California governor to send prosecutors to Oakland to help crack down on rising crime

Source: Associated Press

California governor to send prosecutors to Oakland to help crack down on rising crime

Updated 5:00 PM EST, February 8, 2024

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — California’s governor announced plans Thursday to send prosecutors to Oakland in his latest move to crack down on rising crime in the San Francisco Bay Area city where brazen robberies in broad daylight have drawn national attention.

Gov. Gavin Newsom days earlier said he would deploy 120 California Highway Patrol officers to also help with targeted crackdowns on criminal activity in Oakland, a city of 400,000 people across the bay from San Francisco that has seen a spike in violent crimes, including serious drug-related offenses, retail theft, and auto burglaries, even though crime in other California urban centers is falling.

The additional deputy attorneys general from the California Department of Justice and attorneys from the California National Guard would help Alameda County prosecute suspects arrested for serious and complex crimes, Newsom said. He didn’t say how many prosecutors would be sent or when.

Car break-ins where the thieves use a car-escape tool to tap a glass window and silently shatter it and then steal belongings left inside the car have become so commonplace in the Bay Area that the criminal activity has its own verb: “bipping” a car. Some thieves have “bipped” cars in broad daylight with occupants in them.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/oakland-california-rising-crime-prosecutors-9c66bac75b87776cf98f747408ede1e7