Yo! Youth OutLook

Measure Y: Parking Lot and Parcel Tax, City of Oakland. 69.5% Yes votes

The City of Oakland should increase successful after school, counseling, truancy, and job training programs, early intervention programs for children who witness violence, programs to prevent child abuse and domestic violence, and increase community police officers, paramedics and emergency fire personnel in each neighborhood by authorizing a surcharge on parking in commercial parking lots and parcel tax.

YO! asked students at the Media Academy in Oakland, a charter high school that is participating in our Mobile Publishing Team (MPT) workshops, what they thought about Measure Y. The measure, which passed in November, increases police officers, paramedics and emergency fire personnel in each Oakland neighborhood. Here’s what some student had to say.

Errica, 16

“Having more cops on the street, there will be a lot more drug busts, so therefore they will let the little fishes go so they can catch the big fish. There will also be less homicides and less young people dying.”

Rosa Velasque, 15

“I think that if we have more cops we might be in the same situation now because cops sometimes are more criminal than the criminals. But then I also think that Oakland needs more cops because of all the murders.”

Kim Deur, 15

“I think that it would be better having more cops because they’ll get trouble out of the streets. There is a bad side of everything, there will be more streets blocked off and more young people will get pulled over for not having a license and for being underage.”

Jose Alvarez, 15

“There will be less trouble, less homicides, and Oakland will be less of a bad city with more cops here. Then Oakland will be a place that has less crime than anywhere else.”

Diego Jimenez, 15

“More cars will be taken away, more people being deported. More cops will help the community, but more people will got to jail.”

Joanna, 16

“I think that more cops will be better in Oakland because it is too rowdy and way too ghetto and while one cop is busy doing one thing someone could be getting killed and that would be all bad.”