A handyman in an East Oakland neighborhood was shot by a female police officer at Tolin's Liquor Store Saturday night after (possibly drunkenly) harassing other customers and refusing to drop his "weapon," which in this case was a 12-inch hatchet. Neighbors say the man, Brownie Polk, always carried tools and was just working on a roofing job that day, and he simply raised the hatchet over his head when the policewoman drew her gun at him. While one witness says he was moving to walk out the door at the time the officer fired three shots at him, the officer claims she fired because he was threatening her and refused to drop his hatchet and that he had moved "inside a threshold area where a suspect can kill an officer if they have a stabbing instrument." Surveillance video shows the man was indeed holding his hatchet, and Oakland police are using this to defend the officer, who's only been on the force for 18 months. more ›

Mario Pacheco, whose makeshift home dental clinic in Oakland was raided by authorities, guns drawn on Friday, tells CBS 5 today that he was "just doing what [he] could to help people." As it happens, he didn't have a license to practice dentistry and allegedly never called himself a dentist, but through referrals he performed dental work on low-income and uninsured patients, sometimes for free. He was wearing a white doctor coat when arrested, and according to reports his office was "filled with bloody gauze and dirty syringes," which doesn't sound all that nice and benevolent (especially the syringe part -- remind you of anything?). Yet another reason Pelosi better push that health care bill through the House! more ›

The big tabloid-crime news story of the day is the connection being made between a body found last week in a McLaren Park homeless encampment (which was apparently once attached to this severed leg, and was not, as investigators first thought, that of a woman but in fact was a man's) and the murderous folks from Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland. The bakery, as you may recall, was connected to the 2007 murder of Chauncey Bailey, a journalist who had been investigating trouble at the bakery. more ›

Police are now recommending charges against two women, Cavenia Bryant and Jamillya Edgerton, who beat and kicked (and ripped the weave off of) hair salon owner Melissa Seals last month in Oakland while a third videotaped it. If you recall, the attackers, called in to radio station KMEL to say, "she deserved every bit of that for the shit she talked about... because she, she exploited our business to her clients." It turns out Melissa, like most hairstylists, was kind of a talker and may have gossiped a bit about these girls' sexual activities, which in turn got back to their parents, and which, in turn, precipitated the beat-down. The best part to us, of course, is that they called in to KMEL to take credit for it. We now go back to our regularly scheduled newsday. more ›

KCBS is reporting on the discovery of two women's bodies last night in a room at the Value Inn on West MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland, one of a strip of motels frequented by prostitutes and gangbangers -- and we say this only because we used to live right near there and would occasionally see ladies of the night, walking in the morning light with bloody knees. Few details exist except that the women appeared beaten, and they were found in a room which had been occupied since June 5th. These two unfortunate slayings bring Oakland's total homicide count for 2009 up to 47, and not quite on track to equal last year's tally of 126 for the year. more ›

The body of Ivarene Lett, age 97, was found beaten to death two nights ago in her 6th floor apartment in the Adams Point neighborhood of Oakland, near Lake Merritt. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, who recently passed her driving test and who enjoyed going to a weekly dance class and driving her vintage Chevy. As far back as city records go, Ms. Lett appears to be the oldest homicide victim in Oakland's history. And it's been quite a year for such records, with Oakland recognizing its oldest homicide suspect just about 12 months ago, who was 94 at the time of his arrest for killing his landlord. Comments on Lett's case range from "pretty concerning" to "the ultimate in depravity." We'd go with #2. more ›