Vera Davis’ granddaughter addresses the VNC regarding Repass.

An unusually large number of Oakwood Community residents attended the Venice Neighborhood Council (VNC) meeting Tuesday night to voice their concerns and complaints regarding a recent police presence at the Oakwood Park during a Repass, which is a gathering of friends and family after a funeral.

Most speakers felt police presence was unnecessary, an offense to community, and racially motivated.

Captain Brian Johnson said he was told there would be 400 gang members and the “shoreline” people would be attending. He said 7 to 8 cars were sent.

Captain Johnson apologized. He said police presence was overbearing, overdeployed. “The people needed to be given time to grieve,” he said.

“My job is to acknowledge what happened and do it a better way,” he said. He also said he and Reverent Horace Allen will be meeting with the community members to see how situations like this can be handled more congenially for all concerned.

Many members of the Oakwood community addressed the board.
One member said “we don’t even have 400 men in community much less meet at the park.”

Racially Motivated
Most felt all the park harassment was racially motivated. One example was drinking in the park. There is a group of men who meet at the north end of park. They drink, play chess, talk. Community says they are continuously harassed while a community group plays “slush” ball drinking alcohol and are not harassed. One group is black and the other is white. Oakwood residents ask why the duality of treatment. One policeman suggested to men at north end of park to put alcohol in a paper cup.

People are not supposed to smoke in the park and during the Repass, smokers were asked to leave the park. This was considered a very insensitive, unnecessary act by the police at that moment in time for those grieving.

A couple of the black speakers said that “white people didn’t want the Blacks east of Lincoln and now the white people are trying to get them out of Venice completely.”

Gary Weatherford, son of Glenn Featherstone, said, “We’re not going anywhere.” The baseball field at Oakwood was named after Featherstone, who was a resident and Abbot Kinney business owner in Venice as well as a little league coach for 40 years in Santa Monica, Venice, Culver City area.