Oakland, a blue city in California, took down a traffic light at a busy intersection after thieves kept swiping copper wire, and residents say the nearby homeless encampment is to blame.

City workers replaced the traffic lights with four-way stop signs at the intersection located at East 12th Street and 16th Avenue.

The move came after people repeatedly stole copper wire and tampered with the electrical box at the intersection to allegedly steal power.

The city tried putting heavy cement blocks on top of the electrical boxes, but people simply dragged them out of the way, a city spokesman said. The stop signs are temporary, according to the city, but it does not have a timeline for reinstalling the traffic lights.

Neighbors expressed their frustration, and some blamed the homeless encampment around the intersection. The encampment spans about three blocks on 12th Street from 17th and 14th Avenues.

“If you really want to fix the stop sign, I think you really have to clean up this homeless encampment,” Tam Le, owner of Le’s Auto Body & Engine Repair, told CBS San Francisco. He has been running his auto shop on a corner of the intersection for more than 25 years.

“It’s just telling us that the city is giving up on us,” Le said.

The traffic lights had not worked properly for months before they were taken down, residents said.

“The city did try to fix the traffic light at least a few times. But once they fixed it, normally within a week or so, it will go out again,” Le said.

Violent crime is up overall in Oakland compared to this time last year, according to the latest police data. Robberies, in particular, have spiked, topping 1,000 incidents already this year.

Robberies involving a gun are up 21% to 409 incidents, and carjackings are up 4% to 166 incidents. Aggravated assaults are down but remain high at more than 900 incidents. Homicides are also down, but 23 people have already been killed this year.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP

Oakland residents have been sounding off about rising crime for at least a year.

Last May, about 500 angry residents showed up to a town hall meeting on crime to demand answers from city leaders on Oakland becoming more dangerous, especially violent incidents perpetrated on women and the elderly.

In July, the Oakland chapter of the NAACP blasted city leaders and called for a state of emergency over the city’s crime “crisis.” The black civil rights organization, which tends to lean Left, blamed the “defund the police” movement specifically as part of the reason for the crime spike.

In nearby San Francisco, the worsening trifecta of crime, homelessness, and public drug use has caused many businesses to abandon the city’s once bustling downtown area. This has left many commercial buildings empty and cut into the city’s tax revenue, exacerbating the city’s growing budget deficit, which officials warned could reach nearly $1.4 billion by 2027.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called for the U.S. and European Union to form a plan to seize or leverage Russian assets to offset Ukraine’s costs in fending off Russia’s invasion.

The U.S. and E.U. have access to about $280 billion worth of frozen Russian assets that Yellen and other officials hope to tap for Ukraine’s benefit. In remarks planned to be delivered in a speech in Frankfurt, Germany, on Tuesday, Yellen called for greater cooperation between the U.S. and E.U. to tap those resources, according to excerpts of Yellen’s speech viewed by Bloomberg.

“It’s vital and urgent that we collectively find a way forward to unlock the value of Russian sovereign assets immobilized in our jurisdictions for the benefit of Ukraine,” Yellen’s remarks said, according to Bloomberg.

The Treasury secretary also called for continued aid to Ukraine.

“It’s also critical that we ensure Ukraine has the support it needs to equip its military, fund critical services, and ultimately rebuild in the medium- to long-term,” the speech continued.

The proposal to seize Russian assets to offset the cost of the war for Ukraine has earned critics in the West who are concerned that such a move would destabilize international financial markets. If the risk to foreign assets held in the U.S. or Europe becomes too great, countries may move to reduce or eliminate their exposure to such recriminations from Western governments. The result would be a much more fragmentary global financial system.

Ukraine has lost ground recently to a renewed Russian offensive in the eastern part of the country. Russia has surged troops into the region, especially in the northeast near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city behind Kyiv.

Ukraine’s military has struggled to hold ground as it runs low on munitions, supplies, and soldiers.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP

“The situation is on the edge,” Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told The New York Times last week. “Every hour this situation moves toward critical.”

Budanov delivered his assessment of the situation from a bunker in Kharkiv. He said that the Ukrainian military lines are strained from a lack of troops.

“All of our forces are either here or in Chasiv Yar,” he added, referring to a Ukrainian stronghold about 120 miles to the south of the city, also under threat from Russian forces. “I’ve used everything we have. Unfortunately, we don’t have anyone else in the reserves.”

President Joe Biden signed legislation for the U.S. to provide Ukraine with about $60 billion more in military aid last month.