Alameda County issues countywide curfew.
In the wake of widespread incidents of looting and property damage across much of the East Bay on Sunday, Alameda County officials issued a countywide curfew Monday.
The county curfew order is effective beginning June 1, and will be in effect from 8 p.m. each night until 5 a.m. the following day, until 5 a.m. on June 5, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office said.
People will not be allowed “on any public street, avenue, boulevard, place, walkway, alley, park or any public area…within the boundaries of the county,” the curfew order said.
Sheriff Gregory Ahern issued the order, and in it wrote that the curfew was necessary because “extreme peril to the safety of persons and property have arisen within the county…as a result of civil unrest, violence, looting, arson, and the destruction of personal and real property.”
There are exemptions from the curfew for “peace officers, firefighters, emergency operations personnel, other government employees engaged in authorized emergency operations, members of the National Guard, or any other responding military personnel deployed to the county,” as well as “individuals who can establish to the satisfaction of a peace officer that they are in such place for the sole purpose of traveling to their home or workplace or to obtain medical assistance,” the order said.
Any “authorized representatives of any news service, newspaper, radio or television station or network, or other media organization” are also exempt from the curfew, as are “people experiencing homelessness,” the order said.
Several Bay Area cities issued curfew orders of differing lengths on Sunday in reaction to civil unrest and looting. In many cases, the looting and property damage being inflicted on businesses across the East Bay appeared to be perpetrated by groups separate from ongoing protests against police violence and the police killing of George Floyd happening simultaneously around the region.
Ahern wrote if the county’s curfew order requirements are more stringent than any of the curfews set by cities in Alameda County, then the county order would supersede the local orders.
While protestors took to the streets by the thousands around the Bay Area in recent days to demonstrate for that cause, and have clashed with police forces using rubber bullets and tear gas on large crowds, Alameda County officials in an alert Sunday evening told residents to stay in their homes, attributing reports of lawlessness to “large, mobile groups of rioters and looters traveling throughout the East Bay Area.”
Some especially brazen looting took place Sunday in Walnut Creek, where one woman was shot in the arm as scores of people stormed Macy’s and the Broadway Plaza business district in broad daylight. The city imposed an immediate 6 p.m. curfew and asked all businesses “to close immediately. Please ensure your doors are locked & secured.
