January 10, 2009 patrol

We went to Oakland this past Saturday in the aftermath of the BART shooting and the riot last week. We had 15 Guardian Angels from San Francisco, Oakland, and Solano County.

We started our patrol in downtown Oakland on Broadway. Seeing the debris and destruction left from the riot was intense. There were burned trash cans, burned newsstands and boarded up shop windows that had been broken. Soon into the patrol a fight started between two women and as we approached the scene the police arrived and handcuffed the women and took them to jail.

When we reached the BART station at Fruitvale a confrontation started between a young woman and an older man. The woman said the man had slapped her and the man said he did so because she was trying to get inside the bag he was carrying. The train arrived and we all got on, including the woman and the man. We asked the woman if she wanted to press charges and she said yes so we contacted the train operator. At the next stop the BART police took the man out of the train while other officers spoke to the woman in the train. The woman didn't want to press charges now, so the BART police took down information from the man and let him go.

After that, we headed to International Blvd but everything was OK. After that we came back to San Francisco after having a good and safe patrol.