They Got Me

This is so ironic, but an important part of the journey.

I got mugged last night, Dec 15, (about 10:50pm) at gunpoint by some dudes in the Regen parking lot.

I had just gotten out of my car completely distracted trying to manage the backpack and other things in my arms when about 30 secs into it 2 young guys approach me asking for my wallet. They were black males, 18-23 maybe, black hooded sweat shirts with the hood up over their heads, welding a semi-auto 0.22. Before I could even respond they started going through my pockets and pulled out my cash and wallet. They ended up running off with my backpack, wallet, cell phone, cars keys and about 5 bucks in cash, but only after a brief debate about whether or not to take my car. And he did hit the car alarm to verify which car the alarm belonged to making me suspicious that they might come back for it. We got it on tape but there's no way to make out faces. Also another suspicious thing is that there was a car in the lot waiting that pulled off just as I parked, the police believe this was the get away vehicle that probably waited for them around the corner.

There wasn't any physical violence, I'm okay, learned my lesson and it's more just a huge inconvenience (tons of phone calls and unplanned errands). And again I was tempted to dismiss Oakland as hopeless and be off but I think now this just motivates me to want to do more to transform this place. It's going to continue happening, it might happen to me again, I just have to make sure I carry less on me and am alert. This was for a reason, it changes my perspective on things and allows me to have empathy that only comes from experience.

The OPD was amazing, by-the-way, they were here even before I got off the phone with the 911 operator. Oh and 4 people got hit earlier that night and 2 more as the officer was taking my report. They apparently work in maybe 4 groups of 2-3 hitting simultaneously, taking advantage of the fact that OPD can't be omnipresent.




The whole thing went down in less than a minute.