Posted on | November 22, 2025 | No Comments
Coach John Beam (left); Cedric Irving Jr. (right)
How dangerous is Oakland, California? It is one of the few cities in America that is worse than Baltimore. In the U.S. News listing of Most Dangerous Cities, Baltimore ranks fourth, while Memphis is Number One, followed by Oakland, with St. Louis in third place.
Let’s put some numbers on this. In 2023, the overall U.S. homicide rate was 5.6 per 100,000 population, while the rate in Oakland (26.9 per 100,000) was more than four times higher than the national rate, and about 50% higher than Chicago (18.7 per 100,000). The population of Oakland is less than half a million, and they average about two homicides a week, so getting murdered in Oakland isn’t a rare thing. It’s a routine fact of life, but one murder there recently made national news:
Oakland police on Friday arrested a 27-year-old former football player following the death of legendary Laney College coach, John Beam, who died from his gunshot wounds in what authorities described cryptically as a “targeted” shooting. . . .
The news of Beam’s death and subsequent arrest of Cedric Irving, Jr., 27, were announced Friday [Nov. 14], a day after Beam, 66, was shot before noon in the 900 block of Fallon Street, near the Laney Fieldhouse. That building is adjacent to the college’s football field and houses the school’s athletic facilities and resources, where Beam worked.
Irving was spotted before dawn Friday by Alameda County sheriff’s deputy Miguel Torres at the San Leandro BART station, conspicuously carrying two duffle bags, a source and police said.
No motive was given. . . .
At a Friday news conference, Asst. Police Chief James Beere said that Irving knew Beam, “but they did not have a relationship.”
He also said that Irving was not a Laney College student but had been known to “loiter around the campus.” Irving had played football at Skyline High in 2017, according to Max Preps, but not during the time that Beam coached there.
Beere did state that Irving was “on campus for a specific reason,” and that Beam was “targeted,” though he wouldn’t say more, as charges are pending. . . .
Police recovered a weapon that they said matched the caliber of live rounds found at the scene.
It is difficult to exaggerate how beloved the coach was:
Celebrated former football coach John Beam, who was featured in the Netflix series “Last Chance U” that showcased the connections he made with players others wouldn’t gamble on, has died after being shot on the college campus where he worked, the Oakland Police Department said Friday. . . .
The Netflix docuseries focused on athletes at junior colleges striving to turn their lives around, and Beam’s Laney College Eagles starred in the 2020 season. Beam gambled on players nobody else wanted. He developed deep relationships with his players while fielding a team that regularly competed for championships. . . .
Beam, who was serving as athletic director, joined Laney College in 2004 as a running backs coach and became head coach in 2012, winning two league titles. He retired from coaching in 2024 but stayed on at the school to shape its athletic programs. According to his biography on the college’s website, at least 20 of his players have gone on to the NFL.
Got that? Coach Beam took players that nobody else wanted and turned their lives around, sending many of them all the way to the NFL. Now he is dead as a direct result of the “Defund the Police” movement.
One day before his fatal shooting in what police called a “targeted incident,” Laney College athletic director John Beam stood in a community forum and said he was worried about safety on campus.
Beam, 66, raised concerns specifically about security at the Laney College field house, citing a nearby fire and a previous break-in. He made the comments Wednesday at a “Taco ’Bout Safety” event on campus. He was shot in the field house Thursday, and police announced his death Friday.
Cedric Irving Jr., a 27-year-old former Laney student and Oakland high school football player, was arrested Friday as a suspect in the shooting.
Two days before the shooting, an active shooter [training] took place on the campus.
Beam said at the event Wednesday that he felt the campus was less safe after the 2020 termination of a contract with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office that provided armed deputies to protect the school. In June, the Peralta Community College District switched its security contractors and assigned unarmed guards from Diligence Security Group to guard Laney College.
Beam claimed the security contractors were able to show him footage of a theft at the field house but did not intervene, recover items, or detain suspects. He questioned whether this was because of a shortage of guards spread across the four community colleges that make up the Peralta Community College District.
“Six guards, four campuses, 24 hours,” Beam said. “How does that work?”
The decision to terminate the contract with the sheriff’s office came amid the George Floyd controversy, Laura Powell explains:
In June 2020, activists in Oakland capitalized on the death of George Floyd to successfully demand that the Peralta Community College District — which includes Laney College — end its contract with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department for campus security.
The deputies were replaced with “local people of color,” who were unarmed, but many of them were reportedly “trained in martial arts.” Complaints emerged that the firms had not been not properly vetted. The new arrangement cost 50% more than the sheriff’s services.
The day before his murder on campus, Coach John Beam voiced serious concerns about campus safety under the new system.
Policy choices have consequences, sometimes tragic ones.
From a KTVU-TV report in December 2020:
Two weeks from now, armed Alameda County sheriff’s deputies will be a thing of the past at Laney College in Oakland, and other campuses that make up the Peralta Community College District.
“The relationship with the Alameda sheriffs ends on Dec. 31. So that really put them under a lot of pressure,” said David Rowe, a journalist at Peralta Citizen, which covers the four community college campuses in the district.
Some wonder whether the district’s board moved too quickly on Monday night, voting to hire several unarmed community-based security firms that will take the deputies’ place, without fully vetting those firms. . . .
“There’s no business license, there’s no security guard license, we have no sense of what kind of mental health training,” said Pamela Rudd, a journalist with Peralta Citizen.
At the district’s board meeting Monday night, interim Peralta Chancellor Carla Walter said the minority-owned security firms are prepared to patrol Laney, Merritt College in Oakland and the College of Alameda. Berkeley City College has an existing contract with another firm.
