Long after the billboards come down, the campaign mailers rest in landfills and the New Year’s toasts come and go, 2014 may be remembered as Richmond’s big election year. We are honored to have been in Richmond’s streets and chambers, its homes and schools and everywhere else, helping write the first drafts of history in an important time and place. Chevron Corp. poured an unprecedented $3.1 million into the municipal races only to lose the open mayoral and city council seats to a progressive coalition on every…
Public defenders staged courthouse demonstrations across the Bay Area on Thursday to urge reform in the criminal justice system’s treatment of people of color.
Tenants of Building H at Creekview Condominiums have been told to vacate the premises due to a water problem. But some say they aren’t leaving without a fight.
Working the graveyard shift that September night, Officer Wallace Jensen pulled his police cruiser over on Stege Avenue and parked out of sight of Uncle Sam’s Liquors. He’d heard reports that locals hung around Uncle Sam’s drinking after dark. His lieutenant had asked him to pass by and disburse crowds. Jensen left his car around the corner to catch potential loiterers off-guard. He never expected what would come next. In the shop, he encountered 24-year-old Richard “Pedie” Perez III, who…
In a trial this fall, Richmond Police Officer Joe Avila, a 17-year-veteran of the force, served as a star witness for prosecutors hoping to secure a conviction in a case they had built over a period of 10 days in a Contra Costa County courthouse.
On Friday, Contra Costa County Judge Terri Mockler ordered the release of 15 inmates in an attempt to comply with new mandates set forth by Proposition 47.
“It looks like the campaign is over and Butt is your new mayor,” Bates conceded. “Everyone that Chevron supported was unsuccessful.”
Violence marred Election Day in Richmond as four teens were shot in close proximity to one another on Tuesday night. Police say the shootings may be related.
Just before Thanksgiving last year, a UPS Store employee turned over a box containing about 5 lbs. of marijuana to Richmond police officer Joe Avila. But the marijuana he carried from the shop that afternoon was never booked into evidence at the precinct. According to a search warrant issued by the Contra Costa Superior Court in September, the drugs didn’t make it to the Richmond Police Department’s property vault, but ended up at Avila’s home in Oakley, 44 miles away.
There have been 12 homicides in Richmond thus far this year, not including a fatal shooting by a Richmond police officer that is still under investigation. In aggregate, that number is a promising statistic consistent with the decline in Richmond’s overall violent crime and the lowest homicide rate the city has seen in decades. But each red dot on the crime map represents a place where an individual was killed. They are homes, businesses, sidewalks, and street corners; Richmond residents…
Still bothered by the absence of any leads, any clues, Richmond Police continue to investigate an unsolved murder from 2012.
At a time when an NFL scandal has propelled the issue into the national spotlight, several agencies and nonprofits are making Richmond a priority for domestic violence intervention. Federal dollars awarded to Contra Costa County last week will help to fund the efforts.
Famed personal injury and civil rights attorney John Burris plans to sue the city of Richmond and Wallace Jensen, the officer who shot and killed Richard “Pedie” Perez III, for wrongful death.