25,000 Oakland Viewers Can't Watch NFL After Gunfire Severs Fiberoptic Cables

25,000 Comcast customers in the Oakland, California, area were unable to watch the 49ers in Sunday’s NFC championship — or anything else — on Sunday after gunfire severed the fiberoptic cables linking them to cable television and Internet services.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

The blackout was first reported around 5 a.m. when bullets apparently cut Comcast fibers in multiple locations near 69th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard, said Joan Hammel, a Comcast spokesperson. Hammel said Comcast has seen similar bullet damage on occasion in the past.

…

Oakland police were investigating a shooting that occurred around 3:30 a.m. in the 6800 block of MacArthur Boulevard, a police statement said. The Police Department’s ShotSpotter gunfire detection system reported 17 rounds fired. At the location, officers found bullet casings, and surveillance video showed a person inside a vehicle firing shots out their window “into the air,” police said.

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The huge blackout came hours before the 3:40 p.m. kickoff of the San Francisco 49ers’ matchup against the Los Angeles Rams in the National Football Conference championship game, leaving thousands of 49ers fans without viewing options. Some connectivity was restored, but by 6 p.m., as many as 20,000 Oakland customers still didn’t have service, Hammel said.

Oakland has suffered a violent crime wave, like many other Democrat-run cities. Last year, the police chief slammed the city council for cutting police funding by $18 million in deference to Black Lives Matter activists as murders soared in Oakland.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.