As an East Bay crime wave continues, Alameda County DA Pamela Price and Oakland PD top brass faced the music at a Thursday night community meeting, where people largely just shouted the speakers (and each other) down.

During SF’s Chesa Boudin recall era (and under his replacement Brooke Jenkins) there have been many theoretical debates over whether crime was really up in San Francisco, or whether it was more important “how people feel.” No such quaint discussions in Oakland, where crime is up across the board, with KGO reporting “crime is up 26% in Oakland year-over-year.” KGO cites that statistic in their writeup of a Thursday community safety meeting at the Montclair Presbyterian Church in Oakland where residents unloaded on Alameda County DA Pamela Price and Oakland Police Captain Clay Burch.

The meeting was predictably a set of shouting matches and, among some, a desire to not let Price nor Burch get a word in edgewise. Both took the heat diplomatically, but residents were understandably on edge over a recent carjacking spree, a pregnant woman shot, a naked woman firing a gun on I-880, and teens stealing a BMW. And that’s just this week.

The meeting was far more crowded than expected, with KPIX’s Sara Donchey quipping above, “looks like the merch line for the Taylor Swift concert.” Many were denied entry because the church gathering room got too crowded, so organizers started a Zoom livecast, and that too hit capacity and stopped allowing viewers to tune in. And those who did attend almost all had a firsthand story of violent crime.

“I was pulled out of my car at gunpoint and deposited in the middle of the street,” one woman identified as Amy D. said, according to NBC Bay Area. “They took my bag, they took everything. This is 10 o’clock in the morning up here in Oakland.”

Another robbery victim Barbara Hoffer complained, “Pamela Price needs to understand that there must be consequences when there are assaults on people in their city," per KTVU.

Crimes committed by juveniles were a particularly divisive matter. Price defended her record on that one, with KGO quoting her as saying, "All counties across the state have been asked to decriminalize young people, and so our county has adopted that as a policy."

And Captain Burch insisted OPD was doing their best in the case of challenging circumstances. "This is an example of what I hear almost every week, almost every other day,” he said, according to KTVU. “We're out there constantly. We're using technologies. We're hoping to solve the suspect in your case.  Oakland PD is not asleep."

This will be used to make political hay in the Pamela Price recall effort, but even the most “tough on crime” officials get the exact same earfulls at their own town hall meetings. In SF’s Marina District, Supervisor Catherine Stefani, DA Jenkins, and SFPD Chief Bill Scott got the same grilling from residents in January. This is part of the job of being a public official, and one simply has to let the community sound off.

And Oakland resident will get another chance to sound off at another community meeting about crime at 12 noon September 9 at the Genesis Worship Center in East Oakland.

Related: Two of Three Murder Charges Dropped In Already Controversial Oakland Triple-Murder Case [SFist]

Image: @AlamedaCountyDA via Twitter