Whitey Ford
07-25-2019, 05:24 PM
Bay Area law enforcement and elected officials do not have an iron-clad explanation of why freeways have become a more common venue for gun violence, but they point to a series of factors, including gang conflicts and the displacement of longtime residents from cities like Oakland, where the average cost of rent has exceeded many working-class families’ budgets.
Gun violence has become “more transitory and regional” in recent years, said Mary Knox, the deputy district attorney for Contra Costa county, much like the lives of people who have been displaced from the Bay Area’s gentrifying urban core to far-flung suburbs and now rely on highways to get around.
In the Bay Area, the shootings occur day and night, with some of the deadliest incidents taking place during rush hour. Most of them aren’t fatal, but between 2015 and 2019 at least 88 people have sustained serious injuries. As with most other homicides in the area, the victims are disproportionately black and Latino. Law enforcement have made 35 arrests over the same time period.The shootings have been most concentrated on East Bay routes connecting the cities of Oakland and Richmond to suburbs in Contra Costa and Solano counties. These include the Interstate 80, a colossal eight-lane traffic artery linking San Francisco and Oakland to the state capital Sacramento. Upward of 290,000 cars drive along some stretches of the I-80 each day, according to the state department of transportation. State Route 4, another frequent venue of highway shootings, winds through the East Bay hills connecting cities like Bay Point, Pittsburg and Antioch.
Wentz noted the economic development of the area. In the early 2000s, developers built thousands of new homes in east Contra Costa county cities, selling them at prices far below similar homes in San Francisco and Oakland. Many of these homes were sold to low-income buyers who borrowed from banks through subprime mortgages. When the economic crash hit in 2008, tens of thousands of people lost their homes to foreclosure and investors bought and transformed them into rental properties. Since then, many low-income people displaced from gentrifying cities like Oakland and Richmond have moved out to east Contra Costa county because of the surplus of cheaper rental homes.
“With the displacement and gentrification of a lot of East Bay cities, and cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond, it’s creating this diaspora that’s being spread to the valleys up [Interstate] 80 and Highway 4,” said the Richmond city council member Demnlus Johnson.
Violent social networks that were previously rooted in small, geographically bound places have spread across multiple East Bay cities. “You’ve got people from North Richmond and Central Richmond both living in the El Pueblo projects in Pittsburg, and then you’ve got people in Richmond living in the vistas in Vallejo,” Johnson said. “When all of those people get on the freeway to come back to Richmond they’re gonna see each other.”
Knox said some of the freeway shooting cases she has prosecuted have uncovered evidence of gang members specifically talking about finding rivals on freeways and attempting to kill them there instead of on city surface streets where there could be more witnesses. “We’ve heard gang members hunting each other, following each other up on to the freeways to ‘do the dirt’,” explained Knox.
https://archive.fo/hu5QI#selection-2003.0-2023.387
Gun violence has become “more transitory and regional” in recent years, said Mary Knox, the deputy district attorney for Contra Costa county, much like the lives of people who have been displaced from the Bay Area’s gentrifying urban core to far-flung suburbs and now rely on highways to get around.
In the Bay Area, the shootings occur day and night, with some of the deadliest incidents taking place during rush hour. Most of them aren’t fatal, but between 2015 and 2019 at least 88 people have sustained serious injuries. As with most other homicides in the area, the victims are disproportionately black and Latino. Law enforcement have made 35 arrests over the same time period.The shootings have been most concentrated on East Bay routes connecting the cities of Oakland and Richmond to suburbs in Contra Costa and Solano counties. These include the Interstate 80, a colossal eight-lane traffic artery linking San Francisco and Oakland to the state capital Sacramento. Upward of 290,000 cars drive along some stretches of the I-80 each day, according to the state department of transportation. State Route 4, another frequent venue of highway shootings, winds through the East Bay hills connecting cities like Bay Point, Pittsburg and Antioch.
Wentz noted the economic development of the area. In the early 2000s, developers built thousands of new homes in east Contra Costa county cities, selling them at prices far below similar homes in San Francisco and Oakland. Many of these homes were sold to low-income buyers who borrowed from banks through subprime mortgages. When the economic crash hit in 2008, tens of thousands of people lost their homes to foreclosure and investors bought and transformed them into rental properties. Since then, many low-income people displaced from gentrifying cities like Oakland and Richmond have moved out to east Contra Costa county because of the surplus of cheaper rental homes.
“With the displacement and gentrification of a lot of East Bay cities, and cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond, it’s creating this diaspora that’s being spread to the valleys up [Interstate] 80 and Highway 4,” said the Richmond city council member Demnlus Johnson.
Violent social networks that were previously rooted in small, geographically bound places have spread across multiple East Bay cities. “You’ve got people from North Richmond and Central Richmond both living in the El Pueblo projects in Pittsburg, and then you’ve got people in Richmond living in the vistas in Vallejo,” Johnson said. “When all of those people get on the freeway to come back to Richmond they’re gonna see each other.”
Knox said some of the freeway shooting cases she has prosecuted have uncovered evidence of gang members specifically talking about finding rivals on freeways and attempting to kill them there instead of on city surface streets where there could be more witnesses. “We’ve heard gang members hunting each other, following each other up on to the freeways to ‘do the dirt’,” explained Knox.
https://archive.fo/hu5QI#selection-2003.0-2023.387