memory has gotten better and it's like the puzzle pieces have all been [click] put together. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. ♪♪ right now at 11:00, oakland's police chief set to address concerns following the city's escalating violence, including several deadly shootings. the new steps being taken to help stop the violence within the city. and we are just moments away from that news conference coming for us. i'm marcus washington. i want to thank you for joining us for our midday newscast. >> i'm laura garcia. we'll have a live look in oakland in just a minute. we expect laron armstrong to respond to city leaders now calling for changes in policing and a crackdown on crime. the chief is expected to talk about the recent murders in the city and the additional staffing

of tactical units. oakland mayor libby shaff wants $18 million slotted for programs to help deter crime to go to oakland police following the recent spike in homicides there. the money was diverted from opd following a city council vote in june. >> the news conference follows the death of a man near lake merritt. eric davis worked in construction, before he came to oakland two years ago. heavily involved in his church in los angeles and we spoke with his mother and aunt who are just heartbroken and pleading for answers. >> he was our heart. trying to protect everybody. >> pick up for whoever can't pick up for themselves. >> crimestoppers offering a $10,000 reward for information in this case. that news conference is expected to begin within just moments. as soon as it starts, we will bring that to you live here during our midday newscast. this morning, one of the men arrested during the smash and

grab at union square more than a week ago appeared in front of a judge. >> 24-year-old callaway was 1 of 9 arrested during the chaotic night. nbc bay area's cierra johnson in the courtroom this morning. she is live in san francisco now to break down what happened as he faced a judge for the first time. >> yes, good morning, laura. cameras were not allowed in the courtroom but i was sitting in as he faced his first hearing. i saw callaway dressed in that orange jump suit as he sat next to his public defender to be arraigned on the charges of possession of that firearm the night of the smash and grab there at union square. the judge did order callaway to be on house detention and electronic monitoring. he is also ordered to stay away from 233 gary street which is that louis vuitton store there at union square. when i asked callaway's attorney about whether the community should feel okay or feel secure in this judgment, this is what she had to say.

>> absolutely. mr. callaway does not have a record of violent convictions. as stated, he is native to the bay area. he's a young black man. he has a 4-year-old child. the conditions are more than enough to ensure the public safety. again, he was not seen in the louis vuitton store mean was not charged with any sort of looting or anything of that kind. he's not charged with vandalism. and mr. callaway is intending to fight his case. >> now he is expected back in court on december 9th and has more suspects from that night headed to court. leaders in san francisco may take another step in responding to crime as well as those recent flash robberies. a vote is expected around 2:00 from the san francisco -- the governing, the supervisors, rather. that would allow off-duty deputies to be hired by businesses as well as

neighborhoods. now the deputies would be paid by businesses, not by the city. much like police officers, those deputies would wear their standard uniform where working and they would also be armed. so a lot happening in response to that recent rash of crimes there in union square. callaway is expected to head home where he will be on house arrest. and we are just a couple of hours away from the san francisco legislators making that decision on whether those deputies would be allowed to serve in the off-duty capacity of private security. a lot to keep track of. we'll keep you updated. live in san francisco, cierra johnson for nbc bay area news. >> thanks, sierra. new details in the legal proceedings over a police shooting in san francisco nearly five years ago. protesters stood outside the hall of justice this morning and held up signs calling for justice for sean moore who was shot back in 2017. a lawyer for kenneth cha entered a not guilty plea in court today. we have body cam video when

officer kenneth cha shot moore in ocean view while responding to a domestic call. moore later died in 2020. medical examiners determined the cause was tied to partisan internal injuries he suffered in that shooting. moore's family was there in court today. they spoke to us about wanting to see justice served. >> me and my mother are here to support my brother. this has been very difficult. >> his attorney claims the district attorney is only charging cha to deflect attention from the current recall effort. we're following breaking news this morning for you in san rafael where emergency crews are on the scene of a hazmat situation. right now people near the northgate one shopping mall are being told to shelter in place. police say a person was seen

pouring a green substance near the area around 8:30. it generated a strong smell and smoke. crews are trying to determine exactly what it is. new at 11:00, one person is dead following a drowning near san francisco ferry building. on twitter, city fire crews say it happened around 8:00 this morning. they are still working to determine how or why that victim was in the water. president biden urging calm along with vaccines and masks as the u.s. braces for the omicron covid variant. it's been detected in at least 15 nations. the latest case reported overnight in japan. sources telling nbc news that pfizer is pushing to open booster shots for 16 and 17-year-olds. the company expected to ask the fda to authorize the shots later this week. right now only those 18 and older are eligible for an additional dose. of course, this comes as the nation scrambles to contain omicron, the newest variant. south africa first raised the alarm with a slew of travel bans.

