You don't have to write the SFist Blotter to notice that we've had a disturbing uptick in violent crime over the last few weeks -- we've now had 14 murders in the last 17 days, with six murders taking place this weekend. Two parents were shot in front of their children on Friday night in Mission Terrace (the five-year-old knocked on doors in the neighborhood until someone came out to help), a man killed his wife and then himself in the Excelsior, and then two men were killed in the Lower Haight Saturday night. We think that count doesn't include the two burned bodies they found this week too -- one woman's body was found Friday afternoon on a pier near Monster Park, and another body was found in a burning building in the Bayview on Wednesday night. (Readers, let us know in the comments if the count includes those two now as well.)
So what's the deal? On January 2, the city had just patted itself on the back for reducing the murder rate in 2006 by 11% over 2005. Well, in today's Examiner, local Republican Art Bruzzone pens a commentary noting that the city has experienced a spike in aggravated assault and robbery-type crimes, and calls for an increased police presence in the city. And, as a commenter on the local chatboard SF Junto points out that while the murder rate may have dropped in 2006 compared to 2005, the murder rate is up 36% since 2003.
Will the mandatory foot patrols help? Let's hope.
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Ken Garcia in the Examiner also points out that SF sends fewer people to prison than almost anywhere else in California:
http://www.examiner.com/a-506758~Ken_Garcia__Few_cities_more_welcoming_than_S_F____for_hardened_criminals.html
Don't you feel safer now?
The foot patrols won't do anything. The two main problems are (as QandA pointed out) an ineffective DA's office, and ineffective homicide detectives (or inspectors, as they're apparently called in SF).
You can have foot patrols, hundreds of extra cops, quality of life crackdowns, fancy statistics like CompStat -- but without being able to solve crimes and then put the people responsible for them in jail, all of those other front-line resources are useless.
The way SF is going now, it will be like New Orleans or NYC in the 80s.
Absolutely, Bah. Just yesterday I was sayin to myself "self, I swear this town is gonna be just like New York in the 80's soon." It's truly frightening watching this town slide into anarchy. One day soon this whole city is gonna blow up and idiots like Kamala Harris and Alix Rosenthal are never going to see it coming.