Antioch mayor promises end to recent street violence; "We are going to find you"
Antioch's mayor on Wednesday said a handful of criminals have turned one of the city's neighborhoods into an East Bay epicenter of street shootings that need to be stopped.
Police in Antioch are scrambling to deal with a huge increase in gun violence, with fifteen shootings in just the month of September. Authorities think the incidents may be a series of retaliation shootings. Antioch Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe is demanding action.
City officials say this latest rash of gun violence began on Labor Day with the fatal shooting of 21-year-old Elijah Scales on Peppertree Way. That was September 2nd. Shootings then occurred for the next two days on the same block.
It started what would become a very violent month. There were three shootings on the 12th, 4 more on the 16th -- including at a memorial service for Scales. Then three more on the 20th, 21st and 22nd, including multiple shots fired into businesses along Sycamore Drive.
"In the past three weeks, we've had bullets through our windows, bullets through our building," said one business owner, "We've been here forever, and I've not seen things this bad in 30+ years."
At Tuesday night's city council meeting, officials got an earful from the public. On Wednesday morning, the mayor gathered the media to express his outrage.
"Let me speak very clear to the people who have been wreaking havoc on our community," he said. "We are going to find you. We're going to hold you accountable. And you will pay the price for what you have done. And the day you find yourself in court, I will be right there in your sentencing hearing to insure they lock you up and put you away for a long time!"
Police think there's a violent back-and-forth going on between two groups but they stopped just short of calling it "gang-related."
"We suspect there are some gang undertones," said Capt. Joe Vigil. "Our detectives are still trying to flush that out to see how much of that is accurate, before we say it's a gang issue."
Meanwhile, the mayor is asking for $100,000 to pay other police agencies to help Antioch. The racist text scandal has decimated the department's ranks and -- with only 75 sworn officers -- authorities say they don't have the manpower to control the drug activity on Sycamore and Peppertree. Hernandez-Thorpe is suggesting permit parking only on Peppertree.
"Restricting those areas to simply residents," he said. "We have allowed people to come from the outside and take over some of those streets for drug activity. That is slowly going to come to an end."
But one young man who lives on the street said he thinks the mayor is showboating.
"He's just full of it," the young man who did not identify himself said. "He's been full of it. The mayor's been up here plenty of times. This ain't no gang-related spot. He's reacting now because of the shootings. He should have been reacting to all the other stuff besides the shootings."
He pointed out that many in the neighborhood consider the police to be a gang. To them, the racist-texts scandal just confirmed it.
"You all want us dead! You all want us to get shot up!" he said. "But now this so-called...doing this 'little shooting' is a problem. We're so-called -- in your mouth, mayor -- a problem. Stop it!"
Nevertheless, the mayor said he's exploring every option to help stem the violence, including calling in the National Guard. Others have expressed doubt that could happen, but he says that doesn't mean he won't ask.