Vallejo city officials said the death, from an incident at a cleanup was accidental, with a public works crew discovering Oakley after he was being compressed within the debris.
Nearly three months after 58-year-old James Edward Oakley was crushed to death by a bulldozer, the Vallejo Homeless Union and POOR Magazine are still demanding answers.
The union, claiming there is more to the story, is beginning its search for answers with a 5 p.m. Tuesday news conference in front of Vallejo City Hall.
“They knew James was there when they ran that backhoe through that lot,” said Shawn O’Malley, longtime friend of Oakley and a currently houseless organizer with Vallejo Homeless Union. “First they kill him, then they try to kill his reputation.”
Vallejo city officials and police said in late February that the death, from an incident at a cleanup at the 2300 block of Broadway Street on Dec. 24 was accidental, with a public works crew discovering Oakley after he was being compressed within the debris. A Vallejo Police Department investigation into Oakley’s death determined there was no indication of any intent to cause harm, while the Solano County District Attorney’s Office said there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges.
A Solano County Coroner’s Office autopsy determined the cause of death to be blunt force injuries. However, the coroner’s office doesn’t deal with a possible criminal element of the death, only the cause.
“The city sends its deepest condolences to the family of the deceased person,” Vallejo City Manager Andrew Murray said in a news release last month. “This was a tragic incident.”
Eli O’Malley, another organizer with the Vallejo Homeless Union — which has approximately 60 members — said her first reaction to the news was one of mourning, followed by one of anger at the lack of response by the city toward Oakley.
“When I heard the news it seemed like a chill went through me,” Eli O’Malley said. “We know that in other sweeps the city has almost hit people before. But I also thought, ‘Hey, I’m in a house right now with my family. Was James waiting on a call from his family?’ It was the day before Christmas and was the family waiting on a phone call that never came to pick him up?
“But I was also upset that the city didn’t release his name on the second city news release. I think the city could have spent more time talking about him rather than their own employee, their own liability.”
Shawn O’Malley is still upset over the portrayal of Oakley as a criminal.
“He was a gentle giant kind of guy,” said O’Malley. “If I needed a jump or something he’d be right there, many times actually, you could always count on him.”
POOR Magazine Homefulness co-founder Tiny Gray-Garcia says the city’s sweeps treat citizens like “trash.”
“Sweeps are literally killing houseless people from Shannon Marie Bigley in California to Cornelius Taylor in Georgia, and now James Edward Oakley, all run over by bulldozers in ‘Sweeps’ of their outdoor shelters,” said Gray-Garcia. “As poor, houseless, indigenous people we have our own healing, practical solutions to homelessness, they do not include spending millions of tax dollars sweeping humans like we are trash.”
Oakley’s death came eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that cities are free to clear homeless encampments even when those living on the street have nowhere else to go.
Vallejo is still currently working on a Navigation Center and the Broadway Project, which have been met with delays for years. The Broadway Project is currently over 90 percent complete. According to Murray’s message in Vallejo Weekly last week, the final certificate of occupancy will likely be in May, with full occupancy of residents by August.
Since 2018, lower court rulings had prevented local governments in California and throughout the West from arresting or fining people for sleeping on public property if beds weren’t available in homeless shelters. When cities moved to shut down an encampment, they were generally expected to offer everyone living there shelter or housing. But few cities had the resources to move all their unhoused residents indoors.
The press conference and prayer ceremony will feature houseless residents of Vallejo and housed advocates and houseless/formerly houseless members of Homefulness and POOR Magazine/Mixed Kollective and Where Do We Go.
Eli O’Malley said the press conference will ask a few demands, including a stopping of all the sweeps, more accountability and a full transparent report and information on Oakley.
“We’re skeptical of the reports the city has released and we want to keep the public’s interest in mind,” Eli O’Malley said.
Discover more from World Byte News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.