Also, read my Oakland stories at the Contra Costa Times website or in the Montclarion/Piedmonter.

Oakland is suffering from the foreclosure crisis that is affecting the nation. Although the city cannot regulate the actions of lenders, it can manage the blight that comes with vacant properties and can use leverage to ask banks to back off on foreclosing.

“I have all the confidence that the city’s housing staff is going to proactively address this issue,” said Larry Hynson, policy analyst with ACORN, a community organization that counsels homeowners in trouble.

The foreclosure rate in Oakland is rising, according to City Attorney John Russo’s office. Russo has sponsored a new hotline, (510) BE-ALERT, for homeowners in trouble.

The resolution, which passed unanimously on Tuesday, urges banks to work with homeowners, possibly by turning adjustable-rate mortgages into more stable, fixed-rate mortgages. The resolution also requires city staff to look into the feasibility of providing city loans to buyers in trouble and requiring bank-owned, vacant properties to be managed so that blight and vandalism are avoided.

The agency has been busy removing debris from storm drains, and it wants home and business owners to check and clean private drainage systems and clean up leaves, yard debris and lawn clippings.

Beginning this week, residents can pick up a maximum of 20 sandbags and 25 feet of plastic sheeting per household or business to prepare for flooding.

The materials are available from the city’s municipal service center at 7101 Edgewater Dr. and the drainage maintenance satellite office at 5921 Shepherd Canyon Rd. Proof of Oakland residency is required.

Oakland fire stations will also distribute up to five sandbags to Oakland residents for pick up at the station.

Report flooding problems at 615-5566.

So far 20 volunteers have signed up for a two day training that will be conducted by Oakland police traffic officers. The training will show them how to use a hand-held radar gun purchased by Quan’s office for the program.

After they are trained, groups of three volunteers will take the radar gun to areas where speeding is common. They will clock the speed of cars and send speeders license plate numbers to police who will mail the speeders a warning letter. Volunteers will not have access to driver information.

The first speed trap will be set on 35th Ave. in the Redwood Heights area. Another group is organizing a trap for Skyline Blvd.

Like their peers around the country, Oakland residents are living longer, and they are more active in caring for their own cognitive health. Now, for the first time, the center is responding to their needs by offering a computerized brain fitness course developed by San Francisco-based PositScience.

Ranging in age from 61 to 97,  they work through a series of six  listening exercises each designed to challenge a different part of the brain and to stimulate the release of neuromodulators, or learning chemicals.

And six weeks in, some in the class are already reporting increased alertness, sharper focus and better learning.

“Now I remember what I’m forgetting,” quipped April Hecter, 65, of Oakland.

Radiating a quiet enthusiasm from behind her sequined glasses, Teri Barr, 54,  organized the class.

“I got interested because some of my students were complaining about their memory,” said Barr, who has been teaching adult education classes for 31 years. “There’s so much news about how your brain needs exercise to stay healthy.”

So, last year Barr started teaching a memory improvement class based on her own research. She meets weekly with her students to work on puzzles and other brain stimulating activities.

Leslie Hammett, 82,  of Oakland was one of the first to sign up for Barr’s memory class.

“We need to keep active to avoid Alzheimer’s,” Hammett said.

That class was so popular that Barr’s employer, Pleasant Valley Adult School,   began to look for a more science-based curriculum. The school invested around $4,000  in PositScience’s Brain Fitness  program, which was developed by 50  neuroscientists from around the world.

The 40-lesson, computer-based course meets five  days a week for two  hours a day. Even though the class is a huge time commitment, 60  people turned out for 21  open slots. The school had to implement a lottery system to select participants.

“It’s just like a breast exam to prevent cancer,” Hamlett said. “This is preventative.”

Until recently, most scientists thought that there was little you could do to boost brain function once you hit adulthood. But a large scientific community now believes that the brain retains its plasticity—the ability to rewire itself for better function—even as the brain ages.

In one particularly difficult exercise, the computer plays a series of distorted phonetic sounds, asking the user to click buttons identifying the order in which the sounds were played. Other exercises involve matching and listening comprehension.

The lessons grow increasingly difficult as your skills improve. Barr  calls it, “working at threshold.”  And, it can be maddening. That’s one reason why Barr  thinks it’s important to conduct the program as a group activity.

“We try to laugh about our frustrations. We do a lot of community building. That’s what’s better than doing it at home,” Barr said.

