Berkeley: At a Berkeley City Council meeting Tuesday night, the city’s police department reported that violent crime and theft plummeted by 28 percent from 2007 to 2011. Violent crime decreased from 7,755 in 2007 to 5,553 in 2011, according to the Berkeley Voice. Despite the drop in crime rates in the past five years, Berkeley Police Chief Michael Meehan told the Voice, “[2012] could be a challenging year to meat goals based on preliminary information coming in from other cities.”

Oakland: Though the City of Oakland has been forced to cut the city’s budget, City Council members voted to spare an East Oakland teen center Tuesday night. The teen center was initially a project of the city’s redevelopment agency, but given the recent closure of agencies statewide, the center was left without funding. The city will assume operations of the outreach center from Councilmember Desley Brooks, the Oakland Tribune reported. Brooks has been criticized for the way she conducted business operations at the teen center.

San Francisco: Due to incorrect breathalyzer test results taken from the city’s police department, hundreds of DUI convictions could be removed from recipient’s records. The police department is “now being accused of gathering as many as 1,000 potentially faulty blood alcohol readings over a span of 10 years because they did not properly maintain and calibrate their 20 breath analyzer machines,” CBS reports. The faulty breath test machines are not being used anymore.