Oakland Police Get Pink Slips as Violent Crime Spikes

Posted August 2nd, 2010 by alex

Almost immediately after Oakland pink slipped dozens of officers, violent crime surged. The crime has escalated from burglaries and things like that to home invasion robberies.

There has been a string of hair raising attempted car-jackings at gunpoint. Even a construction crew was robbed by a gunman in the middle of the day. Last Thursday, a man was forced into his home and ordered to lay naked on his floor while his home was ransacked.

Oakland's police department was recently forced to lay-off 80 police officers in order to close a 30.5 million dollar budget deficit. Oakland is one of the nation's most crime-ridden cities and is facing the additional loss of 122 officers in January 2011, if the budget crisis continues.

This has some local residents saying, "It's time to get out of Oakland." With crime up, low enforcement down, we can't blame them. But for many moving is not an option.

A home security system greatly reduces the risk of home invasions with, as homes without security are 300 times more likely to be robbed than those with.

Links to more more Oakland stories below:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/17/MN6R1EFHC0.D...

http://cbs5.com/crime/oakland.police.crime.2.1826109.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/From-the-news-wires/2010/0717/Police-layoffs-hi...