Jack Newman and Brian Stieglitz, Daily Mail, June 30, 2021 Robbers held up a television crew at gunpoint during an interview with the director of violence prevention in Oakland amid the city’s huge wave of violence, police have said. The attack took place outside City Hall on Monday just hours after the police chief blasted his city’s decision to defund its police department by $18.5million despite a 90 per cent increase in murders. The NBC Bay Area news crew was interviewing Guillermo Cespedes at around 3pm when two armed men tried to take their camera, the Oakland Police Department said. A scuffle broke out and a private security guard who was contracted by the news agency, pulled out a gun and told the robbers to leave.