December 10, 2007
SFist Blotter
-- Really? At Union Square? Where we sit and enjoy our Border's-bought cream cheese stuffed pretzel? Let's back up a bit: according to SF Crime, a 16-year-old boy was shot while kicking it in the Union Square area at around 9:30 p.m. on Friday night. "A bullet struck the teen in the ankle and he was transported to San Francisco General Hospital in stable condition" just 30 minutes after SFPD responded to yet another shooting at Eighth and Market Streets.
No arrests have been made in either shooting.
-- Less than one week after a triple shooting left three people in critical condition at the intersection of Stillman and Third streets, a brutal fight broke out in the same area after residents of a nearby building reportedly dropped water balloons on passers-by in the wee hours of Saturday morning. At around 3 a.m., a balloon-hit one angry pedestrian who then retaliated by firing two shots in the air. After that, the alleged shooter and his pals managed to subdue one of the mischief makers in the building, and then beat the living crap out of him.
Why isn't this intersection -- located near arena venue City Nights -- better patrolled? Well, according to authorities, SFPD is spread so thin right now that things are going to get worse before they get better. Great. And with SF Crime and FCJ being two of the few outlets that let people know about SF-based shootings, we imagine violent crimes will become more frequent during the next few months.
Not to scare you or anything. We're just saying is all.
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i love that our most reliable source of crime stats and information is an independantly-run blog. i don't mean that in a snarky "sf has fucked up again" way, either - i think this speaks volumes of citizen journalism.
for a project two years ago, i compiled crime stats data by actually calling every precinct and getting information directly from then, and then i compared it to the crime stats that SFPD's web tool spits out. they were hardly even a match. and since i did my stats by hand, after going through every report, i know my stats were a lot more accurate... and the SFPD tool had maybe 50% of that information at best. when is the city going to get someone to engineer a reliable tool for this? this is freaing 2007. c'mon people.
Spread so thin, my ass. Afraid to get out of their cars is more like it. True story, I used to live in SOMA, fairly near that area. One night, the parking lot was clogged with shiny SUVs, blatantly selling drugs.
We called the cops (5X) and then watched. Not one, but three cars drove by, slowed down, looked at the crack dealers, then hit their lights and sped through the traffic light to get the hell out of dodge.
All THREE were called to more important calls? I have serious doubts as to this.
My boyfriend and I happened to be coming up the Civic Center MUNI stop at 8th Street right around 9PM when we saw three teenagers in black hoodies going up the stairs and escalator in front of us. They were lingering around at the stairs when we turned left down 8th, and then when we got to 8th between Howard and Mission we heard two shots, turned, and saw three people in black hoodies running across 8th. The next minute, SFPD cruisers everywhere. We were on our way to The Stud; I'm just glad we didn't decide to wait for the crosswalk signal to cross Market and then go down 9th, as I think that would have put us right there when it happened. Crazy stuff, and I do wish the Chron did a better job of reporting it.
The Chron is ridiculously lax in its crime reporting. I saw a dude get shot right in front of the Orpheum at dusk one evening last winter. Seriously, I about soiled myself. A guy pulled a gun, shot a guy, the guy went down, then was shot again.
The shooter ran across the street and stopped right in front of me, then took off. The shopkeeper I was standing in front of seemed amused at my shock. Tourists with tickets to whatever was showing had their mouths hanging open.
I kept an eye on the papers for days and never saw it mentioned. I guess because crime and murder is so rampant here it's just not seen as news anymore.