I Drove Into Oakland's Most Dangerous Hoods. It Was Nuts.

oakland california it's been dangerous here since the 1960s when crime began to increase by the end of the 70s oakland's murder rate was twice of nearby san francisco and even new york city crime here peaked in the early 90s when gangs made parts of this city a war zone today it appears those numbers are getting close to where they were at their peak in 1993 people this is international drive which bisects east oakland according to crime stats two-thirds of all violent crime in oakland happens here in east oakland despite the fact this part of town only has about a third of this city's population this is also by far the poorest part of oakland too now we're going to head into two really bad and dangerous neighborhoods in east oakland where crime is the worst both are on the western side of international boulevard the first one's here in an area that's called the coliseum neighborhood now if you know anything about oakland you know anything near the coliseum is bad news here's the map of the route i would take the day was fairly nice the skies were partly cloudy and it was about 65 degrees it was late in the day on a thursday in late october 2021 let's enter the hood now the first thing you're going to notice is all the bars on the windows and the bars on the street line and the fences and the barbed wire it was hard to find a house in this entire neighborhood that wasn't walled or fenced in or where there weren't any areas to escape this whole neighborhood is one long maze of fences and speed bumps to deter drive-by shootings there weren't a lot of accessible yards or alleyways to escape into either if you're in trouble and you're deep in this hood you're blocks and blocks away from safety and even the fringes of this hood are really unsafe so there's no way to be even somewhat safe until you go five miles north into downtown the neighborhood we're in right now is well known for shootings and gang activity for robberies and break-ins and assaults it's pretty rare that when a call comes in the police can get here quickly especially with the shortage of police staffing when i was here oakland was down 50 officers for a variety of reasons officer burnout early retirements vaccination requirements and of course a defunding the police plan where money was taken away from officers on the streets and reappropriated into alternative policing efforts stuff like violent disrupter programs you know community ambassadors and counselors who were supposed to go into bad areas like this and try to talk sense into criminals before they commit crimes well that doesn't ever really work the goal of new plans to address poverty which the city says is the root cause of all the crime and violence here no poverty is not the root cause of crime and violence in oakland it's dumb people one oakland city council member said this until we invest in the communities that have been disenfranchised from day one the marginalized groups the black folks the brown folks the asian folks poor people until we invest in them then the trauma that these communities have experienced will be replicated before the new budget was finalized 20 percent of oakland's entire budget had to be used up on policing that number's now 18 percent so that's 18 million less to police oakland streets the city's hope is that by taking away money from the cops and giving it to non-police people crime will go down and then they can further lower the police budget they call it reimagining safety in oakland well apparently oakland claims this plan had been working for the last 10 years since crime's been going down they were doing community involvement they were trying to talk sense to people with guns they were even counseling gang members while they laid in hospital beds but eventually the criminals here realize the lack of police on the streets just meant they could act to fool even more which they have and crime is up almost higher than it's ever been today in oakland in places like where i am now there's just going to be less officers on the streets to respond to emergency calls and that's terrible since oakland's crime's the highest it's been in decades it also means oakland won't be able to investigate shootings effectively the mayor of oakland was against taking cops off the streets especially in terrible neighborhoods like this she admitted the new budget would destroy oakland's existing public safety system and would force officers to work overtime oakland lacks proven alternatives to police the mayor said we cannot destroy oakland's current public safety system at a time when we're losing so many to gun violence well today oakland ranks second in the state of california for robberies and it's third for violent crimes per capita there's a murder in oakland every three days that they know of overall one in 12 people in oakland is either robbed had something vandalized shot at shot beaten up or murdered that's just terrible the headlines in oakland are the same every day spike in violent crime a bunch of killings soaring new crime stats gang violence human trafficking robberies carjackings rapes shootings are up 50 armed robberies are up 50 percent carjackings are up 100 percent it's so bad here now they just tell people hand over the keys so you don't get killed here in oakland criminals get out on zero bail and the courts are backed up the city has less than 700 cops now and that's the lowest number of cops in decades they actually do get people behind bars they don't stay long they let them ride out and the clearance rate for solving crimes in oakland is about 25 that means only about one in four crimes is actually solved here which is abysmal when you compare it to california as a whole where six in ten crimes are solved now the area we're in now has traditionally been a black neighborhood but it's almost all hispanic now in 1980 nearly half of oakland's population was black and today it's only 14 percent a lot of the sensible black families moved over to west oakland or left the oakland area entirely for places like antioch or pittsburgh about 30 miles away it's a pattern some people call