Paula Johnson, 61,   enrolled in the class after she was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

“It reminds us all that you need to work at remembering. I have to focus and work at keeping my brain sharp. You get kind of lazy about it,” Johnson said.

Barr  says the course will be offered again in the spring. There is a $10  lab fee for the class, and there will likely be another lottery to determine enrollment.

Tears poured out of the eyes of Charlette Wallace as she hugged her sister, Carol, in celebration on the front steps of the Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland Thursday. A 12-man jury had just sentenced Willie “W.L” Thompson, 34, and LaVar “Mooney” Coleman, 27, to life in prison for the shooting death of her nephew, Dante Wallace.

“If you pray hard enough, things will come true,” she told her family. “Oh, thank you Jesus!”
The verdict put an end to the emotional four-week trial before Superior Court Judge Leo Dorado that determined accountability in a four-man shootout between childhood friends.

In the early hours of April 25, 2004, Thompson and Coleman killed longtime friends, Wallace and Ronnell Hodge, in a shootout on 65th Avenue in an East Oakland neighborhood known as, “the Village.” The four men, along with the only eyewitness, Matthew Cobbs, had been close friends growing up, playing football and baseball in the village streets as kids, and later, drinking and partying as adults.

Wallace said things went sour between the four men when her nephew and Hodge moved out of the village to create a safer environment for their families.

“Jealousy comes when you make it out of the ghetto and others can’t,” she said. “Jealousy comes from trying to get an education and trying to better yourself.”

Wallace acknowledged that the verdict wouldn’t bring back her nephew, but she said the sentence guaranteed others would be safe from future altercations with the convicted men.

“Closure is that we can be at peace and not have to worry about no menaces to society and our family,” she said

OAKLAND – Are Willie “W.L” Thompson and LaVar “Mooney” Coleman murderers who hunted and killed two childhood friends like prey? Or were they acting in self-defense during the bloody four-man shootout that has torn neighbors, family and friends apart? Now, a jury will decide what happened during the early hours of April 25, 2004 in the East Oakland neighborhood know as, “the Village.”

In closing arguments of the double-homicide trial, Deputy District Attorney Chris Lamiero told jurors that Thompson and Coleman instigated the armed conflict that left Ronnell Hodge and Dante Wallace dead. He was responding to the defense’s claim that the two would have killed in self-defense if Hodges fired his .357 caliber revolver first.

“The law does not permit an act of self defense to be contrived. You cannot create a situation and then say you were acting in self defense,” he said.

Lamiero pointed to testimony that claimed Thompson and Coleman followed Hodges and Wallace up 65th Avenue – armed – and initiated a shouting match.

The 12-member jury was handed the case Tuesday after closing arguments wrapped up in the four-week trial before Alameda County Superior Court Judge Leo Dorado in Oakland.

Lamiero also responded to criticism from the defense that he had relegated two human to animals by using a hunting analogy to describe the murder.

“They say, ‘this is an outrage, he called them animals.’ I didn’t call them animals. They are men,” he said. “Animals are not responsible for what nature dictates them to do. But as men, they are accountable for killing two men.”

It had a magnitude of 5.6 on the Richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The epicenter was 5 miles north of the Alum Rock area of San Jose.

The shaking in the Oakland area and surroundings was categorized by the survey as “weak” to “light.”

“There have been no reports of any casualties or damage,” said Carieann Bedwell, a geophysicist at the geological survey.

She said that the temblor was felt as far north as Fresno.

Although Oakland is vulnerable, as the largest city on the Hayward fault, only 20 percent of Oaklanders are prepared for a disaster, according to Renee Domingo, director of emergency services for the City of Oakland.

But earthquakes like Tuesdays do motivate people to get trained, she said.

“Anytime there’s anything close to home, people call. It definitely raises the level of awareness,” she said.

For more information on how to prepare for an earthquake or other emergency, contact C.O.R.E. 

Oakland police used photos from the gang’s MySpace page to identify Dwayne M. Stancill, 19 who was arrested on Wednesday.

The Hyfee Boyz MySpace account has a dozen small photos that primarily feature young men throwing up hand signs to the camera.

Stancill is the son of San Leandro police Det. DeWayne Stancill. He was  arraigned at 2 p.m. at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland.

The store, which replaced an Albertson’s supermarket, had some local opposition because of fears of traffic congestion. But generally residents are happy about the opening.

The store, part of a privately held, nation-wide chain based in Southern California, is 11,000 square feet.