A 20-year-old man was shot twice in the leg when more than three dozen rounds were pumped into a BMW sedan on Oakland's International Boulevard early Tuesday morning — another episode of routine gunfire in a city where progressive prosecutors and soft-on-crime politics have left law-abiding residents to fend for themselves.
The shooting happened around 4:27 a.m. in the San Antonio section of East Oakland, according to the Mercury News. A gunshot detection system logged over three dozen shots fired at the vehicle. The 31-year-old driver was uninjured. The car had numerous bullet holes. Both men drove to a hospital, where the wounded passenger was listed in stable condition — and where, authorities said, both men refused to cooperate with officers.
No arrests have been made. No suspect information has been released. No motive has been determined. The Mercury News reported that it remains unclear whether the shots came from another vehicle or from someone on the street.
When victims won't talk and shooters vanish into the dawn, that's not a policing problem — that's a culture problem, one fostered by years of progressive district attorneys who have signaled that consequences are optional and accountability is negotiable. Oakland has been a laboratory for that experiment, and the results are written in bullet holes.
The Oakland shooting wasn't the only violence marking the start of the week. In Cleveland, a 22-year-old Maple Heights man named Jahmere Williams-Johnson was fatally shot in the chest around 4 a.m. Sunday in the Garden Valley neighborhood, cleveland.com reported. Witnesses told police the altercation began when another man made advances toward two women at a gathering; Williams-Johnson confronted him, the suspect pulled a firearm, fired, and left. No arrest has been made. Williams-Johnson was pronounced dead at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.
It was the third fatal shooting in Cleveland over Juneteenth weekend. On Friday, 49-year-old Carl Formby was shot at a Sunoco gas station on East 93rd Street. The next day, another man was shot on the same block.
In southeast Baltimore, an unidentified man was shot and killed around 12:14 a.m. Tuesday on Leverton Street, Baltimore News reported. Officers found the victim suffering from a gunshot wound; he was taken to Johns Hopkins at Bayview, where he died shortly after. Homicide detectives are investigating.
In Savannah, the violence ran in the other direction: a police-involved shooting at 7:18 a.m. Tuesday near 43rd Street and W. Bull Street left two officers with minor injuries, the Savannah Morning News reported. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is handling the inquiry at SPD's request.
Four cities, four incidents in a single morning cycle — and in the civilian shootings, zero arrests. The pattern is plain: where prosecutors decline to charge, where police are hamstrung by politics, and where criminals know the system won't follow through, the streets settle disputes with gunfire. Oakland's uncooperative victims are a symptom of a city that has taught its residents that the law is not on their side.
The open question is how many more bullet-riddled cars and dead 22-year-olds it will take before the officials who engineered this failure are held to account for it.
