City Government

Proposed Youth Curfew Fails for Lack of Support

Published

12 years ago

November 13, 2013

A proposal for a youth curfew in Oakland died this week at the city’s Public Safety Committee meeting in the face of opposition by City Council members and outraged hostility by young people and their supporters who filled the council chambers.

Brought to the Tuesday committee meeting by District 5 Councilmember Noel Gallo, the “Juvenile Protection Curfew Ordinance” was designed to help remedy the “victimization, exploitation and criminal activities that adversely impact youth in the City of Oakland.”

Gallo’s suggestion was to create a seven-day-a week, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew and also would ban young people from being in public during school hours, 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. He emphasized he did not wish to to have young people arrested but instead called for 24-hour-a-day youth action centers where those detained would be taken for family and academic counseling and resources.

While Public Safety Committee members declined to send the proposal to the full council for a vote, the committee voted to hold hearings on how the city can help reduce truancy and support students.

Speaker after speaker argued that a curfew would violate young people’s rights, underscoring their tense relations with the Oakland police officers, which speakers said regularly harass, racially profile and arrest teenagers.

“There are lots of problems (in the schools), but a curfew is bigger problem. I don’t want someone to take our constitutional rights away from us,” said Andre Mouton, who has worked with young people in East Oakland schools,

“(Young people) will run, and these police shoot. They will treat them like meat. We don’t want one kid killed by a curfew law,” he said.

Some young people talked about their reasons for being out at night, including taking a bus home from work, or soccer games, as well as buying dinner for young siblings. An undocumented young man said the curfew could mean he would be picked up and deported.

A group of four teenagers performed a poem with the refrain, ““I’m here today to say that curfews do not reduce crime. They criminalize us in our day to day,” recited Pablo Paredes, Diana Bonilla, Michele Ramos and Daniel Ramos.

I’ve been kicked out of my house numerous times,” with the result that she is out of the house after 10 p.m., said Patricia Carter. “Should I go to jail because I don’t have good parents?”

Councilmember Libby Schaaf and Lynette McElhaney opposed the curfew, as did Councilmember Dan Kalb, who said he wanted police to devote their attention to high priority 911 calls.

“If they’re stopping a bunch of 16-year-olds hanging out a little later than normal … I don’t think that’s a good use of their time,” he said.

Police Chief Sean Whent opposed the curfew on grounds that it would be difficult to enforce and strain his already limited resources. “I think it would really impair our effectiveness and really impact our ability to do other stuff like violent crime prevention,” he said.

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Oakland Post: Week of December 31, 2025 – January 6, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – December 31, 2025 – January 6, 2026

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Alameda County

Oakland Council Expands Citywide Security Cameras Despite Major Opposition

In a 7-1 vote in favor of the contract, with only District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife voting no, the Council agreed to maintain its existing network of 291 cameras and add 40 new “pan-tilt-zoom cameras.”

Published

4 weeks ago

December 21, 2025

Oakland Post

At the International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference, Flock Safety introduces new public safety technology – Amplified Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered tools designed to improve law enforcement investigations. Courtesy photo.

By Post Staff

The Oakland City Council this week approved a $2.25 million contract with Flock Safety for a mass surveillance network of hundreds of security cameras to track vehicles in the city.

In recent weeks hundreds of local residents have spoken against the camera system, raising concerns that data will be shared with immigration authorities and other federal agencies at a time when mass surveillance is growing across the country with little regard for individual rights.

The Flock network, supported by the Oakland Police Department, has the backing of residents and councilmembers who see it as an important tool to protect public safety.

“This system makes the Department more efficient as it allows for information related to disruptive/violent criminal activities to be captured … and allows for precise and focused enforcement,” OPD wrote in its proposal to City Council.

According to OPD, police made 232 arrests using data from Flock cameras between July 2024 and November of this year.

Based on the data, police say they recovered 68 guns, and utilizing the countywide system, they have found 1,100 stolen vehicles.

However, Flock’s cameras cast a wide net. The company’s cameras in Oakland last month captured license plate numbers and other information from about 1.4 million vehicles.

Speaking at Tuesday’s Council meeting, Fife was critical of her colleagues for signing a contract with a company that has been in the national spotlight for sharing data with federal agencies.

Flock’s cameras – which are automated license plate readers – have been used in tracking people who have had abortions, monitoring protesters, and aiding in deportation roundups.

“I don’t know how we get up and have several press conferences talking about how we are supportive of a sanctuary city status but then use a vendor that has been shown to have a direct relationship with (the U.S.) Border Control,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

Several councilmembers who voted in favor of the contract said they supported the deal as long as some safeguards were written into the Council’s resolution.

“We’re not aiming for perfection,” said District 1 Councilmember Zac Unger. “This is not Orwellian facial recognition technology — that’s prohibited in Oakland. The road forward here is to add as many amendments as we can.”

Amendments passed by the Council prohibit OPD from sharing camera data with any other agencies for the purpose of “criminalizing reproductive or gender affirming healthcare” or for federal immigration enforcement. California state law also prohibits the sharing of license plate reader data with the federal government, and because Oakland’s sanctuary city status, OPD is not allowed to cooperate with immigration authorities.

A former member of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission has sued OPD, alleging that it has violated its own rules around data sharing.

So far, OPD has shared Flock data with 50 other law enforcement agencies.