by JR Valrey, Editor in Chief
Weeks after Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee and the top brass of the Oakland Police Department were posing together in newspapers, smiling, talking about how the Oakland Police Department has fulfilled the criteria to be lifted off of federal oversight after 23 years, the police murdered a man under questionable circumstances in East Oakland. And in line with the past behavior of the department, trying to control the narrative, the Oakland Police have been slow to release any information to the public.
I talked with activist Lance Wilson of the Anti-Police Terror Project to discuss the police murder and recent happenings within the Oakland Police Department.
JR Valrey: Can you give us whatever information has been released about the recent police murder on July 13 in East Oakland?
Lance Wilson: What we know right now is limited, and that is part of the problem. OPD shot and killed a man on Monday, July 13, in the area of the 4000 block of International Boulevard in East Oakland. Initial reporting says the incident began with a California Highway Patrol pursuit and that CHP called OPD for assistance. OPD then encountered the man, used what they described as less-lethal and lethal force, and killed him at the scene. OPD has said no officers were injured.
What is deeply concerning is that the public has been given shifting language and very few facts. First, the narrative was that the man “lunged” at officers with a weapon. Then the language became that he “attacked” officers. Later, OPD said he had a bladed object. But the public has not been shown body-worn camera footage, dispatch audio, a full timeline, or clear evidence that this man posed an immediate deadly threat that justified killing him.
From my perspective, this is exactly why we demand transparency immediately after every police killing. The public should not be asked to accept OPD’s version of events before the evidence is released. A family has lost someone. A community has lost someone. And Oakland deserves facts, not a carefully managed police narrative. It has been a week now, and we still have not been provided the name of the man killed by OPD.
JR Valrey: Now that Oakland has a new police chief, who is he, and how has his leadership affected the department?
Lance Wilson: James Beere is a longtime OPD insider. He is a 29-year veteran of the Oakland Police Department and had been serving as interim chief before Mayor Barbara Lee selected him as permanent chief. Reporting notes that he has spent nearly his entire law enforcement career inside OPD, including assignments in vice, narcotics, intelligence and criminal investigations.
Our concern is that calling someone “new leadership” does not mean Oakland has a new culture inside OPD. Beere comes from within the very institution that has been under federal oversight for more than two decades because of brutality, corruption and civil rights violations. Less than a week after he was named permanent chief, OPD killed someone in East Oakland. That does not feel like a new chapter. It feels like the same status quo with a different person at the podium.
The question is not whether Chief Beere can say the right words about reform. The question is whether he will release the footage, tell the truth, discipline officers, cooperate with independent oversight, and stop the cycle of OPD killing people and then asking the public to trust them.
JR Valrey: What are your thoughts on OPD being let off federal oversight, which they had been under since the Riders case in 2003?
Lance Wilson: It is dangerous and premature. OPD was placed under federal oversight because of the Riders scandal, where officers were accused of beating, kidnapping, and planting drugs on West Oakland residents. The resulting 2003 Negotiated Settlement Agreement required reforms around use of force, discipline, reporting, and racial disparities, among other issues.
For more than 20 years, OPD has had scandal after scandal, chief after chief, reform promise after reform promise. The department has been unable to police itself with a federal monitor watching. So we have no reason to believe it will suddenly police itself once that monitor is gone.
We are also deeply concerned that federal oversight may end at the exact moment OPD has killed three people in one year. From 2015 to 2025, OPD killed three people. This year alone, OPD has already killed three people. That should stop every city leader in their tracks. This is not the time to loosen oversight. This is the time to strengthen civilian accountability, fully fund the Police Commission, CPRA, and the Office of Inspector General, and make sure OPD is not left to investigate and excuse itself.
JR Valrey: In your opinion, has the possible end of federal oversight and the hiring of a new police chief made Black residents of Oakland safer?
Lance Wilson: No. Black Oaklanders are not safer because OPD has a new chief. Black Oaklanders are not safer because a federal judge may end oversight. Safety is not a press release. Safety is not a personnel announcement. Safety is not OPD telling us they have complied with a checklist.
Safety means our people are not killed when they are in crisis. Safety means families do not have to fight for months or years to get basic answers. Safety means police do not get to shift their stories after killing someone.
Safety means our communities have housing, healthcare, mental health support, violence prevention, youth programs, and crisis response that does not begin with a gun and a badge.
