In-N-Out closure fuels claims about Oakland’s “most dangerous square mile.” Is there real evidence?

OAKLAND — Bars and restaurants come and go, but the impending loss of the city’s only In-N-Out Burger is driving talk of the city’s crime problem to the next level.

The SoCal-based fast-food chain, which has gained a passionate following during its two-decade expansion across the state, announced last weekend that the last day of business for its Oakland restaurant at 8300 Oakport St. will be March 24.

It’s a blow to the city’s struggling business scene, especially given that the location was still profitable, according to In-N-Out Chief Operating Officer Denny Warnick, who said in a statement that the restaurant was “regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft and armed robberies.”

The impacts of crime in the area near the airport — part of what’s commonly referred to as “deep east” Oakland — have drawn notice across the globe, with conservative British tabloid Daily Mail labeling the neighborhood this week as the “most dangerous square mile in America.”

It is yet more fuel for the growing political movement targeting Alameda County’s progressive leaders, with recall efforts underway against District Attorney Pamela Price and more recently against Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao.

“How much more do we plan to (lose), the crime is out of control!!!” an X account for the Price recall movement said about the closure.

Despite the headlines, however, there is no hard data on how the neighborhood near the airport and Coliseum Complex compares to other crime-affected urban areas in the country.

Crime problems in that area are nothing new. Frequent car burglaries led the Wal-Mart on Hegenberger Road to close in 2016, around the same time as the nearby diner Carrows. Last year, fried-chicken chain Raising Cane’s said it would close the dining room at its Edgewater Drive spot, KTVU reported.

The “most dangerous” label appears to have started with an online blog post published by Seattle-based e-commerce company PerfectRec, which used the expression to refer to the Shell gas station at 285 Hegenberger Road, a half-mile away from the Oakland In-N-Out.

The post, published by PerfectRec employee Wally Nowinski, went viral on social media, though critics online have pointed out that the data analysis relies not on crime statistics, but Google reviews that reference crime.

It also makes no direct comparisons to other gas stations, which further clouds the assertion that the Shell station is the country’s single most dangerous place to fill up a tank.

Nowinski, who lives in El Cerrito, said he had scraped reviews of the Shell station as part of his job, which involves providing product recommendations to online customers. The reviews that mention crime, he notes, stand out from the pack because most were posted recently.

“What’s interesting here is what went wrong: Up until 2021, every single complaint was, ‘The car wash doesn’t work, the cashier was rude to me’ —  now every review says, ‘I was robbed while pumping my gas in broad daylight,'” he said in an interview.

With Oakland’s only In-N-Out closing, the closest location for the city’s residents is now across the Webster Street tube in Alameda. Before it opened in 2013, then-District Attorney Nancy O’Malley warned that it would potentially become a hotbed of crime from robbers in Oakland.

The statement drew attention at the time because O’Malley overstated the extent of the robbery crisis, citing numbers that were much higher than in reality.

In-N-Out, meanwhile, is a California fast-food favorite, but has become more controversial in recent years for its political stances during the pandemic — namely banning its workers from wearing N95 masks and refusing to check customers for proof of vaccination.

The company briefly closed all its Contra Costa County locations in 2021 in protest of COVID rules there.

“We are grateful for the local community, which has supported us for over 18 years, and we recognize that this closure negatively impacts our Associates and their families,” Warnick said in a statement.

Despite the much-discussed crime woes, the Shell gas station remained busy on a recent rainy Tuesday afternoon, with cars and vans filtering in and out as normal.

One man filling up at the pumps, a Los Angeles resident who asked that his name not be used due to safety concerns, said he usually stops there before returning his rental car at the airport during business trips to Pleasanton. The car is usually full of his belongings.

“I haven’t had any problems here, but I look over my shoulder once or twice before filling up,” he said.

Two clerks inside the store said emphatically that they didn’t want their names to be used in any discussion of the station’s crime troubles.

“We’re in danger every day we come in here,” one of them said.