omicron has already spread and has been detected in 16 nations including japan. theranos founder elizabeth holmes back on the stand for cross-examination today. of course, this comes as she testified about abuse and control she suffered in her relationship with theranos executive sonny balwani. >> she's also reveal deg tails about a sexual assault she said ended her time at stanford. nbc bay area's kris sanchez joins us with more on where the trial stands now. kris? >> reporter: hi there, marcus and laura. the case right now is at a standstill. there's a 30-minute break in the courtroom right now. but already the day started with a back and forth with the judge without the jury present. about whether or not the deposition that sonny balwani gave to the s.e.c., the securities exchange commission, should be allowed. one side wants it. the other side does not. elizabeth holmes was already facing questioning about how she

handled those whistleblower complaints as she admitted that she tried to discredit them as disgruntled employees in order to protect trade secrets, she says. also today holmes will face cross-examination of her testimony. on monday in which she alleged she was raped at stanford at 19, claiming that that was the real reason that she dropped out. she also testified that focusing on starting her own company was the way she coped with that trauma. her relationship with sonny balwani also was mentioned. it was fraught with abuse, she said. it was physical abuse and verbal abuse and that he controlled her sleep and even her diet. while holmes told the jury that she was responsible for what went wrong at theranos and repeated that under cross-examination today, she also said she was under pressure from balwani. balwani denies those accusations. he'll face trial on the same charges next year. today as with most days, there were members of the public waiting to get into the court as well. including scott borden who drove

up overnight from los angeles. >> the story is just wild and, yes, i've been -- i read the book and the podcast and other documentaries and have been following every day the testimony and here i am. >> so there's a lot of information to unpack from the testimony yesterday that was very emotional and today which is the cross-examination and the jury will have lots of time to process that information as with the end of today, the court does not go back into session until tuesday. in san jose, nbc bay area news. >> thank you, kris. scott budman actually in the courtroom. he's been following the case since the beginning. get the latest on the trial by following him on twitter. live updates once again from inside the courtroom. his twitter handle is, @scottbudman. an east bay senior scammed out of jewelry. the sentimental connection that

makes this heartbreaking. after hosting one too many late-night sing-longs in their homes. they decided to open up their own piano bar. his go-to song has a connection to kelly clarkson. find out the tune his bar patrons go crazy for when you tune in here on nbc bay area.

♪give my regards to broadway!♪ ♪remember me to herald square!♪ ♪tell all the gang at forty second street♪ ♪that i will soon be there!♪ ♪whisper of how i'm yearning♪ ♪to mingle with the old-time throng!♪ ♪give my regards to old broadway♪ ♪and say that i'll be there, 'ere long!♪ this holiday season, we want to enjoy the gift of being together. for peace of mind, take the first step in knowing. because it might just be a cold, but you want to be confident. the binaxnow covid-19 antigen self test has the same technology used by doctors and detects multiple variants. so in just 15 minutes, you can test, know, and go. available in stores and online.

♪ ♪ we are taking you live to oakland right now. this is oakland's police chief leron armstrong. he just went up to the podium and he is purposely taking a moments of silence. 2:07, to acknowledge the lives lost most recently in oakland. this in regards to city leaders now calling for changes in policing and a crackdown on crime in that city. the chief is expected to talk about the recent murders in the city and the additional staffing

of tactical units. oakland mayor libby shaff wants $18 million slotted for programs to help deter crime to go to oakland police following the recent spike in homicides. the money was diverted from oakland pd following a city council vote back in june. we've been awaiting this news conference this morning. this, of course, comes following the death of a man over the weekend near lake merritt. this one of the moments of silence that they are taking this morning here at this news conference prior to getting it started. investigators say eric davis was the one who was killed. he worked at a construction site before he came to oakland just a couple of years ago. he was said to be heavily involved in his church in los angeles. we heard from his family members a little bit earlier in this newscast. crimestoppers offering a $10,000 reward for information in that case. there is also the case of a security guard that was recently killed as well. let's listen in.