“We have done the appropriate due diligence,” Walter said. “We have checked each of the contractors’ backgrounds and their readiness for completing this work.”
The guards will be uniformed, local people of color, many trained in martial arts.
But the district will end up paying about $6 million to the new firms instead of the nearly $4 million it paid to the sheriff’s office.
“I think there was an expectation that the district was actually going to save money, that these community policing organizations would be less expensive than the sheriff, not more expensive,” Rowe said.
A few months after vouching for the bona fides of these security contractors, Carla Walter resigned as interim chancellor, citing unexplained “personal reasons.” So the person responsible for this decision didn’t hang around to see the results. Meanwhile, those diligent journalists at the Peralta Citizen got curious about the firms which contracted to provide security:
Affect Real Change, (AFC), doing business as Community Ready Corps (CRC), is slated to begin as the new security and safety team at Laney College beginning January 1, 2021, marking the end of Peralta Community College District’s long relationship and contract with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO). This move reflects Peralta’s community values and intention to align with those inherent in the Black Lives Matter movement. . . .
Most information about CRC, who will provide “community-based security services” to Laney College at the cost of 2.1 million dollars, has been gleaned from CRC websites and public records. CRC’s main website is also associated with getreadystayready[dot]org, a Black-owned business support fund, and the Black Solidarity Fund, blacksolidarity[dot]org created by CRC to create alternatives to traditional philanthropy. . . .
Although CRC’s mission to support and protect communities from racist intimidation, harassment and violence through a variety of community-based solutions for community safety is clear, their business structure is unclear.
According to their Peralta contract released with the public agenda on December 11, Affect Real Change is the company that will DBA, or “do business as” CRC. . . . On the Peralta contract, Affect Real Change is the company who is doing business as the secondary name CRC. . . .
A search on the City of Oakland’s business search website shows that the most recent business license for Affect Real Change expired on December 31, 2019. . . .
Neither Earl Harper, who is president of CRC, or CRC, are registered with the state of California as a Private Patrol Operator. According to BSIS, it is illegal to work as an unlicensed security guard and any company or individual who provides unlicensed security guard services risks severe consequences. . . .
A search on the California Secretary of State’s website shows Affect Real Change as a “foreign nonprofit” based in Monroe, Louisiana with Earl A. Harper listed as president effective December 11, 2020. Prior to that, newly elected Oakland City District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife was listed as CEO.
On December 12, The Citizen again reached out to Johnson and Walter to see if they knew about CRC’s security license status. Johnson said he didn’t know the answer to that question and told The Citizen to contact Harper, the name on the district’s contract with CRC.
One of the phone numbers listed on the district’s contract rang through to Fife, who suggested community activist Tur-Ha Ak would be the best person to speak with regarding CRC. On Peralta’s contract with CRC, Ak is listed as “co-founder” and point of contact for services. In a May 2020 article in Vogue magazine, Ak is referred to as Fife’s husband.
During a phone call with The Citizen on December 12, Ak explained, with pride, some of CRC’s history as community activists and supporters. He said CRC had provided security services for nearly 30 years with a model based on working within the community, building relationships, making it easy for CRC to call on other community-based services to help serve when needed.
However, In an attempt to clarify Ak’s affiliation with CRC, The Citizen asked what his role was relative to Harper. Those questions “don’t really deal with the general subject of security,” Ak said.
To summarize: Community Ready Corps (CRC) is apparently a front for Affect Real Change (AFC), the former CEO of which is Carroll Fife, who in 2020 was elected to the Oakland city council.
Oakland City Council member Carroll Fife
For several years prior to her campaign for city council, Fife was an activist with Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which “was founded in 2010 to train activists across California to organize low-income and minority communities in California in support of left-leaning policies.” Fife then became “one of the key architects of the movement that came to be known as Moms 4 Housing”:
In the fall of 2019 . . . Fife organized the takeover of a vacant house for a group of homeless and housing-insecure mothers and their children.
The four-bedroom house they targeted, at 2928 Magnolia Street, had been vacant for some time before being purchased for $500,000 by an investment firm looking to renovate and “flip” it — something the company had done to more than 100 other properties in the San Francisco Bay area. People in the tech industry (i.e., folks with jobs and money) had been “gentrifying” this area of Oakland, and the “occupation” of 2928 Magnolia Street was about putting a stop to this trend: “Fife visited every day, raised money, coordinated media coverage, and organized volunteers to protect and support the moms.”
After that episode in 2019, of course, came the summer of George Floyd in 2020, and Fife ran for city council on a “Defund the Police” platform.
Note that Fife used the hashtag #DefundOPD (Defund Oakland Police Department) in her social media campaign and specifically promised a 50% reduction in the department’s budget. And in September 2020, Fife was the keynote speaker for a “virtual teach-in” promising to “answer the following questions”:
- What does it mean to Defund the Police?
- How does investing in communities make campuses safer?
- How do we implement safety without guns and sheriffs?
- Are over-policing and under-resourced schools products of systemic racism?
- What does it look like to invest in students and communities?
- Does your vote matter now more than ever?
- How can WE make a difference?
As to what it means to “Defund the Police,” it meant that Fife’s organization got paid to provide security on campus with “local people of color,” and now, as a consequence, Coach John Beam is dead.
The killer? A kook: “Law enforcement sources also told KTVU that Irving believed Beam had used witchcraft on him.” Maybe I should host a virtual teach-in on the topic Crazy People People Are Dangerous.
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