Supervisor takes aim at city council for failure to address 'lawlessness' in Oakland

OAKLAND, Calif. - An Alameda County Supervisor denounced the Oakland City Council Tuesday over its failure to quell the "lawlessness" in the city, following the death of a 60-year-old woman during an attempted robbery.

District 4 Supervisor Nate Miley, who represents East Oakland, Montclair, Castro Valley, and Pleasanton, wrote on Twitter, "As a longtime Oakland resident, I am very disappointed in the Oakland City Council president and council members for their failure to ensure public safety in this city as a core responsibility of city government! Their lack of a comprehensive public safety plan for this safety is disgraceful."

Miley suggests the city council come up with plan that equally supports, violence prevention, intervention, and law enforcement.

"I think that if you don't have equal support for all three of those parts of the equation then I think you are hurting. At this point the council needs to show more support for law enforcement and get the resources there," he said.

In an interview with KTVU, Miley said, "Right now, we can't afford the present status quo, because every day additional lawless behavior is taking place, and the citizens of this city I don't think feel safe."

Community leaders in Chinatown and Little Saigon are outraged over the shooting death of Lili Xu in broad daylight Sunday. She and her boyfriend had pulled up in their Mercedes near 5th Avenue and East 11th Street. Within seconds, a white Lexus ES 300 pulls up alongside, someone gets out and then opens fire, killing Xu.

New surveillance video obtained by KTVU shows that the Lexus had eased into a nearby parking spot 13 minutes before the deadly shooting. 

Oakland police told KTVU on Wednesday that the department plans to saturate Little Saigon 24 hours a day with a combination of patrol and undercover officers as well as robbery and burglary-suppression teams.

Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said plans are still underway for a police substation in Little Saigon. The department has designated a Vietnamese-speaking police officer to serve as the liaison to the neighborhood.

At a rally outside Oakland City Hall this week, the council president said, "We are going to pull together the resources so that we have not only the increased police presence that the chief and deputy chief have promised, but we'll open up a substation."

Harry Lin, a retired dentist who was friends with Xu, said, "This is essentially an attack on everybody, all the good law-abiding citizens.

Lin said, "Instead of defunding the police, we need bigger, higher police presence in our local communities."