A.M. Splash: Reaction to OPD Chief Batts' Resignation; BART Emails on Cell Phone Shutoff Decision; Occupy Bay Area

In a move that surprised nobody — except in its timing — Oakland police Chief Anthony Batts tendered his resignation Tuesday, a year before the expiration of his three-year contract. He said he is considering a research position at Harvard University.

...it was no surprise Tuesday that residents said they were saddened by Batts' resignation, but most said it was not completely unexpected. In his almost two-year tenure in Oakland, Batts began to lose the glow that surrounded his arrival.

San Francisco police searched two vacant hotels Tuesday, taking a battering ram to the front door of one, but found that activists for the homeless who occupied the buildings overnight had vanished.

In the wake of the scandal [in which BART shut off cell phone service during a planned protest], BART officials characterized the shutdown as a difficult decision made after rider safety was weighed carefully against the rights of the protesters. "We struggled with that decision," spokesman Linton Johnson said at an Aug. 16 press conference. “That was a gut-wrenching decision. This agency takes free speech seriously." But emails that BART released to The Bay Citizen this week show the decision was made on the spur of the moment with little discussion of the possible consequences. Officials approved one of the most controversial proposals in BART's history just hours after it landed in their inboxes.

Shareef Allman died in a hail of bullets after he was confronted by sheriff's deputies scouring a Sunnyvale neighborhood for the man who killed his co-workers at a Cupertino cement plant. But Allman didn't die from shots fired by deputies, the coroner's office said Tuesday. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Support for the effort is coming from some notable places. In San Jose, Mayor Chuck Reed on Tuesday said he hopes the protesters have an impact on the Obama administration's willingness "to do something about the lying, stealing and cheating going on on Wall Street," he said.

The City’s ambitious plan to offer residents greener power than PG&E took a significant step forward Tuesday. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission approved a term sheet Tuesday with Shell Energy North America to run CleanPowerSF, The City’s proposed public power program, and next week Supervisor David Campos will introduce it to the Board of Supervisors.

County officials, promising to combat Marin's not-in-my-backyard culture as they promote "fair housing" for all, want to spread housing for the poor across Marin, rather than concentrating it in minority communities. In addition, under an "impediments to fair housing" plan prompted by a dispute with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the poor, minorities, the disabled and women will get a bigger voice in how federal housing money is spent.

Reaching 1,070 feet into the air, San Francisco's proposed Transbay Tower would be the tallest building west of the Mississippi.But if approved and built, it could also do something else, critics say: Its shadow, and the shadow of five other buildings proposed to rise at least 700 feet from an area near the old Transbay Terminal at First and Mission streets, could stretch across Market Street and into the parks of North Beach and Chinatown, blocking the sun and turning the parks - at least at certain times of the day - into shadowy wastelands.That's hyperbole, city officials say.

Six months ago, things were heartbreakingly grim at A.G. Ferrari Foods. Within days of two of the original owners dying, the 11-store Bay Area company filed Chapter 11. The situation was looking equally bleak for Andronico's, the Bay Area supermarket chain, which was planning to "recapitalize" its way out of mountains of debt. The outlook for both suddenly got a lot brighter.