Home burglary victims cite problems with reporting crimes to Oakland police
OAKLAND, Calif. - A victim of a home burglary is speaking out about the crime in Oakland, saying Oakland police aren’t doing enough to make reporting crimes easy or following up when a crime is committed.
Denise, who does not want to publicly share her last name, said her East Oakland home was broken into last Wednesday, and she’s been in limbo with the police ever since.
"It just felt very violating, the house smelled like marijuana – like who are these people that came into my house?" she asked herself.
Denise said her neighbor called her at around 2:15 in the afternoon on the 13th, telling her two men were climbing through her window.
She said she came home to her bedroom ransacked and her jewelry missing.
"It was some old vintage gold jewelry my mother had given me, things my friends had made me. The sentimental value, you can’t put a price on that," said Denise.
She said her neighbors called 911, reporting a black sedan they believe was the getaway car.
"I couldn’t sleep that night," Denise recalled. "My husband and I felt unsafe. We feel like the police have not come. People called 911 and police never came."
Denise said hearing back from a police officer assigned to the case has been difficult. She called multiple days in a row to get an officer to come to her home, and the dispatcher told her the officer would have to come after-hours. When Denise requested the officer come before 10 p.m., the dispatcher told her she would need to call again each day to see if an officer could come in the day.
Eventually, she filed a report online, where she had a hard time uploading photos and descriptions because the uploading software was down.
A police officer called her back late in the night, leaving a voicemail that an officer could come by, but Denise was asleep.
On Nextdoor, at least two other people complained of the same problem, with their Oakland houses getting hit just half an hour apart last Tuesday afternoon.
One woman in Glenview complained that her house was hit at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, with a couple of young men climbing through a window. A second victim in Maxwell Park said her house was broken into at 2:55 p.m., and a man wearing a ski mask broke in by cutting the glass of the bedroom window, ransacking the house within 10 minutes.
Featured
Oakland's mayor claims crime drops, but omits robbery and home-invasion increase
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao rejected suggestions Tuesday that crime is on the rise in her city.
Denise said, "and it was exactly the same thing, they went in and took jewelry and put it in a pillowcase which they did at my house."
The victims in Glenview and Maxwell Park also told KTVU that they had a hard time getting a hold of an investigator or getting an officer to come to the house.
The victim in Maxwell Park said that a police officer finally arrived at 1:45 a.m., the day after the burglary, while the household was asleep.
Over the last few days, KTVU exchanged emails with an OPD spokesperson, asking about the multiple reports we learned about, but they told us they don’t immediately have access to reports filed online or in person.
The OPD spokesperson was not able to tell me whether Denise’s home – or the other home burglaries last week – were under investigation.
"You just feel like you’re alone – like we’re all alone here in Oakland," said Denise.
OPD crime statistics say robberies are up 34% while burglaries are down 48% over last year. Residential burglaries are down 37%. Residential robberies, using force or a weapon, are up 71%.