News from the San Francisco Bay area

Thursday January 16, 2003

OAKLAND Calif. (AP) Besieged by dwindling resources, the Oakland Police Department is considering not responding to every burglar alarm in an attempt to free up police to deal with violent crime.

Oakland Deputy Chief Michael Holland said the alarms, 98 percent of which are false, cost the department more than $1 million to respond to each year.

A similar plan was recently proposed in Los Angeles and is also under consideration by several departments in other states.

But if the response in Los Angeles is any indication, a move to cut back burglar alarm response in Oakland would meet sharp opposition.

Another idea Oakland police are toying with is charging residents and business owners fees for each false alarm over a certain undetermined limit.

The new alarm ordinance is expected to be made public in the coming weeks.

Currently, Oakland does not charge homes or businesses for excessive false alarms, but does place multiple offenders on a nonresponse list if they experience more than four false alarms in six months.

Oakland police Sgt. Donald Williams said there are close to 40,000 false alarms a year in the city, about a 30 percent increase from 10 years ago. He said taxpayers end up bearing the brunt of the faulty alarms.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) San Francisco will be hosting a major anti-war rally on Saturday that's expected to feature a diverse range of demonstrators including representatives from more than 50 labor unions, environmentalists and a group of naked women.

The march down Market Street is expected to draw twice as many labor unions than the anti-war demonstration last October. Nurses and longshoremen also are expected to attend the march, which is good news to many peace activists.

``It definitely helps to mainstream the movement,'' said Jason Mark, an organizer with San Francisco-based Global Exchange. ``It shows people that it's not just a bunch of people in dreadlocks out there. Blue-collar people are seen as having a lot of salt-of-the-earth wisdom and legitimacy. There not the usual suspects when it comes to peace and justice issues.''

The rally scheduled for Saturday comes weeks after 100 labor leaders from around country met in Chicago to plan how to sway their membership toward opposing a possible war with Iraq.

The event is expected to draw at least as many people as attended the Oct. 26 rally, which demonstrators estimated at 80,000 and police estimated at 42,000.

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OAKLAND Calif. (AP) As part of California's anti-terrorist efforts, a special task force assembled Thursday at the Port of Oakland to inspect big-rig trucks and boats for dangerous materials.

The California Highway Patrol, U.S. Coast Guard and the Oakland Port Authority began checking all trucks, verifying they had proper documentation and searching through all cargo leaving the port, said the CHP.

If something unusual was found, the vehicle was impounded, said CHP Sgt. Wayne Ziese.

The checkpoint inspections will continue unannounced in an effort to get the trucking industry in full compliance with current regulations, said Ziese.

Ziese said the inspections are intended to increase state and national security after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)