Killing for respect

A puzzling ground zero in Americas struggle with crime and raceAMBULANCE, not police; I saw the look in your eyes, says Phil Tagami, a native of Oakland and a property developer in the city, as another siren wails outside his downtown office. Mr Tagami, of Japanese, German and Jewish stock, knows his sirens and loves his town, which he calls the working waterfront for the Bay Area. Many of the people who work in San Francisco and Silicon Valley (across the bridge to the west) or in Berkeley (just to the north) live here. Then he opens a folder in a big pile of crime statistics. The story that emerges is not quite what recent headlines have suggested. Oakland is trying to return to normal after a horrendous and atypical bout of black-white racial tension. It began on New Years Day, when a white officer shot and killed a young black man lying face down on a railway-station platform. Bystanders recorded the shooting on their mobile phones and riots broke out. Then, last month, two white policemen pulled over a young black man in a routine traffic check. The man, Lovelle Mixon, who was on parole from prison and suspected of rape, opened fire, killing both policemen. He ran to an apartment building where he barricaded himself in with an assault rifle and gunned down two more officers before being shot to death himself.