OAKLAND, Calif. (KRON) — In the aftermath of Wednesday’s mass shooting at a school in Oakland, in which six people were injured, Oakland Chief of Police LeRonne Armstrong spoke out about the incident and recent violence in the city.
Do you have any updates on the suspects who are involved in this shooting?
“No, we don’t have any more updates than we had yesterday. Essentially, we do know that there’s two individuals that we believe are responsible for this shooting. We believe that they fired over 30 rounds inside the school and obviously striking six people. And so we are following up on all leads and tips that we’ve gotten so far, but nothing at this point has led us to the suspects.”
We know of three school shootings that happened on Oakland campuses within the last 60 days. Can you help us understand why these incidents keep happening?
“Well, it’s been challenging throughout the City of Oakland with the level of gun violence that we’ve seen across our city. And for several months, I’ve been speaking to you, the public in the community about the proliferation of firearms. I think it was just a matter of time with the number of firearms we’ve seen in our community that they made them onto our school campuses, and that’s really unfortunate.”
Where are these firearms coming from?
“We know that these firearms, some of which are what they call privately manufactured firearms, ghost guns is what they’re known as. We also know that some firearms have been purchased out of state and brought into state and sold by some dealers. Our partnership with the ATF is critically important and they’ve been on the ground — as well.”
It seems like the suspects in this latest shooting were able to get onto campus pretty easily. Do you think this could have been preventable?
“No, I think the school campus has a security staff that’s at the door. Think any time armed suspects come to a campus, it’s very challenging to say anybody can stop them without being hurt or injured. I do applaud those that put their lives at risk and help students. I also want to thank the heroic officers that responded quickly and went into the school to address the shooters, as well as provide medical for those that were injured. But these are very difficult situations that you know, it’s hard to say if you can prevent them by having someone at any location when you have two armed suspects who intend to shoot someone.”
Is the answer to preventing future school shootings more policing or is it something else?
“I think it’s a combination of both. I think we have to have presence around our schools. We have to be prepared to respond to any incident but it really starts off with our school community, sharing information with police making sure that if any threats come to the staff or to the school that they share that if we hear any information regarding firearms on our campuses, that information needs to be immediately shared with law enforcement so we can prevent these things from happening.”
KRON On is streaming live news now
We heard Mayor Schaaf call yesterday for federal gun control to stop the flow of guns into Oakland. Do you support this?
“Yes, we’ve been calling on this for several months. I think the mayor has been echoing this pretty loud that we need legislative support to help prevent some of these high powered weapons from injuring our community. We obviously have had far too many shootings with rifles, high-caliber weapons as well as extended magazines that are often used in the shootings as well. All of those could be controlled by some legislative law that could help us.”
What is your message to community member concerns about what’s happening in Oakland? And what can we do collectively to address crime?
“My message is that the Oakland Police Department is going to leverage every resource that it has to prevent violence and to apprehend those that are driving violence. We clearly know that the vast majority of our violence is gang and group related violence, and we’re going to continue to use our ceasefire strategy to stop that violence from occurring. We ask the community if you know something, share something. This is not a time to think about not snitching or not bringing forth information. People who commit these crimes have to be held accountable. So I’m really calling on our community right now to bring forth the information that we need to find the individuals that committed this heinous crime.”