HOME: Oakland Equity Indicators | Public Safety | Community Stressors 

The Community Stressors Topic includes three Indicators that measure racial and ethnic disparities in domestic violence, homicides, and juvenile felony arrests. The first Indicator measures disparities in domestic violence victimization between African Americans and Asians. The second Indicator measures disparities in homicides between African Americans and Asians. The third Indicator measures disparities in juvenile felony arrests between African Americans and Whites.

Community Stressors is the second lowest scoring Topic in the Public Safety Theme and in the entire report with a Topic score of 1.7. The Indicator scores were all similar and extremely low. Domestic violence scored highest at 3 followed by homicides and juvenile felony arrests both scoring a 1. This is an area of extreme disparity.

In Oakland, the domestic violence victimization rate among African Americans was 2,111.8 per 100,000, compared to 835.4 among Latinos, 321.8 among Whites, and 223.6 among Asians. An African American person was 9.45 times more likely to be a victim of domestic violence than an Asian person and 6.56 times more likely than a White person. A Latino person was 3.74 times more likely to be the victim of domestic violence than an Asian person and 2.60 times more likely than a White person in Oakland. It is important to note, however, that domestic violence is generally under-reported to police, so we cannot be sure that the data we have here reflects the true rate of incidents for people of different races.

African Americans had the highest rate of homicides at 55.7 per 100,000 people in Oakland. The homicide rate for Latinos was next but much lower at 10.9 homicides per 100,000 people. The rate for Whites was 3.4 homicides per 100,000 people and the rate for Asians was the lowest of all at 1.5 homicides per 100,000 people. Because Asians had the lowest rate, this Indicator was scored between African Americans and Asians, but given the extreme disparities the score would still have been 1 had the ratio been between African Americans and Whites. In Oakland in 2017, an African American person was 37.62 times more likely to be a homicide victim than an Asian person and 16.19 times more likely than a White person.

The juvenile felony arrest rate among African Americans was 1,971.0 per 100,000, compared to 370.5 among Latinos, 30.1 among Asians, and 17.5 among Whites. It should be noted that the actual number of felony arrests for White and Asian juveniles was very low (4 each). An African American juvenile was 112.63 times more likely to be arrested on felony charges than a White juvenile in Oakland in 2017, which is a truly staggering disparity and by far the most extreme of any Indicator in this entire report.