An Alameda County Superior Court judge had his Rolex watch stolen by a group of men just blocks from an Oakland courthouse Thursday, according to a local report.
The incident comes two days after hundreds of residents turned out to decry what they painted as deteriorating public safety in the Bay Area community.
The young men, believed to be between 18 and 22 and traveling in a light-colored Hyundai, accosted the judge just blocks away from the city's main courthouse, according to the Berkeley Scanner.
Oakland police deferred comment to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. Spokespersons for the sheriff's office did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
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Oakland police statistics show a slight increase in robberies in 2023 through the end of April. There were 964 this year, compared to 943 in 2022. However, strong-arm robberies have spiked 35% in that same span, according to police statistics.
On Tuesday, nearly 500 residents packed a meeting with city officials and police leaders to raise their concerns about public safety.
One concerned resident, Denise Lillian, told authorities she was "totally traumatized" after being attacked outside her home on Monday, according to KTVU FOX 2.
"Two kids beat the s--- of me in front of my house," she said.
They knocked her to the ground, punched her, kicked her and dragged her across the pavement, she said.
"It's one of the most terrifying things in my life," she added.
Earlier this month, the city saw 100 robberies in a week, with 50 taking place over a single weekend, according to Oakland police.
"When judges, Marines and former senators can’t even feel safe walking down the streets of California anymore, how are the rest of us supposed to feel?" asked California GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson, referring to the 2021 assault and robbery of former Sen. Barbara Boxer in Oakland.
And just across the San Francisco Bay, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had his skull fractured with a hammer during a home invasion attack last year.
The robberies that happened included acts like carjackings, shootings and assaults.
"Oakland, like other Democrat-run big cities, has fallen into a state of lawlessness," California Assemblyman Bill Essayli, a Corona Republican, told Fox News Digital. "Crime and violence is out of control and the political leaders there are unwilling to address the criminal crisis."
Essayli, a former deputy district attorney and federal prosecutor, blamed in part California's lenient criminal justice reforms: Propositions 47 and 57, which reduced certain crimes to misdemeanors and lowered the amount of inmates in state prisons, and AB 109, which transferred some parolees from state supervision to the counties, for "emboldening criminals."
In addition to those laws, Alameda County's progressive District Attorney Pamela Price has come under fire for her own policies, which have included soft punishments for violent crime suspects and calling for a rally against a local TV news station.
In April, she told community leaders she was looking into ways to punish gang members implicated in the stray-bullet shooting death of a toddler named Jasper Wu without sending them to prison.
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Jasper was asleep in a car seat as his parents drove down I-880 on Nov. 6, 2021, when rival San Francisco gang members opened fire on each other from separate cars, according to authorities.
In April, another gang-related shooting on the interstate left five-year-old Eliyanah Crisostomo dead in the backseat of her family's vehicle.
James Gallagher, the California State Assembly's Republican leader, took issue with Price and her party's policy priorities.
"Alameda County’s woke DA has made a career of putting criminals first, and this lawlessness is the result," he said. "Every time Democrats reduce consequences for violent criminals, they send a message that it’s OK to victimize people. We need to start holding criminals accountable instead of enabling them."
Fox News' Greg Wehner and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
