Homicides In Oakland Are Down, But 2025 Is Off To A Bleak Start

Oakland, California is a place of paradox. It’s arguably the best city in the Bay in many respects. The art scene is, and has been thriving. For every artist San Francisco lost, Oakland seemed to gain. The food scene here is amazing, even The New York Times gets a throbbing erection for Oakland’s culinary culture. If you’re like most people, you’re into the sun. And if you are, Oakland’s weather is among the best in the country. You get sunnier skies than San Francisco, and a delightful bay breeze without all the gloom of its more famous sister city. And we’re one of the most diverse major city in the United States. All good things, right? 

Well, yes. But life in Oakland does admittedly have some setbacks: Crime. And not bullshit crime, I mean murder and other serious violent crimes. That’s not to say things in Oakland haven’t improved. I was here in 2023, and shit was bananas. There were multiple murders and shootings within a 6 block radius of my apartment. I even witnessed a shooting while walking near Lake Merritt with my ex-girlfriend. However, when 2024 rolled around, I noticed a shift, at least in my area. Things were calming down. Hearing gunshots was a regular occurrence in my part of town, and I noticed that what used to happen every couple days in 2023, only occurred every couple weeks in 2024. 

These are good signs and a real reason to rejoice. Progress not perfection is how things improve in real life, and I’ll take any progress I can get. So, naturally, I was happy to learn that Oakland recorded a 34% decrease in homicides in 2024. A statistic that matched my anecdotal experience. This downward trend persisted without all the rightwing rhetoric that successfully recalled Sheng Thao and Pamela Price. According to right wing groups, this was going to lead to a huge decrease in violence in Oakland.

Despite the well-wishing of the average Oakland bootlicker, things in Oakland, if the start of 2025 is any indication, appear to be going in the wrong direction. We’re only 5 days into the calendar year, 7 when you read this, and Oakland has already experienced 4 homicides, that’s a murder for almost every day of the new year. 

While shotspotter technology has its merits, and may lead to faster response times to potentially life threatening situations, it does literally nothing to solve the root cause: racism and poverty.

On paper, racism in California, and many of its practices are frowned upon, but the reality is significantly different than the legislature. It’s easy to change laws, it’s much harder to change culture. I’m not talking about crime culture, hood culture, or street culture. These are all going to exist in some capacity no matter who is in charge, and have been dabbled in by every disadvantaged ethnic group. Even white ones. Read the history of early East Coast Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants. You know why you don’t hear about the Italian mob anymore? Because economic conditions improved. 

Oakland needs economic investment, and in order to change the perspective on city streets, maybe create circumstances in Oakland’s youth population that offer real education, financial literacy, and a path to a career in tech or something tech adjacent, so they can not only survive the streets of Oakland, but the Bay Area as a whole. 

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