding officer on-site and tried to persuade him that tearing down John’s home during the storm and under COVID would look bad for CalTrans and harm the residents. Neumann asked for time to work out solutions to problems CalTrans had with the encampment.

“He listened,” said Neumann, “but I didn’t change his mind. What changed his mind was the presence of eviction defenders.”

By February 2, at least three residents had moved back unto the CalTrans owned land.

Kiki

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Activism

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Published

5 hours ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two

Oakland Post

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Activism

‘Criminal Justice Reform Is the Signature Civil Rights Issue of Our Time,’ says D.A. Pamela Price

Speaking about the destructive impact of mass incarceration, Price asked people to consider “how many children have incarcerated parents, where the practice has always been to isolate and eliminate connections between people who are incarcerated and their children and their families and the community. So, when we bring people home, they have no more connection.”

Published

5 hours ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and practices of the 1950s, our country is not going to move forward,” she said.

By Ken Epstein

Part Two

District Attorney Pamela Price, facing a recall that began before she took office in January 2023, explained in an exclusive interview with the Oakland Post how she came to dedicate her life to transforming a deeply flawed criminal justice system into one that provides equal justice and public safety for all and ends mass incarceration for African Americans and other working-class people.

She summarized her life experiences as someone who was “traumatized and radicalized” by Dr. King’s murder, joining the Civil Rights Movement full force, getting arrested when she was 13 years old in a civil rights demonstration, being tracked into the juvenile justice and the foster care systems, and making it as a foster kid from the streets of Cincinnati to Yale College.”

“I understand a lot of things about struggle, about sacrifice, about trauma and fortunately survived all of that, and as a survivor learned some important lessons, and I brought all of that with me into the law and have been able to become a civil rights attorney in Alameda County,” she said.

“That’s been the joy of my life; I’ve lived every lawyer’s dream,” she said.

“Years ago, when I first decided to run for district attorney, I realized that mass incarceration was so destabilizing to our communities,” she said.

She saw that the “criminal justice system has so many impacts on our community, the safety of our community, the stability of our community, the growth of our community, the direction of our community.”

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and the practices of the 1950s … our society is going to be mired in discord, and we will not have social justice, racial justice, economic justice, none of the things that actually make our communities worth living in.”

It is crucial to address the needs of “young people in the juvenile justice system when they are more likely and able to be rehabilitated and redirected,” she said. Young people are much more able to be rehabilitated before the age of 18, really before the age of 26, and before they end up in an adult prison.

D.A. Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’ Malley, joined the D.A.’s office in 1984, where she remained for 39 years. She was promoted to a leadership position after just six years in the office during the era of mass incarceration when there was an explosion of prison construction in California.

“Prosecutors like my predecessor were the ones who filled (those prisons) up. She became a leader in the office around 1990. And what is very important for the public to know is that prior to becoming the district attorney in 2009, she was the chief assistant district attorney for 10 years under Tom Orloff.

“O’Malley worked very closely, hand-in-hand with him for the period of time that included the illegal conduct or the unconstitutional exclusion of Jewish people and Black people from death penalty juries.”

Commenting on the recall campaign against her, she said that had not a handful of multimillionaires and billionaires “put millions of dollars into this, we would not be having this recall. It is not a grassroots movement. It’s a platinum movement.”

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I’m just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said.

If they successfully paint Oakland as a failed city, then hedge fund billionaires and real estate developers can come in and buy up the property cheap, she said.

Though D.A. Price has been bombarded by a massive tsunami of lies, slanders, and misrepresentation, she remains strong and positive because she is a woman of faith, she said.

“I’ve been saved and guided by (a) higher power since I was 13 years old. So, I’m not a new person to faith, and I’m grounded in that,” she said.