Source: Fremont Police Department

December 28 

#004 – Major Crimes located a vehicle associated with a wanted subject at the Mission Peak Lodge. This same vehicle was used in a pursuit with Hayward PD earlier this month. The subject was also wanted for an armed robbery/carjacking out of Union City. A SWAT callout was initiated. Prior to SWAT arrival subject, his girlfriend and a small child exited a room and attempted to drive away. Major Crimes, with the assistance of Street Crimes and Patrol, were able to stop the vehicle from leaving the parking spot. The subject exited the vehicle and attempted to flee, while reaching into his waistband. Subject was taken into custody after a brief struggle.

#13: Officer was dispatched to Launderland on Walnut Ave. on a reported transient male drinking alcohol to the rear of the business. Officer contacted the transient and arrested him for trespassing.

#16: Officer responded to Safeway at the Fremont Hub on a reported shoplifting and arrested a female for petty theft, under the influence of drugs, and a probation violation.

#034: Officers dispatched to an incorrigible on Simple Ct. Parents want 17yr old arrested. Officer investigated and cited the kid for misdemeanor vandalism.

#035: Citizen on Grand Lake heard a loud bang and noticed garage door in now open. Officer investigates and learned this was an attempt burglary.

#036: Citizen on Sedge St believes someone is actively breaking into her house. Officer documented the incident as a suspicious circumstance.

December 29 

#22: Officer conducted a security check at the Islander Motel and contacted a male subject on the property. Officer learned that the male was on probation. A search of his person revealed a dangerous weapon (dagger). He was taken into custody.

#027 - Officer stopped a male near Paseo Padre / Stevenson and arrested him for driving while unlicensed.

#002 - Officer attempted to stop a bike near 4100 Tamayo but the subject ditched the bike and starting jumping fences. Perimeter set to no avail. Bike was booked into FPD property.

#003 – While searching the area related to the above call, Officer located a female nearby standing on a corner. She was under the influence of a controlled substance and arrested.

#029 – Received call from citizen that a subject possibly had a gun near a room at Motel 6 North. Multiple units responded. Several rooms were searched. Reporting party later advised the object he saw might not have been a gun. In all, report taken for the searches.

#004 – Officers dispatched to the extended stay on Farwell where a subject advised that his brother had just sliced his wrists with a razor in the bathroom. Brother was located, treated on scene, and transported via ambulance for a 72 hour psychiatric evaluation.

December 30 

#21: Officer conducted a traffic enforcement stop at Hansen/Dusterberry and cited a male for possession of less than one ounce of marijuana.

#22: Officer stopped a male at Grimmer/Bay and arrested him for being under the influence of a controlled substance.

#17: Officer was dispatched to a non-injury collision in the parking lot of PF Changs and arrested a male for driving under the influence of alcohol.

#18: Officer was dispatched to Target at the Fremont Hub on a reported petty theft where security had followed the suspect out of the store. Officer detained a male and arrested him for petty theft with a prior, burglary, violation of a court order, and a probation violation.

When Craig Steckler was a young boy in Santa Ana in the mid-1950s, he and his buddies befriended a policeman who said he loved helping people, especially those defenseless against crime. Steckler, then a fourth-grader, idolized the good-natured lawman.

“From that age forward, I knew I wanted to be a cop and give back to the community,” he said. Steckler lived his boyhood dream, starting as a San Clemente officer in 1968 and becoming Fremont’s chief of police in 1992. But after more than four decades in law enforcement, Steckler — now 68 — said it’s time to call it quits. Sunday will be his last official day as chief. “I love this profession, but 45 years is long enough,” he said.

For the entire story that ran Sunday, click here.

I didnt’ see it on TV, but last Sunday (I’m told) host David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press used quotes attributed to Fremont Police Chief Craig Steckler from weekend articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post. Those papers had called Steckler for his thoughts regarding comments made by NRA chief Wayne LaPierre last Friday, when LaPierre called for placing armed police officers at each school in the nation in order to prevent another school massacre.

Steckler criticized LaPierre’s ideas. Here’s his mention in the New York Times:

Craig Steckler, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, called the rifle association’s proposal unrealistic and probably unwise. Putting at least one officer in each of the nation’s schools could mean hiring as many as 100,000 people, he said, expanding the ranks of state and local officers by one-quarter. Qualified applicants, he said, are already scarce.

“My city has 32 elementary schools, 5 middle schools, 6 high schools, and that doesn’t include private schools,” said Mr. Steckler, the police chief in Fremont, Calif., a city of 214,000 people. “My patrol force is 89 officers on all shifts. Where are we going to get 40-some additional officers?”

“I just don’t believe that putting more guns on the campus is a solution,” he added, saying that chiefs would rather see more resources devoted to mental health care and the control of assault weapons.

Here’s Steckler in the The Washington Post:

The NRA’s proposal would be unworkable given the huge numbers of officers needed, said the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Craig Steckler.

He pointed to budget cuts and hiring freezes and noted that in his hometown of Fremont, Calif., it would take half the city’s police force to post one officer at each of the city’s 43 schools.

The Department of Education has counted 98,817 public schools in the United States and an additional 33,366 private schools.

In the meantime, we’ll have a story in Sunday’s Argus newspaper (and Oakland Tribune and Daily Review) that will profile Steckler. Sunday is his last day as Fremont’s chief of police. He’s retiring after a nearly 45-year career, the last 20 years spent as Fremont’s top cop.

The Fremont Unified School District plans to use a recent $277,000 grant to complete construction for its new professional development center.

The new center will provide technology upgrades, including a state-of-the-art television studio. It also will feature an expanded facility, where district teachers, administrators and support staff will continue to receive professional training. Project construction is expected to be completed by late January, district officials said.

