California Highway Patrol officers ended a protracted shootout with a well-armed convicted felon around midnight on Interstate 580 in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, July 16.
A bomb squad had rushed to the scene in response to a "detonated object," according to the Contra Costa Times. Following the incident, a portion of I-580 continued to be closed today, said the paper.
In this video taken by residents, gunshots can be heard at the beginning, followed by the sighting of an officer's approach to the scene at the 7:50 mark:
User name: mannyblack Location: Oakland, Calif. Date uploaded: July 18 Views: 19,438 User notes: the homie and I were chillin' in the kitchen and we heard gunshots. then they just kept coming and we realized that it was something really going on up the street. so we head to the living room and we can see cop cars converging on the street. This video is about 5-7 minutes into the shootout, from the westside of the 400 block of Oakland Avenue. Audio is probably more descriptive than the actual video because our window faces the freeway but the trees and darkness blocked our view. plus we were NOT trying to get shot! Click here to watch this video on YouTube.
Videos posted to YouTube show looters breaking into a Foot Locker store in Oakland, Calif., after a verdict was announced in the trial of a former police officer who shot and killed an unarmed BART passenger, Oscar Grant.
On Thursday, a jury in Los Angeles found ex-BART police officer Johannes Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Protesters who gathered in Oakland's streets complained Mehserle should have been found guilty of murder.
Oakland police began the evening clutching batons and declaring a downtown assembly following the conviction of Johannes Mehserle, a former BART police officer found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, "unlawful." This afternoon, Mehserle was found guilty for the murder of Oscar Grant, a man who was killed at a train station in downtown Oakland on New Year's Day, 2009. Police said those gathering in Grant's honor, in protest of the verdict, would face possible arrest or "serious injury" if they refused to disperse:
User name:MannyOrtez Location: Oakland, Calif. Date uploaded: July 8
Oaklanders gathered downtown following the conviction of Johannes Mehserle, the former BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officer accused of shooting and killing Oscar Grant while on duty in the early hours of New Year's Day, 2009.Cell phone videos of the shooting shared on YouTube by witnesses gave rise to a movement surrounding the incident and a protest that became violent in the weeks following Grant's death.
Oakland businesses boarded up their shop windows in anticipation of possible riots following the verdict. On the boarded up windows of one building, artists painted a mural of Grant.
If activity on YouTube is any indication, the San Francisco public transportation system seems to be a hot bed for conflict, and the fact that the city's residents are a tech-savvy crowd means that incidents are regularly caught on camera. A quick search on YouTube turns up lots of results. A new video uploaded on Tuesday already has a whopping 1.6 million views at the time of this post.
Last fall, this video of two women fighting on the Stockton route of the San Francisco MUNI (the Bay Area's bus system) went viral practically overnight. It has 870,000 views to date.
Several altercations between the police officers and passengers of the Bay Area's underground railway system, BART, have also been video taped and uploaded to YouTube. Most recently, this violent scuffle between a rowdy BART rider and a BART policeman ended in the two shattering a glass window, badly cutting themselves. Most notoriously, the fatal shooting of a young man named Oscar Grant, whose death was captured on numerous cell phone cameras, spread quickly around the web and YouTube became a virtual town hall in which users expressed their anger and pain and shared their tributes to the fallen Grant.
The video posted yesterday shows two grown men -- one white, one black -- arguing in the back of a MUNI bus in Oakland, California. Things escalate and quickly turn physical while another passenger documents the whole thing on camera. Viewer discretion is advised as some strong language is used and violence breaks out towards the end.
Racial tension appears to have played a key role in this dispute, and many believe that the Oscar Grant shooting in Oakland also revealed racial prejudice; Grant was a young black man who was unarmed and appeared to be doing nothing wrong, and the officer who shot him was white. Many of the response videos uploaded to YouTube questioned whether racism was in play. The video that shows the two women - one Chinese, one black - attacking each other over a free bus seat also makes you cringe; there's so much anger bottled up that suddenly erupts.
Those who have ridden on a public bus as it transports people through the different neighborhoods of San Francisco may have experienced the unique mixing of cultures and classes on public transportation, perhaps unlike any other social forum. We continue to watch as members of the community decide over and over again to document these conflicts and upload them to YouTube so others can watch.
In San Francisco unique in the number of incidents and/or the frequency with which they are captured on camera? How often are racial tensions to blame? Do skirmishes like these happen on public transportation systems everywhere?
We're curious to hear from you.
Update: The older white man featured in the latest MUNI bus video is apparently the same man being tasered by the police in this YouTube video at an Oakland A's baseball game, reports the San Francisco Examiner.
Three pieces of infrastructure snapped on the Bay Bridge this evening, causing an emergency closure of the highly trafficked through-way between Oakland and San Francisco. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the pieces that snapped were two sturdy steel rods and a cross beam that had been installed during an emergency repair job to the bridge over Labor Day.
The closure of the bridge in the middle of rush hour caused massive traffic delays, and several commuters -- trapped in their cars for hours trying to get home -- captured the scene on camera.
CitizenTube is YouTube's News and Politics Blog. Here you'll find important breaking news videos from citizens; developing trends in the use of YouTube by news organizations, activists, politicians, and governments; and lots of other YouTube goodness. Hit us up on Twitter, @citizentube, if you see something worth posting here.