>> today i'll be talking about the violent crime that's happened in the city of oakland over the last couple of weeks. a couple of follow-ups from some of the incidents that we've been investigating over the last couple of weeks and the way in which it's impacted our community. again, the oakland community is suffering from over 127 homicides so far. we are investigating this year. the first one to start off with an acknowledgment that kevin nishita lost his life over the weekend. he was loved by many. loved by officers and colleagues that he worked with. as you know, we released the surveillance photo of the vehicle that we believe was involved in this crime. that vehicle is a 2004 to 2008 acura tl white four-door with a sunroof and no license plates. if anyone has any information, related to that vehicle, please contact the oakland police

department's homicide section at 510-238-3821. our crimestoppers of oakland as well as the oakland police department is now offering a $32,500 reward for information leading to the arrest of the individuals involved in this crime. this continues -- we continue to see this reward increase as people, obviously, have some serious concerns. obviously, to our news crews that suffer us in the city of oakland, we're going to do everything we can to continue to make oakland a safe place for you to cover news, and we will be meeting with our local stations to have that discussion. i also want to recognize the homicide from this weekend of eric davis. this homicide occurred. mr. davis was following a group of individuals involved in car burglaries. it's a very tragic situation and it's unfortunate for the city of oakland. this occurred in the 600 block of grand avenue. our crimestoppers of oakland as

well as the oakland police department is currently offering a $10,000 reward. today i'll be releasing the description of the vehicle as well as a photo of the suspect's vehicle in that crime. that suspect vehicle is a toyota rav4, four-door, black. the vehicle may have a rear passenger side window that is missing. it's been shot out. we ask for the community's help in identifying that vehicle, and if we can identify the individuals responsible for that shooting as well. and help bring those to justice. also want to talk about the caravan, our response to caravan robberies. after a week last week where we have seen the tremendous impact of caravan robberies, not only in oakland but throughout the bay area, i immediately responded by redeploying our staff within the oakland police department. last weekend we staffed extra teams to be able to be out into the community and address these

violent robbery caravans that continue to impact communities across the bay area. a tactical response is what i deploy. essentially what i did was divide up our tactical team to put out specially trained officers throughout the city and four different quadrants in the city and make sure we had a quick response to those that would seek to come to oakland and use caravans of vehicles armed suspects to rob businesses. we were prepared, and we will be prepared moving forward. especially trained officers that are trained in de-escalating these highly armed situations. what i was concerned about was the amount of firepower that we continue to address to be confronted with every time these caravans come into oakland and our patrol officers having to drive into those situations and actually putting officers' lives at risk as well. we have two shootings at police officers over that -- over the

last weekend. and that has some serious concerns that when officers are responding to these caravans they are being met with gunfire. so in order to safely address this, we have to actually deploy our specially trained officers to be prepared to address these armed caravans. we'll continue to do that. i thank the mayor, mayor shaff, for her proactive approach to assisting the department and helping us identify potential opportunities for resources with additional academies, hopefully unfreezing of position and i think it's clear today as we sit with 676 officers currently at the department, that is the smallest staff that we've had in several years. it is lower than the staffing we had at this time last year where we had 740 officers. so to have nearly 70 less officers a year later is definitely going to impact -- van impact on our ability to

address public safety. but the mayor yesterday committed to helping this department working with the city council to hopefully identify additional academies, as well as potentially additional resources that we can bring to assist this department, to address crime in our city. but i also want the community to know that we are continuing to investigate these homicides. that we are following up on every lead that the community brings to us. and today after i get -- take questions, our homicide commander will be prepared to speak to the tenth arrest we have made for homicide in the month of november. so although we continue to see crime occurring, that concerns us, we want to make sure we're following up on those who pick up guns in our community by holding them accountable. that's critically important as well. so with that, i'll take questions and then i'll have the lieutenant come up and speak to the ten cases we closed in the month of november. >> chief, can you confirm the current status of cease-fire? you were talking about -- with

covid. are we -- just remind us where we are. >> yes, our cease-fire strategy is continuing. our cease-fire strategy actually never stopped. it was impacted by covid. and we weren't able to do the things we had done traditionally around call-ins and direct communication. but we are -- we have been for several months fully implementing the cease-fire strategy. we actually added an additional team in the month of november. teams have been reduced due to budget cuts but we increased an additional team in the month of november with additional six officers being deployed to our cease-fire unit. so our cease-fire unit is up and running. it's focused on those involved in violence, group and gang violence. we had a call-in this month, about two weeks ago, a call-in. and so we had individuals that attended that meeting. so we are following up. >> renegade running that was broken into four times over the weekend.

