Whose Streets?

Oakland residents convinced the city to rethink how it tackled gun violence. Now, amid calls to defund the Police other cities are eyeing it's strategy.

- By Samantha Michaels

IN AUGUST 2018, a few weeks after he was shot eight times at a party in Oakland, Andre Reed was recovering at his mom’s house, his wounds still open, when he got a message on Instagram. It was an old friend from his school days. She said some people were looking for him and wanted to talk.

Reed, then 35, had recently been released from federal prison, after years of bouncing in and out of the criminal justice system. “Is this the police?” he asked. She said she didn’t think so but would check. “They don’t get nothing to do with the police, nothing like that,” he recalls her saying when she messaged him back.