Oakland police shooting

Oakland police shooting casts ugly glare on ex-felon desperation
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Tuesday, March 24, 2009

It was a deadly mix of panic, rage and frustration that caused Oakland parolee Lovelle Mixon to snap. His murderous rampage left four Oakland police officers dead and a city and police agencies in deep soul search about what went so terribly wrong. Though Mixon's killing spree is a horrible aberration, his plight as an unemployed, ex-felon isn't. There are tens of thousands like him on America's streets.

In 2007, the National Institute of Justice found that 60 percent of ex-felon offenders remain unemployed a year after their release. Other studies have shown that upward of 30 percent of released felons live in homeless shelters because they can't find housing; and those are the lucky ones. Many camp out on the streets. A significant number of them suffer from drug, alcohol and mental health challenges, and lack education or any marketable skills. More than 70 percent of all federal prisoners are literate at only the two lowest grade levels. Nearly 60 percent of violent felons are repeat offenders. They are menace to themselves and, as the nation saw with Mixon, to others. They can be set off by any real or perceived slight, or simply lash out from bitter rage.
The answer to the Mixons isn't easy and simple. What's needed is to strike a delicate balance between public safety and ex-felon rehabilitation.
City officials in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, New York and Atlanta have been repeatedly challenged to take action to end employer discrimination against ex-felons.
In a revealing study in 2003, and duplicated again several years later, Northwestern University Professor Devah Pager hired groups of African American and white young men with identical resumes and experience to pose as job applicants. Some were told to say they had a drug felony. The study found that when they marked the felony-conviction box on the applications, it reduced the white applicants' chance of landing an interview by 50 percent. For black applicants, the chance of landing the interview was reduced by two-thirds.
To counter employer discrimination against ex-felons, nearly a dozen states and counties and cities have enacted laws to limit what employers can ask applicants about criminal records. But that reform effort has stirred fierce resistance from employer groups.
In Washington, D.C., where nearly 3,000 former prisoners are released each year, the City Council passed a measure in 2007 that would have banned discrimination in employment as well as housing and education against ex-felons. Most ex-felons fit this profile: They are poor, with limited education and job skills, and come from broken or dysfunctional homes. Researchers found that the single biggest thing that pushed them back to crime and inevitably repeat incarceration was their failure to find work.
The measure was vetoed by then Mayor Anthony A. Williams. The heat on Williams came from business groups that claimed they'd be sued by rejected applicants.
Similar legislation has been kicking around in Congress since 2005. A bill called the Second Chance Act is a relatively mild measure to pump about $100 million into local and state agencies for education, job and skills training, counseling, and family unification programs to stem the high rate of recidivism among ex-felons. Obama has often spoken of the need to stop the revolving door of felon release and repeated incarceration. He backs the Second Chance legislation.
But with the economy and the financial crisis dominating the White House and congressional agendas, the likelihood that ex-felon aid will get attention is slim.
At last count, there were an estimated 12 million people in the United States with felony convictions. That's nearly 10 percent of the working-age population. And with jails bulging and states desperately trying to figure out how to cut jail costs and increasingly resorting to early release, more ex-felons will be on the streets.
The estimate is that more than 600,000 offenders are now being released from prisons yearly. Mixon was one of them.

Article:
Oakland police shooting casts ugly glare on ex-felon desperation

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Im sorry to add more to this but, here is what incident they are referring to:

Dozens march for Mixon, against police
Charles Burress, Chronicla Staff Writer
Thursday, March 26, 2009

(03-25) 20:36 PDT Oakland -- About 60 people marched and rallied in Oakland on Wednesday to condemn the police and honor Lovelle Mixon, who was killed by Oakland police after he fatally shot four officers Saturday.





"OPD you can't hide - we charge you with genocide," chanted the demonstrators as they marched along MacArthur Boulevard, near the intersection with 74th Avenue where Mixon, 26, a fugitive parolee, gunned down two motorcycle officers who had pulled him over in a traffic stop. He killed two more officers who tried to capture him where he was hiding in his sister's apartment nearby.
The protest was organized by the Oakland branch of the Uhuru Movement, whose flyers for the march declared, "Stop Police Terror." Many marchers wore T-shirts featuring Mixon's photo, including a woman identified by march organizers as Mixon's mother. The woman declined to comment and gave her name only as Athena.
Lolo Darnell, one of Mixon's cousins at the demonstration, said, "He needs sympathy too. If he's a criminal, everybody's a criminal."
Asked about police allegations that Mixon was suspected in several rapes, including that of a 12-year-old girl, marcher Mandingo Hayes said, "He wasn't a rapist. I don't believe that."
Bystanders had mixed reactions. Nicole Brown said that she can't condone murder but that police don't respect residents of the area. Daria Belt said she had no sympathy for the protesters but sympathized for Mixon's family.


Article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/25/BADD16N9VP.DTL

 

This isnt a valid reason to hate Northern California entirely.
Its a very nice and beautiful place to live. This is just a really bad incident that happened and we must try to learn from it.
Shold we let paroled felons have their hands on assault weapons?
Knowing that it is our right to own one?