‘All over this city, there’s tons of them. It’s disheartening. It’s discouraging, because it’s so many.’

OAKLAND, CA – AUGUST 22: A picture of a 24-year-old man who was shot on July 18th is seen at a memorial after another fatal shooting there in the 1900 Block of Foothill Boulevard in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, August 22, 2021. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

By JAKOB RODGERS | jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

Veronica Ward still makes the drive over and over to Oakland’s Garfield Park, unable to keep away from the place where she saw her brother’s lifeless body lying on the pavement in July.

But as she makes the drive, she often sees new memorials dotting the roadsides, honoring other people killed in Oakland — three in the last week alone, she said.

“All over this city, there’s tons of them,” Ward said. “It’s disheartening. It’s discouraging, because it’s so many.”

That cycle of violence continued Monday when a 40-year-old man was found dead on 45th Street in the Temescal neighborhood. That marked the 131st death investigated as a homicide by Oakland police in 2021 — the city’s highest total in nearly a decade.

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Not since 2012 have so many homicides been investigated by Oakland police — part of a wave of violence that has seen the number of annual killings in the city climb almost 70 percent from just two years ago. The bloodshed has re-activated the debate about how best to keep Oaklanders safe and the role of police in doing so.

Mayor Libby Schaaf called Monday’s killing “a somber milestone to hit,” adding that it was “devastating to see all that progress erased since the pandemic.” Still, she said that the city was taking a “holistic” approach to once again cut down on the number of killings within city limits.

She hailed recent moves by the City Council to approve two new police academy classes and add 60 officers. She said the city is working to place more violence interrupters on the streets to prevent bloodshed before it starts.

“Not long ago, we were able to make dramatic reductions in that gun-violence rate by taking this comprehensive approach, and that is what we will do again,” Schaaf said.

Others feel the city isn’t doing enough. The ever-rising number of homicides is part of a national story tied to the economic woes wrought by the pandemic, said Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project. She said Oakland’s violence-prevention measures need more time and help to work.

“It hasn’t had a chance to get off the ground,” Brooks said.

Just a few years ago, homicides were declining in Oakland, reaching a low of 75 in 2018 before climbing slightly to 78 in 2019. But that number jumped to 109 last year as part of a national spike that roughly coincided with the coronavirus pandemic.

While the number of killings is starting to level off in some cities, Oakland’s continues to rise. This year’s total ties the most the city has seen since 148 homicides in 2006.

For those left behind, grief wields its terrible power.

Ward still weeps for her bother, Travis Ward, who was fatally shot July 24 near Garfield Park in East Oakland. For her, the holidays will likely include another trip to the spot where her brother died — as she’s done every week since she got the call that he was killed.

“There’s just something that keeps driving me over there,” Ward said. “It feels like yesterday. I don’t know where five months went, but it feels like yesterday.

“I just sometimes get angry, then I get sad, then (I’m) in disbelief about it,” she added. “So it’s denial and everything else wrapped in one.”

The 2021 toll means that on average, a person was killed in Oakland every two or three days. The year started with a spate of mass shootings — at least six in the first half of 2021 — and continued with a drumbeat of carjackings and robberies.

Most are still unsolved, no matter whether on the city’s streets or freeways.

As of Dec. 3, Oakland police had made arrests that led to charges in 44 percent of their homicide cases. Zero arrests have been announced in the five homicides being investigated by the California Highway Patrol because they took place on freeways and highways within Oakland city limits.

“I don’t wish this on my worst enemy, the pain I have to go through,” said Christina Hughes, 38. Her daughter, Zoey, was among two teenagers slain in May when their party bus was ripped apart by a hail of bullets.

Christmas will be difficult to celebrate, Hughes said. Zoey, who was 16 when she was killed, would normally decorate the tree. Hughes said she keeps thinking of her teen’s laugh and how she taught her little brother to sing songs by the rapper Rod Wave.

She wondered how seven months could pass without anyone being arrested for the killing.

“Do they get to live the rest of their life free, and we don’t get Zoey anymore?” Hughes said. “I can’t imagine that that’s the way this story’s going to go.”

After spending months mourning the loss of her brother, Ward said the report of yet another person slain in Oakland was too much to handle.

“It’s sad and scary all at the same time,” Ward said. “It’s like you don’t know if you’re going to walk out the door and make it home.”

Staff reporter Harry Harris contributed to this report.