.Wednesday Must Reads: Schaaf Secures $750,000 Donation to Hire Local Cops; McClymonds’ Coach on Leave for Assault on Student

Stories you shouldn’t miss:

1. Mayor Libby Schaaf secured a $750,000 anonymous grant to train local residents to become Oakland police officers, the Trib$ reports. The city plans to use the funds to expand the Oakland police cadet program in conjunction with Oakland public schools. The grant, along with $450,000 in funds appropriated by the city council, will pay for 25 new cadet positions for recent high school graduates. More than 90 percent of the Oakland police force lives outside of the city — a problem that city officials have struggled to fix for years.

2. A McClymonds High School football coach is on paid administrative leave after a video surfaced of him pushing and tackling a student on a school bus, the Chron reports. The video shows DeCarlos Anderson, coach of the McClymonds junior varsity squad, shoving the student in the chest and body slamming him during the team’s return trip from a game in Crescent City.

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3. Fisheries experts are raising alarms about the sudden die off of fur seals along the West Coast, the Chron reports. The die off, which scientists from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration are calling an “unusual mortality event,” appears to be tied to abnormally warm waters in the western Pacific.

4. California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein are calling on President Obama to exonerate the “Port Chicago 50,” a group of Black soldiers who were the victims of racist court martial proceedings in World War II, the Bay Area News Group$ reports. The African-American soldiers were court martialed when they refused to load munitions at Port Chicago in Contra Costa County after two deadly explosions had killed 320 men. White soldiers were not required to resume work after the explosions and were not prosecuted.

5. And after GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson declared that Muslims are unfit to serve in the White House — a racist declaration that has stirred controversy within the Republic Party — he has skyrocketed to the top of the polls and is now in a virtual tie with Donald Trump. Trump’s poll numbers jumped significantly this summer after he falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants were rapists and murderers.