black blight as the hispanic families have moved into this part of oakland so have the dangerous hispanic gangs i wouldn't want to be here at night would you can you imagine what happens here at night but during the day even though this is the most dangerous part of oakland i didn't really feel that unsafe i was aware of how vulnerable my position was and probably shouldn't have ventured so deep into this hood if the mob turned against me in here there's no easy way out there's a weird energy here too almost a calm before the chaos or calm after the chaos or both quite a few people here got all worked up when they saw me with the camera pointed at them and at one point i got yelled at to put my camera away but i explained that i was also there to record a happy birthday video for my niece and one guy even offered to help she's 12. oh hi willa god bless you this west oakland happy birthday to you may god bless you and many more og unk out of west oakland california thanks man all right that guy was really cool i liked him a lot now we're going to a second neighborhood in east oakland which is also very terrible with crime and poverty this neighborhood's further along international between the blocks of 87th and 98th streets this is what they call deep east oakland and when you're driving along this part of town what makes it extra scary and intimidating is the sheer number of lawlessness here i already talked about how you never see a cop this deep in the hood but it's also the lack of traffic laws that are in oakland today people do whatever they want on the roads they fly by you in the bus lane they run lights they run stop signs they speed up and down side streets they weave in and out just whatever they want and they don't get pulled over it's actually a new strategy they're implementing in oakland to try to cut back on the number of times cops have to interact with the public so instead of pulling people over for traffic violations they just let anything go you can basically do whatever you want it seems like in oakland when you're driving around it's actually pretty scary to drive in oakland it's like driving through a zoo so we're going to turn into this second hood in deep east oakland into a neighborhood called highland to be honest while this hood is a lot more dangerous than other hoods in east oakland they all pretty much just look the same a lot of east oakland looks just like this now the video that i'm working on right now is the most dangerous part of oakland so went over to east oakland i took international down to 75th to 102nd and drove around in there which has been notoriously like pretty much the most dangerous part of oakland uh yeah and so i wanted to just you know get feedback from someone that's been there for a long time based on you know what i saw in that particular area you know i guess i'm just interested to hear from someone who lives there you know how bad is the reputation of that part of oakland yeah it's it's it you you gosh boy where to begin um i mean oakland's always had a bit of a rough and tumble reputation i mean even long before i lived here you know back in the 70s it was kind of like the blue collar working class town back when the the raiders were originally here and they were just you know raising hell all over town yeah it's it's such it's a weird mix of a city because you do have these areas like the there east oakland where you where you're talking about particular where the coliseum is um i don't know if you went down to the coliseum area but um that's exactly where i was yeah that's okay what i wanted to ask you about yeah the colosseum was built back in the days of the multi-purpose multi-use coliseums in the 60s and it's like it and and right next to it's the oracle what was called the oracle arena where the warriors used to play they moved across the bay a couple of seasons ago and so it was this big complex where it's right off the highway it's near bart so you know getting in and out of it's pretty easy but there's nothing there that makes you want to come hang out before or after because it was always very industrial it wasn't like there were you know places you know go have dinner before or after a game what not they've tried to clean up some of the areas near the bart stop nearby and there's a big long walkway that goes from the bark stopped to the coliseum and it's like walking i mean you just feel like you're walking in a prison yard because there's razor wire at the top of the the walkway you look down below and again you know it's always been industrial but now it's just like a wasteland of um homeless camps abandoned or you know cars motorhomes that people are living in and there's just nothing about it that makes you feel good or clean i mean just be like really you know sketchy about parking over there walking to a game and it's really sad because um you know that's a that's you know now we're we've lost the raiders the warriors have gone across the bay to san francisco and now the a's are possibly going to move to las vegas because they can't seem to get um a new stadium built downtown which they've been trying to do for years that's a whole other ball of wax dealing with the politicians do do people from the west side of oakland or from other i mean is there any reason to ever go down there do you ever go down there at all i only go down there if i'm going to a baseball game i mean to be or if i have to go the airport because excuse me there's a main road that you can take off the highway that goes right down past the coliseum straight to the airport i mean i i personally have no reason to go down there um and you know to be honest i i wouldn't feel safe going down there especially at night i mean it's it's just it's just too it's just too it's just too nasty you know i hate again i hate to talk about my city this way but it's the truth it's just this is an area that there's very little that you would normally feel welcoming uh about that section down there there were people driving around you know going 50 down international weaving through the bus lanes people flying through lights it wasn't just the danger element of