April 1st, 2008. The 911 call came at 2:30am from a woman reporting that she had been raped and robbed inside her apartment. Fremont patrol officers quickly located the suspect in an adjacent apartment where he had barricaded himself inside. It was time to call in the SWAT team. The team quickly surrounded and locked down the building. But after nine hours of failed negotiations, SWAT officers fired tear gas into the apartment. The suspect immediately surrendered was taken into custody without injury.

The effectiveness of any SWAT team in a situation such as this, requires high quality training in weapons use and tactical operations. But a team does not operate alone. A recent joint training operation by the Fremont police department showed that an intricate relationship between the SWAT team, hostage negotiator team (HNT) and tactical dispatchers is vital in any “call out.”

Fremont SWAT officers take down a suspect during a training operation

For this recent joint training operation, organizers transformed an abandoned daycare center into the scene of an incident. Role players were brought in to serve as suspects, victims and hostages. The nature of the scenario was known only by a handful of organizers, or proctors.

While SWAT team members donned their protective gear and loaded up their weapons with dummy rounds, the tactical dispatch team got set up in the RV-sized mobile command center. Not far away, the HNT organized their smaller van, filled with equipment used to communicate with suspects and gather intelligence.

Also inside the mobile command center was the command team. The command team is comprised of the SWAT tactical commander, Sgt. Patrick Epps and the HNT team commander, Sgt. Curt Codey. The final decision maker is team commander Lt. Johnny Liu. “We’re like the intelligence center, we make sense of all the information coming in from the tactical team and HNT,” said Epps.

The event kicked off with a “call” to dispatchers, reporting that a suspect who had escaped from jail was barricaded in his house with two hostages. According to Epps, a 22-year veteran of the force who has been on the SWAT team for 14 years, the SWAT team was dispatched in a “surround and call out” operation.

“The days of a SWAT team kicking in the front door and running through the house and tackling everybody are over. Our job is to protect lives. Which includes our own. The priority of life now is citizens and hostages, officers and suspects,” he said.

According to Epps, the majority of SWAT calls today result in the “surround and call out scenario.” This is when a SWAT team surrounds the building and provides the suspect with someone to talk to, a hostage negotiator. The SWAT team is then on standby for a worst-case scenario or to accept a surrender.

The responsibility of making contact with a suspect falls to the HNT. Codey has been on the HNT team for 22 years and in charge of it for nine. According to him, 90 to 95-percent of the time, incidents are resolved through negotiations.

“We want it that way,” said Codey, “Our job on the HNT is to keep those guys [SWAT] from having to go in. They’re our friends and we don’t want them to go into harms way.”

Fremont SWAT officers approach a house where hostages are being held during a training exercise

Sometimes this negotiation process is quick said Codey. Other times it can take hours. He said that this is why communication and cooperation is pertinent in call outs. It is important for HNT to know what the SWAT team’s needs are so that HNT can gather appropriate information, such as the number of individuals inside or the layout of the room.

But HNT also relies heavily on SWAT tactical operations. “We can’t do anything without containment. It’s very difficult to negotiate without containment. So the SWAT team provides that element,” said Codey.

Containment refers to surrounding suspect and cutting off any possible escape routes, thus making that suspect dependent upon the negotiator for a safe exit.

In Fremont, the 20-member SWAT team and 16-member HNT is considered a collateral assignment, meaning the job is in addition to each officer’s traditional police assignment, such as patrol, traffic or detective.

Outside of joint exercises, the SWAT team and HNT train 22 hours a month in order to maintain the high standards set by the Commission of Peace Officer Standards and training. There are also opportunities for more advanced state and federal training.

For those involved in SWAT and HNT, the additional training and work hours are worth the price and are often the reason they became involved with the team in the first place.

“It takes a lot of dedication. A lot of training,” said SWAT officer Jeremy Miskella, “I always like to be very tactical in my job and obviously your job as a SWAT officer is very tactical, so I kind of fell into it.

