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WORLD> America
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3 officers dead, suspect killed in Oakland, Calif.
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-22 15:17 Police did not say why the officers had initially stopped the suspect, other than to call the stop routine. People lingered at the scene of the first shooting. About 20 bystanders taunted police. Tension between police and the community has risen steadily since the fatal shooting of unarmed 22-year-old Oscar Grant by a transit police officer at an Oakland train station on Jan. 1. That former Bay Area Rapid Transit officer, Johannes Mehserle, has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Monday. Violent protests erupted on the streets of Oakland in the weeks after Grant's death, further inflaming tensions. Officer deaths are nothing new in Oakland. The memorial wall in the Oakland Police headquarters shows that at least 47 officers died before Saturday. The wall shows the last officer killed in Oakland was in January of 1999. People left four bouquets of white roses under the granite wall inside the building lobby. The governor's office said Schwarzenegger would fly to Oakland on Sunday from Washington, D.C., to meet with police and Mayor Dellums to "get a firsthand account of what's happening." Both state Attorney General Jerry Brown and Dellums were at Saturday's news conference. A group of Oakland ministers went to the hospital to offer prayers and condolences to the family members of the injured officers and the dozens of Oakland police officers who gathered there. They said that on Sunday morning they would urge their parishioners not to let the event tear the city apart. Pastor Raymond Lankford, executive director of Healthy Oakland, urged people to show support for the officers and their families. "What officers do, that's a tough job," Lankford said. "They need love, they need support. They need to know the community is behind them."
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