March 29, 2016
The shooter rang the doorbell, then straightened out his arms as he held the pistol in front of him with both hands. He waited for the doorknob to move and heard a little girl ask, “Who is it?”
March 17, 2016
Jury deliberations began Wednesday afternoon in the trial of 26-year-old Brandon Wallace, who has been charged in the murder and attempted murder of two men in 2010 on a sunny morning outside a South Berkeley barbershop.
February 05, 2016
The Berkeley scientist and mother who was struck by a motorist and trapped beneath his car while cycling near campus earlier this week is expected to pull through, family members said Thursday.
December 31, 2015
In 2015, crime looked to be on the upswing in Berkeley compared to the prior year’s significant reductions. If you missed any of Berkeleyside’s most-read and notable crime stories, we sum them up for you here.
December 02, 2015
Tuesday night’s council meeting ended abruptly with a split vote to adopt new laws proponents say will help clean up Berkeley streets and provide storage and improved restroom facilities for the homeless.
November 24, 2015
A broken elevator at a Berkeley apartment building owned by Equity Residential has left numerous tenants with mobility issues in the lurch this holiday season, and building management has been slow to handle the problem, residents report.
November 04, 2015
The Berkeley High School community is reeling after a racist message threatening violence against African Americans was found on a library computer Wednesday afternoon.
November 01, 2015
Thousands of revelers took to the streets around Channing Way and Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley’s Southside neighborhood Saturday night in what many called “a riot” that ultimately resulted in property damage and at least three assaults, one of which sent a victim to the hospital.
October 26, 2015
More than 100 people crowded into the North Berkeley Senior Center on Saturday to strategize about how to address problematic behavior in Ohlone Park linked largely to the area’s growing nomadic homeless population.
October 09, 2015
The father of two who was fatally shot Tuesday night in South Berkeley had been playing dice with the man who has been charged with killing him after emptying 16 rounds from a semiautomatic handgun into his body, according to court documents released Friday.
October 02, 2015
The shots rang out just after midnight, leaving seven people injured and dozens held hostage in Henry’s Publick House at the Hotel Durant in Berkeley’s Southside neighborhood. One of the young men who was shot would die. For the survivors, it was just the beginning of a more than seven-hour standoff between a schizophrenic man who heard voices and would order bizarre sexual assaults of his female hostages before being shot by police 24 times as he lunged, armed with a gun, toward a group of hostages when police moved in to detain him.
September 14, 2015
Tuesday night, the Berkeley City Council is set to consider a new proposal to increase the city’s minimum wage to $19 by 2020. The proposal, from the city’s Labor Commission, would increase and extend the current ordinance, which is set to boost the minimum wage to $12.53 by October 2016.
September 10, 2015
An annual enforcement effort targeting drinking at UC Berkeley as the semester kicks off has netted a record number of arrests and citations related to alcohol use around campus, but the calls for medical service for heavily intoxicated students have been on the decline, authorities reported this week.
August 11, 2015
Attorneys representing 14 people who say they were struck and jabbed by police batons, clubbed, beaten, teargassed, slammed to the ground, fired on with “less lethal” projectiles or arrested during December protests in Berkeley related to the “Black Lives Matter” movement are considering filing a civil claim with the city on their clients’ behalf.
August 03, 2015
One week after a police operation in southwest Berkeley sparked community questions about whether military tools and tactics have been unnecessarily adopted by local departments, the Berkeley Police chief and one of his captains said safety was the overriding concern that drove decision making last Monday.
July 23, 2015
The city of Berkeley has announced the closure of its historic municipal fishing pier due to “considerable structural damage” that has made the popular walkway unsafe for the public.
June 17, 2015
The construction company that built the apartment complex in downtown Berkeley where a fifth-floor balcony collapsed Tuesday during a birthday party, killing six and injuring seven, has been fined and sued in connection with its work in other locations, according to documents reviewed by Berkeleyside.
June 11, 2015
Berkeley police officers used 50 tear gas grenades and “blast rounds” to clear Telegraph Avenue during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in December, but police officials declined to say Wednesday night whether that had been excessive.
June 03, 2015
Teachers at Berkeley’s alternative high school have raised concerns about the state of affairs on campus, citing “extreme behavior” among students, chronically low attendance, a lack of academic rigor, and a generally unsafe campus environment due to deficient security resources and limited district support.
