Fremont High Students Riot in Foothill Blvd.

A fight between two teenage women escalated into a mob that stopped traffic and attacked elderly bystanders.

The brawl began around 12:30 p.m. just outside Fremont High School on Foothill Blvd. at 48th Street. A resident of a house on Foothill Blvd. saw a young man holding a clutch of hair. Soon men in tricked-out cars and on decorated bicycles equipped with boom boxes gathered and escalated the chaos.

Traffic could not proceed while the mob occupied Foothill Blvd. One couple took an elderly lady into their vehicle in order to protect her from attack. She had been waiting for the bus. However, the bus driver soon closed his doors and refused to admit anyone.

The Melrose branch library is located at the intersection. Library staff locked the door and called the police. However, they never saw police respond, neither from Fremont High nor from the Oakland Police Department. One reason may be that three other fights broke out at other locations at or around Fremont High School at the same time.

The library supervisor told ORPN that she has noted almost weekly mini-riots this April and May, repeating a pattern every Spring for the last four years. Library staff used to have a direct cell phone connection with one school police officer stationed at Fremont High, but he has transferred to other duty, and the library has not been able to establish contact with a new school officer.

"Teenagers need to see the police," said the library supervisor. It may be possible for officers to raise their visibility by measures like parking on main streets instead of side streets, but the basic problem is that City Hall allows the de-policing of Oakland. We need at least 1,100 officers, up from the 750 or so Oakland has today.