Cover Stories
A series of leadership changes — including the possible hiring of Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts as San Jose’s Chief of Police — is poised to expand a series of shake-ups affecting three of the Bay Area’s largest and most high-profile police departments — each facing dwindling budgets and public scrutiny from widely publicized scandals.
Batts is competing with current San Jose Police Interim Chief Chris Moore — a favored candidate amongst rank-and-file San Jose officers — to head the police department in the city that coins itself as the “safest big city” in the country, the San Jose Mercury News reported Sunday evening.
There was no shortage of news in 2010.
The year’s events spanned the range from triumphant to tragic, from stories with eagerly anticipated endings to wholly unexpected surprises.
A first-of-its-kind study released this week by the American Academy of Pediatrics confirms what some LGBT advocates say they have known for years: gay teens face harsher punishments in schools, courts and by the police than their straight counterparts.
The study, which covered more than 15,000 teens over the course of eight years, showed that despite the fact that LGBT teens were less likely to commit mild to moderate crimes, they were up to three times more likely to face punishment by school officials and the judicial system.
On Friday morning, one of the final chapters of a tragic high-profile Bay Area story will be written.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge is set to sentence former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle on Friday for the shooting death of passenger Oscar Grant at the Fruitvale BART station platform on January 1, 2009.
SHANGHAI – Four days in Shanghai barely scratched the surface of what’s possible in this giant Chinese metropolis — a sister city to San Francisco for the past 30 years and accessible via a direct 14-hour international flight from SFO.
Shanghai is the largest city proper in the world by population, topping in at almost 14 million people. As a metropolitan area, it ranks as the tenth largest — home to 16 million people.
There will be no grand ceremony, no formal salute and few goodbye tears marking the end of an era.
This Friday, the Transbay Transit Terminal, the drab gray building occupying three blocks of Mission Street that is often ridiculed for its utilitarian appearance and colonization by San Francisco’s homeless population, will close for good.
OAKLAND — The departure of 80 police officers in Oakland after failed negotiations between the city council and the police union has residents and business owners in the city wondering: what if I’m ever in need of a police officer’s help?
Will an officer come to help me if I’m to become a crime victim?
(7/13) — UPDATED 17:45 PDT — OAKLAND — Mayor Ron Dellums announced Tuesday afternoon that after continued negotiations, Oakland officials and police union leaders were unable to reach a last-minute agreement to avoid the layoffs of 80 police officers.
The two sides met well into Monday night and continued their discussions behind closed doors today to try and hammer out a compromise as the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline loomed.
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — Nothing in North America can quite match the gargantuan size of the Yongsan Electronics Market in Seoul, Korea.
With its very own subway and Korea Train Express (KTX) station, the Yongsan market and station serves as a hotspot for deal-seeking Koreans and foreigners alike. Good deals — if you’re careful — can be had on anything from computer components and camera gear to mobile phones and video games.
(7/9) — UPDATED 14:15 PDT — OAKLAND — A large, peaceful gathering of people in Downtown Oakland following former BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle’s conviction for involuntary manslaughter was followed by violence as the sun set.
Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts blamed the violence, which included looting shops and setting dumpsters on fire, on a small group of about 50 anarchists.