Above all else, these officers said that camaraderie is the driving factor behind their involvement and dedication in SWAT and HNT. “It’s the people. It’s like being on the football team in high school. You’re surrounded by 20 of your best buddies,” said former SWAT officer Steve Pace, now a technical advisor for the team.

Along with this advanced training comes additional responsibilities. “It’s a special call of duty. You can’t make any mistakes in this business, it’s not accepted. It’s not allowed,” said Epps.

These responsibilities can take their toll on officers, especially those on the HNT who are attempting to communicate with a suspect or victim.

Fremont SWAT officer Ramin Mahboobi pulls security as a suspect prepares to surrender

Codey said that the job of a negotiator is a double-edge sword. On the one hand they must develop a report with a person in order to gain their confidence, but if a situation turns negative, he said it is emotionally damaging to the negotiator.

“We’ve had people kill themselves while negotiators are talking to them and that’s extremely taxing on the negotiators. But that attachment is also what makes you effective,” said Codey.

It is the pressure to achieve success that officers said drives them rather than hinders them. Former SWAT officer and now technical advisor for the team, Tony Tassano, said, “Sometimes things go to crap and we are the guys they call out to fix it.”

Codey said that the challenge of resolving a difficult situation is what he enjoys the most. “You’ve got an incident that might be life or death. You might have 40 or 50 cops out here. Everything is hanging on your word. On what you hear and your communication skills,” he said.

While the Fremont SWAT team may not respond to as many calls as cities such as Oakland, Epps said that the police department and city of Fremont are dedicated to fully funding the team. The team also provides personnel and equipment to assist other cities when requested.

This support from the police department and city ensures that the team has sufficient resources needed to stay abreast of improved tactics and field new equipment. The joint training scenarios then provide an opportunity to test out these skills and technology and discern what works and what needs improvement.

No matter how proficient the SWAT team, HNT or tactical dispatch team is by itself, the joint training showed that it is the interaction between the three that determines the success or failure of a mission. As Epps said, “Communication is the key to the successful outcome of these things. The perfect SWAT call out is when we roll in and we roll out and it’s not in the news because nobody got hurt.”

Oakland Police Department's Asian Liaison Officer Alan Yu speaks

Oakland’s Chinatown held its latest monthly crime-prevention meeting on Wednesday evening (Oct 15), in which police briefed some 80 residents present about a recent burglary and once again urged them to shake off the habit of not reporting crime cases.

A Chinese family lost $5,000 in cash and $6,000 worth of jewelery during daytime on Sunday October 12 when someone broke into their house on the 10th Street through an open window, Alan Yu, Oakland Police Department’s Asian Liaison Officer, told a packed lobby of the St. Marks Apartments, a senior’s home with about 100 units on the 12th Street.

Yu advised residents not to put too much cash at home, a common practice for Chinese immigrants and particularly elderly people, who made up of the bulk of the audience.

“Please don’t worry about the banks shutting down shop. There is deposit insurance,” Carl Chan, chair of the Chinatown’s Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council (NCPC), reassured the listeners.

Chan, also president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber Foundation, told the 510report that the Chinatown NCPC had been holding Cantonese-language public meetings for more than three years and the venue for the event on the third Wednesday of every month was normally at one of the several senior’s homes in the neighborhood for the convenience of the elders.

In the latest meeting, Chan and Yu, accompanied by another four police officers and several volunteers, made yet another appeal to Chinatown residents for them to report whatever crimes happen to them.

The community is known for its propensity to keep crime cases to themselves when no or little economic losses are incurred or injuries inflicted, a habit police officers have attributed to cultural differences.

But that has made the residents more vulnerable, encouraging law breakers and hampering police efforts to study crime patterns to prevent future offences, the officers said.

“Not only will they come back again and again, assuming it’s their turf here,” Yu said. “But also our superiors will be in the dark about what is going on in Chinatown and will think it’s very safe.”

“Then it is impossible for them to make the decision to deploy more officers and resources in Chinatown,” Yu said.

