Lawsuit Asks Court to Clean Up Abandoned Sausage Factory 

The former Coast Sausage Co. property on the corner of Adeline and 28^th streets has been a source of blight and crime in the neighborhood near McClymonds High School.

The City has cited the property owners at least 25 times for violations of the City's blight ordinance due to graffiti, trash dumped on the property and overgrown vegetation. The Public Works Agency also has issued no less than 167 work orders to clean up graffiti and illegal dumping directly adjacent to the property. The owners' failure to secure the property and address chronic blight has attracted homeless encampments and squatters. Neighbors complain about car break-ins, burglaries, shootings and other crimes associated with the property.

The lawsuit asks the Court to declare the property a public nuisance and appoint a receiver to secure the building and oversee remediation.

The Neighborhood Law Corps (NLC) is an award-winning unit in the City Attorney's Office that uses civil law to address sources of criminal and nuisance activity in Oakland neighborhoods. NLC attorneys work for the City for a two-year period at a salary commensurate with the compensation of a first year Oakland public school teacher. An NLC attorney is assigned to each of the five Oakland Police Command Areas.

The NLC also recently secured settlements of public nuisance lawsuits against the owners of the West Grand Hotel and the Hillside Apartments. Those settlements will force landlords to address crime and inhumane living conditions at the rental properties in West and East Oakland.

City Attorney in the Community 

On March 21, I was honored to serve on a panel at Mills College to discuss women's civil rights.

The Mills College Public Policy Department and POWER (Progressive Oakland Women for Empowerment & Reform) presented the program.
 

The panel included: Jerri Lange (author, TV broadcaster, journalist, SFSU professor), Lynette Jung Lee (retired president & CEO East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation), Oakland Fire Department Chief Teresa DeLoach Reed, former State Assemblymember Nancy Skinner and Betty Soskin, a park ranger at Rosie the Riveter WW II Home Front National Historical Park. Ms. Lange announced that she was 90 years old, and Ms. Soskin announced that she was 93 years old, making them first-hand witnesses to almost a century of battles for women's empowerment in America.

The panel moderator was Daphne Muse, writer/activist and former director of the Mills College Women's Leadership Institute.

We discussed our experiences as women, how far our world and America and we have come, and how much farther we still have to go to achieve our goal of true equality.

As a baby boomer born in 1948, throughout my formative years opportunities and doors opened for me and other African Americans and women as a result of the relentless battles our ancestors fought and won, and continue to fight today. My life and the opportunities I have had were not available to women who were born just a few years before me.

To mention a few landmarks: I was six years old when the US Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, declared state laws establishing separate public schools for African American and white students to be unconstitutional; I was fifteen when Congress passed the 1963 Equal Pay Act, prohibiting wage differentials based on gender; sixteen when the 1964 Civil Rights Act, among other things outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in most employment; I was seventeen when Congress enacted the 1965 Voting Rights Act prohibiting racial discrimination in voting; and I was in law school when Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments Act prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions receiving federal aid.  

The nonagenarians on the panel who were born in the 1920s applauded the progress our country has made, noting that they did not have the opportunities baby boomers and younger folks have had.

Mills College panel on women's rights March 21, 2015

This month Mayor Libby Schaaf and I announced that Oakland has joined a national coalition of cities and counties supporting President Barack Obama's appeal of a federal District Court's ruling blocking recent executive actions on immigration reform.

Oakland is one of 73 cities and counties -- together representing 43 million Americans -- to sign an amicus brief defending the President's actions in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The "friend-of-the-court" brief filed in Texas v. United States argues that a District Court judge's injunction blocking the reforms is bad for the economy, hurts families, threatens law enforcement priorities and stalls desperately needed changes to the federal government's immigration policies.  The brief demonstrates robust support from the country's largest cities, as well as suburbs and rural areas, for the President's reforms, which will provide temporary relief from deportation to immigrants with longstanding ties to the U.S. who pass a background check and meet other criteria.

Oakland and other cities previously filed an amicus brief in Texas v. U.S. in federal District Court defending the President's executive actions, which offer protection from deportation and work permits to millions of immigrants who have been living in the U.S. for at least five years, have no criminal records and have a child who is a citizen or permanent resident. In late 2014, Texas and other states led by Republican governors filed a lawsuit challenging the reform efforts, arguing that the president has a constitutional duty to enforce existing immigration laws.

President Obama's actions will be a tremendous help to Oakland families and millions of families across the country that are contributing to their communities and working to make a better life for their children.

Updates on Major Cases & Matters  

Federal Courts Grant Motions for Summary Judgment Dismissing Ray v. Basa, U.S. District Court Case No. 11-cv-02923-YGR, and Ray v. Leal, U.S. District Court Case No. 11-cv-05550-YGR

Plaintiff Edward Ray is a state prisoner incarcerated at the La Palma Correctional Center in Arizona. In October 2011, Mr. Ray filed the civil rights lawsuit Ray v. Leal alleging that Oakland police violated his Constitutional rights during an arrest.

Mr. Ray was arrested in 2006 after a high speed chase in East Oakland on suspicion of robbery of a convenience store.  He and his son were eventually convicted of several counts of robbery in connection with other crimes in Oakland.  Mr. Ray is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence.  His lawsuit against three officers alleged excessive force.

On March 31, the Court found the entire complaint untimely and dismissed it with prejudice.

The Court also granted the City's motion for summary judgment in the case Ray v. Basa, in which Mr. Ray alleged that Oakland officers violated his rights when they removed his minor daughter from her home which had no working toilets or running water. He also alleged that officers defamed him by telling the press that the child had witnessed violence and drug use in the home.

The Court noted that Mr. Ray, while represented by counsel, had voluntarily relinquished his parental rights and did not contest the social workers' findings or police reports, thereby implicitly admitting the claims. The Court also agreed that Mr. Ray's lawsuit was untimely and that he had provided no persuasive evidence to excuse his delay in filing.