May 27, 2015
Moments before being struck by a fatal shotgun blast, a Pinole man killed in Berkeley in December used his body to try to shield his fiancée from the gunman, she testified in court Wednesday.
April 20, 2015
After four years of consideration, the city of Berkeley launched its Twitter account Monday afternoon to help improve the consistency and flow of information it provides to the public.
April 07, 2015
James Kenney Park in West Berkeley is slated for major repairs in the coming fiscal years, which will likely require closure of parts of its community center for 6-8 months, according to city staff.
March 31, 2015
For more than a month, residents around Berkeley have wondered online about a recurring nighttime boom that has woken babies, freaked out pets and set off car alarms. The sound, which has become known on Twitter as the #BerkeleyBoom, has been heard around the city, though it has been concentrated primarily in the southern part of town.
March 24, 2015
Thousands of Berkeley voters got stuck in an email storm last week after a technical glitch became a viral meme that prompted around 70 residents to hold a potluck picnic Sunday. It all started late last Tuesday when Nigel Guest attempted to send an email to himself that mistakenly hit the inboxes of thousands of registered voters.
November 20, 2014
According to evidence presented by authorities this month in the case against Krishna Ferreira, the victim had been a member of the West Side Berkeley gang who had fallen out of favor with his comrades — and been “green lit” for punishment — when he failed to comply with the gang’s rules while he was incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail in 2012.
October 24, 2014
On Russell Street a tree is blooming. Tibetan prayer flags are strung across its branches in a rainbow of color. White paper tags that flutter, holding messages of hope and healing, are its blossoms. Looking closer, one might notice laminated photographs and Buddhist passages hanging from the boughs, bouquets of flowers at its base.
October 23, 2014
Michael Diggs, the homeless man charged with killing a 54-year-old Berkeley man with a hatchet in late February, told police he snapped after the victim walked naked into the bathroom where Diggs’ girlfriend was showering, then tried to force her to have sex with him.
September 24, 2014
For most people in crisis, the first point of contact for help is not the officer or the firefighter, but a voice on the phone line. A missing loved one, a car crash, a harrowing encounter with a violent stranger: dialing 911 happens as the situation unfolds, or in its immediate aftermath. But who answers those calls? And who sends help?
July 25, 2014
The public dismay was palpable last month when the Berkeley City Council decided, in a surprise move, to put a parks tax before voters this fall without a related bond measure that would have infused parks and pools around the city with much-needed cash, reversing an earlier vote on the items.
July 11, 2014
The Berkeley man convicted in the murder of a young woman he had met only hours earlier is now facing 25 years to life in prison. A jury found 36-year-old Jamaal Anthony Prince guilty of first-degree murder just before noon Thursday in the slashing and stabbing death of Jennifer “Jessica” Kingeter on Dec. 28, 2012.
June 16, 2014
Community supporters of Berkeley’s municipal animal shelter have been raising alarm bells about the shelter’s budget for the coming fiscal year — and their concerns about the city’s lack of budgeting transparency are broadly shared.
May 29, 2014
For nearly four decades, Tyler Hoare has been adding whimsy to the waterfront with his salvaged wood creations: some 30 large sculptures including airplanes inspired in part by Snoopy comics; a submarine, a pirate ship, a viking ship, and a ‘King Tut ship’ with a gold-painted Egyptian-style figurehead; and, before most of the wood pilings in the water rotted away, spindly, rustic, 6-foot-tall sculptures Hoare calls his “post people.”
April 18, 2014
Stepped up police patrols, trimmed-back bushes and increased efforts to clean up graffiti around Strawberry Creek Park are among a slew of recent steps by the city following two troubling incidents in March, including a drive-by shooting nearby and the violent robbery of a Berkeley middle school student.
March 10, 2014
Every year on the anniversary of her fiancé’s killing, Tiffieny Dean makes a pilgrimage to the Berkeley Police Department to remind investigators that, three years later, the case remains open.
February 19, 2014
Nearly three years after Berkeley city staff said the municipality was working on a social media policy to allow for greater transparency and communication, the city still has virtually no online presence apart from its official website.