Robert GrahamA longtime business owner has brought together other restaurants and shops in downtown and near Lake Merritt to create a "No Bippin Allowed Zone" to stop more car break-ins.
"Bippin" is a term for breaking into a car and the community hopes their effort can partner with the city and police to reduce this crime.
"Oakland provided family, a sense of entrepreneurship, or sense of, you know, how to take care of yourself and just moving forward being proud of who you was," said Tyranny Allen, the creator of the campaign and the owner of eight different businesses including Winky Dinky Hot Dogs. "If we lose as a business then we lose the structure of the city, without no structure then you provide chaos, chaos is not the way we want to live."
Allen is from San Francisco but moved to Oakland decades ago while becoming a member of the Hip Hop group Digital Underground. He later became an entrepreneur, which kept him deeply connected to the town he now proudly calls home.