Michael Sze, Oakland Police Department's neighborhood coordinator for the Chinatown, takes questions from an elderly woman

Cantonese-speaking officers and volunteers at the Chinatown Substation of the Oakland Police Department would help those who didn’t speak good English to complete the paper work for reporting a case, the officers reassured the audience.

In the Wednesday meeting that lasted for about one hour and forty minutes, only a handful of listeners stood up to voice their concerns about public safety despite a general fear and repeated attempts from the officers to encourage them to speak out.

An elderly woman who lived in St. Marks complained about Souza’s Liquor right next to the senior’s home that attracted a large number of alcoholic people loitering at night.

Another told her story of being pushed and kicked by a homeless man on the street in September after she refused to give him money.

Yu advised the elders to go out in groups either during daytime or at night as “there were only cases of 3-4 people robbing one person but no cases of one person robbing 3-4 people.”

The robbers targeted elderly Chinese because they knew the old people were not only unable to resist but also were used to carrying big sums of cash, said Michael Sze, Oakland Police Department’s Neighborhood Services Coordinator for Chinatown.

“Sometimes you will be surprised by how much money these elders carry on them,” said Sze.

A sketch of the male suspect was posted at Lincoln Elementary

By Guo Shipeng
 
Oakland’s Chinatown has retained a low crime rate in the past three months, but a city official said some residents’ habit of not informing the police about crimes made the community more vulnerable.
 
Most of the 11 robbery cases reported between July 12 to October 8 in the Chinatown were strong arm, but at least one involved firearm, according to figures on the website of the Oakland Police Department.

Of the 49 thefts during that period, 13 were vehicles. There were also 12 burglaries.
 
“Normally we don’t have big crime cases, though minor ones are reported from time to time,” said Michael Sze, the Oakland Police Department’s Neighborhood Services Coordinator for Chinatown.
 
“Generally it’s a safe neighborhood,” Sze said.
 
Nonetheless, the Chinese victims’ inclination to keep crime cases to themselves is always a concern for authorities, Sze said.
 
“Perhaps it’s a cultural thing. They are not very used to trusting the police,” Sze said. “Some others see no point of reporting because they think they won’t be able to get back their lost valuables anyway.”
 
“Even though we might not be able to help recover the losses, it is important to notify the police because it’s crucial for us to study crime patterns and prevent similar cases in the future,” Sze said.

Sze said the police spent much energy on educating Chinatown residents to raise awareness in these two regards. 
 
“Chinese immigrants also like to carry cash with them in business transactions. That and the habit of keeping cases to themselves have been taken advantage of by criminals,” Sze said.

The two attempted abductions of schoolchildren are probably the most talked about public safety topics in the Chinatown in the past month.
 
On September 2, a middle-aged Chinese man tried to lead a 5-year-old girl away from Lincoln Elementary School before he was stopped by a friend of the girl’s parents.
 
“The man just let the girl go. It’s not very like in an abduction. So it’s still unclear what happened and we don’t know if it was just a mistake,” said John Melvin, Lincoln’s principal.

Police fingerprinted Lincoln pupils and gave them safety tips.

 
But a similar case eight days later on the playground of the nearby Madison Square Park heightened the community’s alert.   
 
“There was a little panic,” Melvin said of the incident in which another Chinese man tried, but, failed to take away an 8-year-old boy playing soccer in the park.
 
The Chinese community, which has a long-standing tradition of self and mutual aid policing, quickly took actions. On September 17, the Chinatown Neighborhood Crime-Prevention Council invited police officers and the girl’s mother to its monthly meeting to discuss ways to beef up security.
 
So far police have found no one that matches the descriptions and sketches for the two men, but they have increased patrols around Chinatown schools.
 
Police gave educational lectures to the 600 students at Lincoln in late September to tell them what to do when strangers approached them. Officers also fingerprinted each and every of the student for future records.
 
Melvin said the school has installed surveillance video cameras. In a sign of easing worries, sketches of the male suspect posted on the doors of Lincoln have been removed.  
  
