Oakland uneasy over police shootout deaths

OAKLAND, Calif. — The parolee who shot five Oakland police officers Saturday, killing three and gravely wounding another, was hiding inside his sister's apartment just around the corner, where he ultimately was shot dead himself.

And neighbors knew it. But they didn't call the cops for nearly an hour.

If neighbors had spoken up sooner, said one woman who lives two doors down, some of those lives might have been saved. But in East Oakland, lamented the woman, Elaine, who refused to give her last name, that just doesn't happen.

"I've been crying all day. It makes you feel bad," she said, wiping her eyes just steps from the blood spatters that clung stubbornly to a broken sidewalk on 74th Avenue. "Because all the time, you knew he was in that apartment. But you just don't want to be a snitch. The word, 'snitch,' it's almost worse than murderer."

Sunday, a city all too familiar with tragic spasms of violence was left grasping for answers in the wake of one more — this time the deadliest police shooting in its history.

The Oakland police officers were pronounced dead Saturday after a traffic stop by officers on motorcycles and subsequent SWAT team attempt to apprehend the suspected shooter, Lovelle Mixon, 27, who was fatally shot after police tracked him down to the nearby apartment.

Acting Police Chief Howard Jordan identified the slain officers as: Sgt. Mark Dunakin, 40, who was killed during the traffic stop; and Sgt. Ervin Romans, 43, and Sgt. Daniel Sakai, 35, both killed at the apartment where the gunman was holed up. Police spokesman Jeff Thomason said 41-year-old Officer John Hege was pronounced brain dead but was still on life support Sunday afternoon. A fifth officer, whom police did not identify, was grazed by a bullet. He was treated and released.

Mixon was wanted on a no-bail arrest warrant for violating parole on a previous assault with a deadly weapon conviction when he was stopped on MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland, a ragged commercial strip that is home to hair salons, storefront churches and check-cashing stores.

Business workers and media responding to reports of the shootout described a "Wild West" scene, where cops yelled at pedestrians to get down and take cover behind cars.

A city of 400,000, Oakland has struggled with a high crime and homicide rate for several years.

Saturday's shooting also threatened the already strained relationship between Oakland's black community and law enforcement. Mixon was black, and none of the police officers were.

Tensions have been high between police and many Oakland residents since the shooting death Jan. 1 of Oscar Grant, 22, who was black, by a white Bay Area Rapid Tranist police officer at an Oakland transit station. After Grant's death, violent protests erupted in Oakland streets.

By Saturday night, a dozen pastors were calling for calm in the city.

At the improvised memorial at police headquarters, Marie Mason, a 35-year resident of Oakland and an African American, said she had come to lay flowers and say a prayer to prove "not everybody hates police officers."

"We appreciate what they do," she said.

LaTasha Mixon, 28, of Sacramento said Sunday that her cousin was "not a monster." She said her family's prayers were with the slain officers' relatives.

"We're devastated. Everybody took a major loss. We're crushed," she said.

The incident involving the gunman "is bad because he's a state ward, he's a state parolee, they let him out," said California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a former Oakland mayor. "There are hundreds of shooters walking around the East Bay. Our parole system isn't working."

Information from The Associated Press and The New York Times is included.