watching cd people walk around and wonder like hopefully nobody tries to open my door it's just driving around down in east tokyo like you really don't feel like you can let your guard down just even at the light yeah yeah because i mean if you might end up getting caught in the middle of a site what they call a sideshow down here and often those will take place at night where you know groups of you know groups of kids i'm going to say kids because i think it's mostly you know people younger than us they'll just take over a whole intersection and just start doing big donut burnouts you know through the intersection they'll do it on the highway too you know they'll just like get two or three o'clock in the morning um and you'll see it hear about on the news then you'll see the evidence of it the next day just you know giant burnouts like right in the middle of the freeway like god you know uh it's scary but you know um yeah and yeah it's just you know the safety factor and you just feel like there's a real um gosh it's just an inborn lack of respect in general just for just for treating people properly um and i think it just kind of bleeds into the vibe of the area and just creates a sense of just like you in a way there's a bit of a me first mentality you know if you know i'm gonna just i'm just out for myself um and everybody else you know forget about you and it just it just leads into all this to be you know you know sort of lawless behavior in some parts of town yeah so is east oakland pretty much um been handed over to the criminal elements almost like as long as you're not shooting each other anything goes because i kind of got that vibe when i was there but it it does kind of feel like the wild west down there i know when you drive down 73rd is like the main one the main drag so you can take off the highway that goes all the way down to the colosseum in the airport 73rd street and there's a big police station um there about i don't know a mile or so down so i know there i mean there is a police presence but i think they can only do so much because their numbers they don't have the numbers that they need for a city like this and they're often at odds with the politicians um i can't tell you how many times a police chief has changed you know a new police chief has been brought in i'm sure at least three or four times since i've lived here you know for various reasons so there's uh it feels like there's a lack of a sense of continuity in the leadership structure that's that can kind of pass that along to you know the the people on the ground who are trying to who are you know there to you know keep keep people safe yeah it's you know unfortunately yeah it's just gotten worse over the last few years and i don't know i don't know if the politicians can solve it i don't know i you know i just don't i don't think they can solve the issues so i don't know who if that means anybody can who's going to take care of all the issues here i don't know if anybody can how often are there shootings like downtown um is that a regular thing are most of the shootings on the east side um is there even a place um pinpoint is being the worst you know i can't i can't save right now like how many i hate to say how many murders have happened this year but usually it's you know you know a decent amount i don't want to say like in the triple digits but um yeah it's not like it's not like you turn on the news every day and you know you get up and you know there's three people shot and he's you know anything like that but i will say when you do hear a story like that it often does tend to be mostly in east oakland um it's it's just where a lot of the you know a lot a lot of the crime goes down and unfortunately you know that's where when the shooting happens it's often in that part town like right where i was yeah 96th and international yeah it's a colorful area to say the least just because there's a lot going on down there it's definitely a lot of energy yeah if you could never it would never be a boring day to spend time no no it wouldn't no wouldn't deep deep east oakland deep east oakland deep east so for the people here in east oakland and in oakland in general it's up to them to self-monitor themselves the police aren't going to be much help they're outmanned and under budgeted folks here are going to have to change their community on their own self police themselves if they want a safe place to live they're going to have to get together and clean the place up as a community so they can walk their own streets in safety and in prosperity can they do it i hope so but i also doubt this place will ever come close to being really great again oakland's most dangerous neighborhoods a small example of what's wrong with the usa in the 21st century hey guys so if anything i just talked about upset you or made you sad or mad well then do something about it call your local leaders and demand change chip in and help those in need make your community better because communities don't get better without hard work and determination america is a great place it just needs some more love and pride this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production and are you looking to move and need advice i do consulting that's right i'll sit down and talk about where the next perfect place for you and your family should be i do it all the time together let's find you a new home that's safe and checks all your boxes you can get my email in the description to find out how i can help you find your perfect relocation

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 2,938,358

Keywords: the worst places to live in california, worst cities in california, california, moving to california, should i move to california, california realtor, california mortgage loan, california history, california facts, california trivia, california news, california taxes, san francisco, los angeles, california homeless, homeless san francisco, oakland, oakland crime, oakland dangerous neighborhods, is oakland dangerous, oakland homeless, moving to oakland, oakland realtor

Id: RKIebSflncQ

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 14 2021