“There is less fear among the parents now,” Melvin said.

By Adelaide Chen

The nightlife in Oakland’s Eastlake area has never thrived, but it existed quietly. Among the local businesses today, many of the Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants close early, before 8pm.

If it wasn’t enough that the a string of robberies scared away customers in the evenings a few months back, business for the 20 or so restaurant owners have been hit by another factor–the downturn in the economy.

“We lose customers during dinnertime,” said Dien Dam, owner of Pho King Noodle House, which specializes in Vietnamese beef noodle soup.

“This time the economy has gone down and food prices gone up.”

Dam’s restaurant has never been robbed in its 14 year existence. But when four restaurants in the neighborhood last summer, no customers patroned her place after 4 or 5 o’clock.

These days she closes the restaurant at 6:30pm.

“There’s not enough (night)life,” she said. “Nobody walks outside.”

In Eastlake, over 150 small, immigrant-owned businesses line two parallel streets, International Blvd and East 12th. Storefronts often have signs in two or three languages. There are auto repair shops and beauty salons, realty and mortgage brokers, lawyers and doctors that cater to the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Latino residents in the area.

Kimberly To’s family owns New Saigon Supermarket and she has gotten to know how their business is affected directly by the financial situation of her clients.

The store’s highest sales fall on the first of each month when paychecks and food stamps are issued. During property tax season her sales are lower because her clients are saving up.

“They tend to cook at home more than eat out now,” she said. But it hasn’t affected the supermarket’s bottom line “because (the customers) still have to eat.”

Jackie Xian, 36, hasn’t fallen on hard times. But when he eats out with friends, he prefers to drive outside of the neighborhood, he said, to places where there are more businesses open and more people around.

“To have a good time, you need to feel safe,” he said. At 6 o’clock on a recent night, Xian, among others, was picking up takeout items for dinner, and not sticking around.

He said he chooses to meet his friends in other hotspots for Chinese restaurants. He preferred strip malls in Richmond off the 80 interstate, or south down the 880 freeway to the suburbs in Fremont and Milpitas.

Jose Macias said his family-owned restaurant and bar, La Estrellita, has been in business for four decades, and it has never been robbed. But the family takes precautions. The doors lock after dark, and the staff lets
customers in and out.

“I think everyone felt it,” he says of the robberies in Eastlake, that struck four restaurants serving Asian cuisine.

Macias said he noticed a ten percent drop in his sales this year, but his situation might be different compared to the Asian restaurants. His customers come from a wider range of ethnic backgrounds, he said.

“They’re diverse, like Oakland,” he said.

Victor’s, a bar down the street who serves a primarily Latino clientele, hasn’t had much of a drop off in sales either, according to the owner. On a early Sunday evening, a handful of bartenders and servers entertained over 20 customers. Ranchero music blared from the speakers.

Candelario Cuevas, who has owned Victor’s for more than 30 years, said he isn’t too worried about safety.

“The police patrol a lot,” he said. “They come around. You see them almost all night.”

Across from Clinton Park at Cafe DaHuong, Thanh Pham, 33, said more activities and festivals used to be held at the park that drew crowds.

Pham has lived in the neighborhood for over ten years. As far as the nightlife, young people would come to Eastlake, cruising Lake Merritt after hip-hop shows, he said. But the city began enforcing the ban on cruising, he said.

“Because hip-hop is supposed to be violent, the police say,” he said.

The Rainbow Cafe, which serves Hong Kong cuisine, used to be a popular late-night hang out place. It stays open until around midnight.

The manager, Alice Huang, remembers having more customers in their twenties come in.

But this year alone, the cafe has been robbed three times. The owner is thinking about closing the restaurant she said, partly because of the economy, partly because of the robberies.

On an early Sunday evening, there were a few occupied tables. Some of the customers had their eyes glued to the T.V. screen watching a football game.

“In a little while no one will come, once it gets dark,” Huang said, as she prepared for a late night at work.