any leads on that one. >> i'm sorry, i didn't hear the question. >> there's a store called renegade running that posted about having been robbed four times in the last couple of weeks. any specifics on any suspects for that one or any of these? >> no, no specific suspects for that, but what we have seen is vehicles, one particular group in a vehicle commit multiple burglaries. and it's important when the community sees these individuals committing these crimes that they first call 911 but also, if there's any images that they can capitalure to help us investigate those crimes, we really would appreciate that and appreciate them sharing with us. what we've seen over and over is a trend of a group of individuals that sometime are not even from oakland come and commit multiple burglaries. as high as 30 burglaries in one particular hour period going from car to car, breaking into cars. but if that information is not shaird with law enforcement, then we can't have an immediate response.

so we ask people, even though it's an -- still call 911 so we can immediately respond and address that crime. >> as you hear right there, chief armstrong with the oakland police department addressing the crime within the city. he talked about our recent things they are doing, as far as dividing the teams. these are specially trained officers within four quadrants of the city to deal with the caravan of crime. they have criminals coming into the city and he's hoping to address it that way. he also talked about mayor libby schaaf working with the police department and with the council to release funds to add more officers to the police force. right now they have currently 676 officers within the oakland police department. he said the lowest they've had in quite some time and they need more officers to patrol all the crime that they're having right now within the city. we are dealing with 127 homicides within oakland this year. it's a number that no one wants to deal with, of course. he also addressed that recent

homicide within oakland over the weekend with eric davis. he did describe the suspect vehicle in that. it's a toyota rav4, black, four-door. he also said the rear window may be shot out there. there's a $10,000 reward through crimestoppers for that. we'll keep monitoring that news conference. you can find it at nbcbayarea.com. going to have much more ahead for you during our midday news conference coming up in just a bit.

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welcome back, everyone. want to check that microclimate forecast with kari. it was a cool start to the morning. how is it looking now? >> it's starting to warm up but still looks a little hazy. our live view over san jose, you can barely see the hills through all the hazy conditions. and that's because we are seeing some moderate air quality as we sometimes do during the wintertime. especially when we've had a stretch of some really dry weather. and our temperature is warming up, too. look at morgan hill. up to 72 degrees today and 72 in cupertino. you can see at the bottom of the screen the seven-day forecast shows that we're stuck in this weather pattern for a while longer. our temperatures today will reach up to 68 degrees in hayward. expect sunny with a light wind. in daly city, it's going to reach up about 61 degrees and more of the same in san francisco. mid-60s downtown and some upper 60s for mill valley to novato and 74 today in ukiah. looking at where all of the rain

is right now, it's still hitting the pacific northwest with another atmospheric river. this is going down in the record books for them as the wettest fall on record. meanwhile, we are just like, where is the rain? and it's because it's all still going farther to the north. blocked by this high pressure and that's also causing that sinking air that's pushing down the smoke and all the pollutants that we're seeing and giving us the hazy sky. but it's also driving all of the rain farther to the north. we're not going to see this pattern changing any time soon. so we're looking at temperatures above normal reaching into the low to mid-70s. it will get slightly cooler for the weekend as the high pressure moves away a bit and we see more clouds coming in and we're also looking at cooler temperatures for next week while san francisco will continue to see highs reaching into the mid to upper 60s. laura and marcus? >> thanks, kari. >> thanks for joining us. our next newscast at 5:00. you can watch the full news

conference of oakland police at nbcbayarea.com. all the latest information all day on our website as well. thanks for joining us for our midday newscast. we'll see you tomorrow morning starting at 4:30 a.m.

♪♪ right now on "california live" -- >> we're celebrating the season with giving tuesday. >> then kicking off christmas in the park in san jose. >> we're at lightscape, and i'm about to get lit. >> plus, we've got the sweet sounds of a father/daughter duo bringing joy to the world. ♪ look all around everywhere you look there's a little bit of christmas ♪ >> it's all happening right now on "california live." ♪ california california live