Free Republic

Two days after state auditors disclosed that Oakland misspent federal stimulus dollars meant for job creation, Mayor Ron Dellums said the city's Recovery Act problems are a thing of the past. "It's much ado about nothing, man," Dellums said in his first comments on the matter. "It's an accounting matter." Auditors found that Oakland, which has struggled with an 18.3 percent unemployment rate, did not properly account for about $830,000 of the $3 million in stimulus grants it received last year for summer youth, adult and dislocated-worker programs. Auditors found the city arbitrarily used the funds, inflated job numbers and...

Armed robbers terrorized Oakland restaurants and small businesses in three separate crime sprees over the past year. The first wave targeted Asian eateries and struck during the 2007 holiday season. The second arrived last spring and was more indiscriminate. The third struck in July and August. All three made newspaper headlines and led television newscasts, shining a spotlight on the city's out-of-control crime problem and the Oakland Police Department's apparent inability to cope with it. In fact, the department's public response to the takeover robberies was both odd and illuminating. The department's mantra for dealing with the city's crime spike...

Up until now, the story of what got Oakland City Administrator Deborah Edgerly into hot water when her nephew was swept up in a gang bust has been shrouded in mist. Here's the story:On the night of June 7, Edgerly - whose duties included overseeing the Police Department - showed up at a West Oakland liquor store just as her nephew's car was being towed by police as part of an operation against the Acorn gang.The nephew, 27-year-old William Lovan - who works for the city as a parking meter repairman - had left the car running and locked the...

I've been in neighborhoods in Detroit, Chicago and South Philly where store clerks do business from behind a formidable barrier of bulletproof glass - and customers place their money in a turnstile. In Oakland, some store owners are choosing hot lead as the best material to put between themselves and would-be robbers. On Saturday night, the owner of Ed's Liquors in the 2700 block of 23rd Avenue returned fire after being wounded in the leg and shot the gunman, an 18-year-old Pittsburg man, at least three times, authorities said. And two days earlier, a clerk at Wah Fay 8th Avenue...

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, says she's ending her longtime support of the Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland and would have ended her support sooner if she'd known it had problems. The bakery has been in the news in the past eight days because Oakland police and other agencies raided it on Aug. 3 and arrested seven members and shut it down for health and safety violations. On Thursday, a federal bankruptcy court judge refused a request by a lawyer for the bakery, Fayedine Coulter, to reverse his previous decision to liquidate the bakery. In a motion filed with the...