15-year-old “Seven” Shavers explains why she feels safe—and sometimes doesn’t—in her neighborhood and when taking the bus to school.
This story is part of a first-person series examining public safety and related issues in Oakland being produced in partnership with Oaklandside and El Tímpano, with support from the American Press Institute.
I live in kind of a good neighborhood, near International Boulevard. There’s not that much crime, except maybe once in a while—because you can’t really prevent it from happening, you know?
All my neighbors are nice. I think that’s important because you can rely on them if something bad is happening or if you need help with anything. Like, let’s just say there’s an emergency, and you need someone to talk to if no one’s around. When I was younger, I didn’t like to talk to my neighbors that much because, you know, “stranger danger.” But now that I’m getting older, I kind of like being more interactive with them and saying hi and stuff.
Sometimes I hear the police sirens going down International. I have the Citizen app on my phone so I can just see what’s happening and I get a lot of notifications, late at night. It’s not scary because it’s not really close to my house — it’s a few streets away — and I’m kind of used to it by now.
There was this one time when one of my neighbors — they live in an apartment — late at night, I think two guys came in with guns and robbed them. I didn’t find out till the next morning, and that was around the time when our camera was dead, so we didn’t have the footage.
I was kind of shaken up about it ‘cause it was a neighbor that I had known since elementary school. I was worried for him because that’s scary, you know? After that, I kind of felt less safe because maybe we could be next.
There are specific buses for the schools. I use the AC Transit app to see what times the buses are coming and I use the Maps app to look at the routes. The Skyline High School bus is always the first one, and if I miss that one, then the Montera Middle School bus comes 30 minutes later. If I miss that one too, I have to take a few buses just to get up to the school; I have to take the bus to either Fruitvale or Dimond, to get on the 39. But the 39 only runs every hour. I kind of take a long time to get dressed in the morning because I’m really into fashion and stuff, and I always have a hard time picking out my outfits. So I remember one time when I actually missed, like, half of a school day!
One morning, the bus came down and stopped to pick people up and there was a car that didn’t stop — it just kept driving and it hit the bus. So we were just going to wait for another bus, but my friend called her mom and she took us to school.
I know a lot of people on the buses, so I don’t feel unsafe when I’m on them. It’s just a bunch of different students or parents with their kids taking them to school. But when I’m late, I kind of feel like I have to keep my guard up more because there’s a bunch of random people around me. I gotta make sure nothing bad happens, you know?
The things that make me feel unsafe in Oakland are gun violence, random adults just talking to me, and being around adults when they’re drunk on the bus because they don’t have good sense and can’t really think straight. So it’s just kind of scary and I’m not comfortable being around them. I’ve seen a lot of drunk people get on the bus and they just act out a lot — yelling and screaming and stuff. It can be stressful a little bit.
One time, I was walking to the bus — during the summer, not during school — and this random guy in a car saw me walking and he honked his horn at me. I looked at the window to try to see who it was because it was a tinted window and I couldn’t see inside. So I just turned back around and kept walking faster, and he honked again. Then he rolled the window down, waved at me, and asked me if I was single. I told him I was 13 even though I wasn’t because I was just scared of saying anything.
Men are always randomly talking to me and trying to flirt with me. And it’s just uncomfortable ‘cause, you know, I don’t want to hear that stuff. It’s kind of scary because a lot of adult men, they’re kind of aggressive. So I’m kind of scared that they’re gonna try to hurt me if I ignore them or if I say no to them. So I just pretend like I can’t hear them or something.
Sometimes I’ll be walking home and random adults will just try to talk to me. I just ignore them and start walking faster since, you know, I’m just a teenager. A lot of people always say that I look older than my age. So sometimes adults talk to me thinking that I’m like 18 or something, and I tell them: I’m not an adult, you know?
As told to Tony Daquipa.
You should interview my kids- they hate taking the bus to alameda from west Oakland