Black Oaklanders have lived through the Riders scandal, the Celeste Guap scandal, repeated misconduct scandals, racial profiling, excessive force, and decades of OPD violence. A new chief does not erase that history. Ending federal oversight does not erase that history. The only thing that will make Black residents safer is reducing our contact with police and investing in community-led systems of care.
JR Valrey: How has Barbara Lee’s administration dealt with people in homeless encampments versus the last mayor’s administration? Has there been a difference?
Lance Wilson: There has been some difference in rhetoric. Mayor Lee has talked about wanting fewer sweeps and more city workers cleaning up trash and waste around encampments, which is a different tone from the more punitive approaches we have seen across the region. Reporting in February said she was considering a shift toward fewer sweeps and paying unhoused residents to help with cleanup.
But rhetoric is not enough. The lived experience of unhoused people is what matters. Oakland still passed a controversial policy easing restrictions on encampment sweeps, and advocates warned that it would criminalize homelessness and displace people without creating real housing solutions. KQED reported that encampment closures skyrocketed from 240 closures in 2024 to 1,212 closures in 2025 after the Grants Pass decision, and advocates raised concerns that there were not enough shelter options available.
So the question we are asking is simple: Are unhoused people actually safer, housed, and cared for, or are they just being moved from block to block? If people are still being swept, displaced, surveilled, and exposed to police contact without permanent housing, then we are still criminalizing poverty.
From an abolitionist perspective, homelessness is not a police problem. It is a housing problem. It is a healthcare problem. It is an economic justice problem. And no administration should treat people living outside as a nuisance to be managed instead of human beings who deserve dignity, resources, and a real place to live.
JR Valrey: In your opinion, how are Black homeless people viewed in Oakland by the police and local government?
Lance Wilson: Black unhoused people in Oakland are too often treated as problems to be managed, moved, surveilled or disappeared from public view instead of as human beings who deserve housing, care, dignity and safety. That is the heart of the issue. When local government talks about encampments, the conversation is usually about “abatement,” “clean up,” “enforcement” or “public nuisance.” Very rarely is the conversation rooted in the fact that these are our neighbors, our elders, our young people, our disabled folks, our veterans, our families, and our community members who have been failed by every system that was supposed to protect them.
For Black unhoused people, that criminalization is even more dangerous because they are already overpoliced simply for existing in public. Police often see Black homelessness through the lens of suspicion and control. Instead of asking, “What does this person need?” the system asks, “How do we remove them?” That leads to sweeps, citations, arrests, stolen belongings, surveillance and violent encounters with law enforcement. From an abolitionist perspective, homelessness is not a crime. Poverty is not a crime. Mental health crisis is not a crime.
Being Black and unhoused in Oakland should not make you a target for police contact.
And what we saw with this recent killing raises exactly those concerns. Why were CHP and OPD interacting with someone near an unhoused encampment? Was this person in crisis? Was any non-police crisis response called? Was MACRO called? Was there any attempt to meet this person with care instead of force? Those are the questions we need answered because when the state responds to poverty, crisis and homelessness with armed police, people die.
JR Valrey: If people would like to stay informed on police murders and terrorism in Oakland, how could they do that?
Lance Wilson: People should stay connected to the organizations that are doing this work on the ground every day. Follow the Anti-Police Terror Project on social media, sign up for our email list, come to our general meetings, and pay attention when we issue action alerts, statements, press conferences and calls to show up. We organize around police killings, state violence, surveillance, budget fights, mental health crisis response, and the broader fight to build real public safety beyond policing.
People can also support directly impacted families by showing up when families call for community support, attending rallies and press conferences, making public comment, contacting elected officials, and refusing to let police departments control the narrative after they kill someone. Police rely on silence. They rely on confusion. They rely on the public moving on before the truth comes out. Our job is to stay organized, stay informed, and stay in the streets when our people are harmed.
The best way to stay connected is to follow @antipoliceterrorproject, visit antipoliceterrorproject.org and join our organizing spaces. This work requires all of us. If we want to end police terror in Oakland, we cannot just watch the news. We have to build power, demand answers, and fight for care, not cops.
SF Bay View Editor-in-Chief JR Valrey is a veteran journalist His work can also be heard on www. blockreportradioworld.com. He can be reached at jr@sfbayview.com.