Alameda Police Nab Oakland Murder Suspects

The killing of 15-year-old Iko Bayarsaikhan in Alameda on Halloween night was a particularly vicious act. A pack of thugs shot her in the back when their armed robbery in a park went awry.

Writing before any suspects were identified, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Chip Johnson merely imagined that the killers might be Oakland thugs. He wrote it would be "hard to swallow if the shooter who killed Iko turns out to be from Oakland. That will mean that our own cup runneth over, that the violence plaguing Oakland is spilling over into other communities." (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 5, 2007)

"Iko" Bayarsaikhan

Johnson was spinning what-if talk, some might have said. But not for long. The day after Johnson turned in his column to editors, Alameda police arrested three male juveniles. The Oakland Tribune reported, "The three boys were taken into custody in Oakland." (Nov. 6, 2007) Several more youth were arrested a week later in Oakland. Two weeks after the killing, one of them, a 16-year-old who lives on 26th Street in west Oakland was charged with being the shooter who killed Bayarsaikhan. Additional youth will be charged.

Incidentally, columnist Johnson also reported, "The Alameda Police Department ... is the only department in Alameda County with three staffers certified in the collection, processing and comparison of fingerprints." The Oakland police department has to contract out fingerprint analysis to Contra Costa County, which it does only for a handful of cases.

What are Oakland officials doing about the public safety crisis? They are preparing a program for outreachto "at-risk" youth on the streets, especially gang members. The program boils down to asking the thugs that they not kill each other when they have disputes among themselves.

As for little Iko and other victims of the thugs' business of armed robbery, City Hall has nothing to offer – because that would mean confronting the demand for at least 1,100 police officers in Oakland, a city of 400,000 residents. Not to mention the 75,000 residents of Alameda.

Teen Murderer Knew Oakland Doesn't Find Killers

If anyone thinks the thugs do not know how under-policed Oakland is, consider this case. One of the Oakland youth who killed Iko Bayarsaikhan in Alameda had this conversation with a detective of the Alameda police department:

"How come they don't do this for people in Oakland?" the 15-year-old asked when talking about how Alameda cops had been so dogged about tracking down the killers.

"What do you mean?" the detective asked.

"In Oakland, they don't do all this to look for somebody," the youth replied.

Detective: "We're not in Oakland. This is the city of Alameda." (San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 17, 2007)

Also on the tape of the questioning, the killer teens displayed what the prosecutor termed a cavalier attitude about the murder they committed. Instead of expressing remorse, they wanted to know who "snitched."