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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Black Panther Apartments Assaulted By San Francisco Police
Press Release
BLACK PANTHER APARTMENTS ASSAULTED BY SAN FRANCISCO POLICE
Developer/Owner, Former Black Panther Leader Elaine Brown Accuses Police of Same Type of Assault as on Black Panthers in the Past
For Immediate Release—May 22, 2026
What: Highly-Awarded Black Panther Apartments in West Oakland Filing Criminal Charges Against SFPD for Brutal Assault
When: Friday, May 22, 2026
1:00 pm
Where: The Black Panther Apartments
1670 7th Street, Oakland, California
Contact: Misty Cross
info@
415-971-4085
At approximately 2:00 pm on May 21, 2026, more than 20 officers from the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) descended on 1670 7th Street, West Oakland, The Black Panther Apartments, demanding entry. They claimed to have a warrant but would not show it to building security, for which they were denied entry.
Instead of waiting to speak with the building’s Resident Manager, Misty Cross, as requested, SFPD officers used a large sledge hammer or metal battering ram to smash through the building’s front door windows and violently enter the building.
In the meantime, they had already arrested their “suspect” outside and down the street, a person who is not a resident, whom they knew was not a resident. Also, they handcuffed and detained one of the building’s security personnel for “obstruction.”
Brutally pushing aside Ms. Cross, six or more of them aggressively marched onto one of our elevators to go up to the floor where the apartment alleged to be the “suspect’s” residence was located.—During this time, parents and children going in and out of the building had to walk through the smashed glass all over the floor at the front door.
When police finally showed the warrant, it stated, among other things, that the warrant was related to a “robbery” in San Francisco involving a “yellow metal chain.”
After destructively “searching” the apartment where the “suspect” was supposed to reside—though he was outside in handcuffs—the SFPD officers reported they had seized “evidence” in a pair of “shoes” and a “jacket.” They also asserted they had seized a “firearm,” which, notably, was not found in the apartment but was purportedly found on the “suspect,” who was outside, a half block away, handcuffed.
Elaine Brown, CEO of Oakland & the World Enterprises, Developer/Owner of the Black Panther, filed a formal complaint today with the Oakland Police Department against the San Francisco Police Department stating that the SFPD’s actions at the Black Panther constitute crimes of assault, vandalism, false arrest and imprisonment, and violation of the Fourth Amendment, among others, and demanded criminal charges be filed immediately against the San Francisco police perpetrators.
Brown Blames Oakland’s Law Enforcement Shift to the Right
It was in this very block of 7th Street in 1967 that Black Panther Party Founder Huey P. Newton was assaulted by police, a confrontation that left Huey wounded and one policeman dead, giving rise to the “Free Huey” campaign and the expansion of the Black Panther Party. This block was also part of that swath of 7th Street that was once known as “Harlem West,” where artists like Billie Holiday and B.B. King entertained at nearby Esther’s Orbit Room and Slim Jenkins Supper Club.
While The Black Panther complex, a building with 79, 100% affordable apartments, is a keystone to resurrection of the Black economic power of Harlem West, where Brown’s nonprofit is set to launch five cooperatively owned community businesses, Brown believes Oakland is returning to the days of Tom Orloff with the current, appointed D.A., and police have become emboldened to follow suit.
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AN OPEN LETTER TO BLACK WOMEN ORGANIZED FOR POLITICAL ACTION ON ENDORSEMENT OF URSULA JONES DICKSON--AND ALL THE OTHER NEGROES WHO SUPPORT AND ARE SUPPORTED BY THE ENEMIES OF BLACK PEOPLE IN SIMILAR SITUATIONS!
How condemnable that Black Women Organized for Political Action (BWOPA) would actually endorse the most reactionary black woman on the American political scene since Condoleezza Rice for Alameda County D.A., Ursula Jones Dickson, comparable only to Clarence Thomas. This endorsement recalls BWOPA’s reactionary foundation as “Dames for Dellums.”—And this in a time when the U.S. Supreme Court, pressed by Clarence Thomas, overruled the 1965 Voting Rights Act, taking blacks back to Jim Crow, back to 1865.
Jones Dickson was appointed by the County Board of Supervisors to replace Pamela Price—the first black/black woman District Attorney in the County, who was elected not appointed, effectively opening the door for another “black” woman. Jones Dickson’s appointment had the strong support of Eric Swalwell, a stalwart in the campaign to recall Price, whose support garnered the recall endorsement of all 14 police unions in Alameda County. She had and has the strong support of three of the last D.A.s, who were collectively in office for a span of over 50 years: Lowell Jensen, Tom Orloff and Nancy O’Malley. Moreover, Orloff and O’Malley were among the leaders of the Price recall campaign. Support from that collection of racists should have been a clue to your organization as to who and what Jones Dickson represents.
Within one month (1) of being sworn in, in February 2025, Jones Dickson eliminated the Public Accountability Unit in the D.A.’s office created by Pamela Price to re-open dismissed or unprosecuted cases of police shootings/murders of civilians. Any black with a minimum of consciousness understands that blacks are the primary targets of such police shootings, shootings that are common and commonly dismissed. Jones Dickson has returned Alameda County to that racist tradition.
Jones Dickson has, since her appointment, set six teens, aged 14 to 17 years old, for trial as adults—double the number of children tried as adults over the previous 10 years. Notwithstanding that the U.S. is the only country in the entire world that has refused to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a global agreement not to adjudicate children (people under 18 years old) as adults in criminal prosecutions, the racial disparity in these prosecutions in the U.S. is well-documented: 59% of youth so adjudicated in the U.S. are black as compared with their general population percentage of 14%.
To date, Jones Dickson has failed to even open an investigation into the allegations of rape against Eric Swalwell, her greatest supporter, a well-publicized rape that took place in the Alameda County city of Dublin, his home town. This is true despite that the L.A. and Manhattan district attorneys, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. Department of Justice are actively investigating similar rape and sexual assault allegations against Swalwell.—And, she has yet to return Swalwell’s campaign contribution for the June 2, 2026, election.
Jones Dickson has received a $20,000 contribution from Tom Orloff for the upcoming election. Orloff spent his career trying to convict members of the Black Panther Party, most especially Party founder Huey P. Newton, stating upon learning of the death of Huey: “Newton played no positive role in the community…[He was] nothing more than a gangster.” And, it is noteworthy that Jensen’s career was built on his failed prosecution of Huey for the murder of an Oakland cop and attempted murder of another in 1967 on 7th Street in West Oakland—notably in the same block where we have built our Black Panther Apartments, composed of 79, 100% affordable apartments, lauded by environmentalists and affordable housing advocates and the black community.
Former County D.A. Nancy O’Malley has contributed over $5,000 to Jones Dickson. O’Malley, Orloff’s protégé, refused to reopen the Oscar Grant BART police murder case and charge the second BART cop involved in Oscar’s murder, Anthony Pirone, who held Oscar down on the BART platform while the shooter cop shot him in the back and killed him.
97-year-old Lowell Jensen dragged himself to Jones Dickson’s swearing-in, to join his racist successors, Orloff and O’Malley to embrace Jones Dickson. And now she’s embraced by you.
History will not forgive you.
Elaine Brown