For more, click here.

The city of Newark is accepting applications to fill two open seats on the Planning Commission. When city offices reopen Wednesday, applications will be available during business hours on the 5th floor of City Hall, 37101 Newark Blvd.

Forms also can be downloaded from the city website, www.newark.org/departments/commissions.

Applications must be received in the city clerk’s office by 5 p.m. Jan. 14.

Mayor Al Nagy will appoint the new commissioners from the slate of applicants.

The commission meets the second and fourth Tuesday evening of each month.

For more information, call City Clerk Sheila Harrington at 510-578-4266.

The city of Fremont has received 10 applications from residents seeking to be appointed to the City Council seat that Bill Harrison vacated Dec. 4, when he was sworn in as mayor.

The council is expected to appoint its fifth member after holding special meetings Jan. 9 and 14. According to state law, the council has until Feb. 2 to fill the vacancy.

We’ll have more on this next week. There’s a lot of history and intrigue within the list of applicants. Until then, here they are, in alphabetical order:

Tariq Ali, David Bonaccorsi, Christina Broadwin, Robert Brunton, Robert Chavez, Yogi Chugh, John J. Dutra, Rick Jones, Raj Salwan and Rakesh Sharma.

The League of Volunteers, a Newark-based nonprofit, has scheduled a free concert Jan. 6 featuring a performer singing Western songs and telling folksy stories in the tradition of Will Rogers.

The event will feature Sourdough Slim, who will perform a one-man vaudeville-style cowboy show that combines old-fashioned country songs, yodeling and comedic sketches.

The cowboy character, depicted by actor Rick Crowder, also will play the accordion, guitar and harmonica. The League of Volunteers and the Newark Arts Council are copresenting the performance.

The concert will be held at the MacGregor/Bridgepoint School Auditorium, at 35753 Cedar Blvd. in Newark. Doors open at 1 p.m., and the performances will start at 2 p.m.

For more information, call 510-793-5683 or go online at www.lov.org.

Well, all that ‘happy holidays’ and  ‘good will to all men’ was fun while it lasted, eh?

From the Fremont Police Department:

Wednesday, Dec. 26, 2012:

#25: Commercial burglary at Public Storage on Peralta. Several units were broken into over the holidays.

#35: Late reported armed robbery at Walnut near Guardino. Victim was robbed of his I-phone by a HMA 25, dark hoody with a handgun. Victim waited several hours to call us.

#37: Residential burglary in the 37000 block of Elliot St. Pet sitter discovered the burglary. Owners are away on vacation.

CR #008, Officer stopped a vehicle in Niles, driven by a 17 yr old female with 3 passengers. The juvenile driver was arrested for DUI. This is her second DUI in a year. She was cite/NTA released to mom after her blood test.

#003, Residential burglary on Sunrise. The owners came home from a week’s vacation to find the home ransacked and their vehicles moved.

#009. Commercial burglary at Outback Steakhouse.

Actors at the Made Up Theatre say their improvised sketches have less in common with comedians than they do with construction workers.

That’s because the actors don’t tell jokes; rather, they build a story, piece-by-piece, by bouncing ideas off each other in front of an audience, said Ben Stephens, a founding member of the Fremont troupe.

“Improv is all about listening to your scene partner, accepting their idea and then adding on to it,” said Stephens, 30. “You never know what’s going to happen next.”

That unpredictability is part of improv’s allure, said Bobby August, one of the theater’s players.

“It’s a high-wire act,” August said. “It’s one of the most challenging things. It’s a humbling and risky art form.”

On the first and third Saturdays of each month, they perform short-form improv, in which the actors take suggestions from the audience and then act them out. “It’s kind of like the show, ‘Who’s Line is It Anyway,’” Stephens said. “It tends to be more playful.”

On the second and fourth Saturday of each month, the actors offer long-form improv, where they perform a 30-minute story made up completely on the spot.

The troupe’s annual special New Year’s Eve show, at 8 p.m. Monday, will be a hybrid of those two styles, Stephens said.

For more of the story, click here.

From Fremont police:

The Fremont Police Department has been awarded a new traffic safety grant for an anti-DUI program aimed at preventing deaths and injuries on our roadways.  Additional enforcement measures to combat impaired driving are coming as a result of a recent $49,000 grant awarded by the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) to the Fremont Police Department. The Fremont Police Department is dedicated to keeping our streets safe through both enforcement and education.

As part of the OTS grant, the Fremont Police Department will be conducting a DUI/Driver’s License checkpoint on Thursday, December 27, 2012, from approximately 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. in the area of Fremont Boulevard and Country Drive.

The special DUI Checkpoint grant is to assist in efforts to reduce the number of persons killed and injured in alcohol and other drug related collisions in the community.  The grant activities will specifically target impaired driving offenders as well as educating the public on the dangers of impaired driving through the use of DUI/driver’s license checkpoints.  When possible, specially trained officers will be available to evaluate those suspected of drug-impaired driving.

Drunk and drugged driving are among America’s deadliest crimes. In 2010, 791 people were killed and over 24,000 injured in alcohol and drug-impaired crashes in California.  Crashes involving alcohol drop by an average of 20 percent when well-publicized checkpoints are conducted often enough. Checkpoints have proven to be the most effective of any of the DUI enforcement strategies, while yielding considerable cost savings of $6 for every $1 spent.

“DUI checkpoints have been an essential part of the phenomenal reduction in DUI deaths that we witnessed from 2006 to 2010 in California,” said Christopher J. Murphy, Director of the Office of Traffic Safety.  “But since the tragedy of DUI accounts for nearly one-third of traffic fatalities, the Fremont Police Department needs the high visibility enforcement and public awareness that this grant will provide.”

Funding for this program is from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.