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Builder of Oakland's Fox Theater Once Imprisoned For 'White Slavery'
Police Chief George Gascon, formerly of Mesa, AZ.
As KCBS reports, just an hour after Gascon's announcement of the sweep, everyone scuttled back outside and deals were going down one block away from the police station. They quote a chaplain at the San Francisco Rescue Mission as saying, "I would not be surprised if we were [still talking about ridding this area of drugs] 20 years from now. This is reality."
As for prostitution, we'd like to point Gascon to this 2006 special report from the Chron, "Diary of a Sex Slave," in which Sun Spa Massage at Geary and Hyde (a noted nexus of Korean sex slave trafficking -- please see some tasteful Yelp reviews here), remained fully operational a year after a *federal* raid on the place. Not to be pessimists, but this ain't Mesa, Arizona! It's gonna take a lot more than Text-a-Tip and a few police sweeps to clean up a neighborhood filled with hooker hotels and SROs. We know, some of us have lived there. It's like a self-sustaining ecosystem of crack, meth, crackheads and tweakers.
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300 arrests and none of them are likely to end up in court -- thanks, Attorney-General-to-be Kamala.
As a new kid in the 'hood, he's trying to flex his muscles to make his mark. Sadly, he appears to be clueless about the extent of the problem...
There is absolutely nothing "clueless" about this guy. Do Not underestimate him.
Although I myself have mixed views about the illegal issue, I Do know one thing for sure, my town and neighborhood became safer with him at the helm. I wish we still had him here in AZ. Our loss, your gain.
There goes Hamsterdam.
'The Wire' fans, anyone?
I logged on just to say that!
amazing...so true.
Might need to lend George the series.
Well, something that the Wire (and the book The Corner) also showed was that constantly just rolling past corners, occasionally jumping out and grabbing the occasional person doesn't really solve the problem either.
If we actually want this to stick, aside from convictions (and many of these appear to be repeat offenders from the article), we need to have an increased police presence. Actual foot patrols (I only ever seen them on Haight itself, unless they're driving along the footpaths of the Panhandle) and a greater number of them in problem areas. At the very least this will hopefully help to reduce the number of criminals who commute here from elsewhere if we can make it a hostile environment.
If there were deals going down an hour later, right next to the police station it's because this was a bullshit sweep for show, not with the intent of actually doing anything lasting and long-term. When you make arrests in this sort of environment you need to actually follow through and continue to defend the territory you took back. Not just say you've done your job and go home. The dealers know that if they leave their corner someone else will come and take it, why don't the cops?
It won't solve the problem for good, but we need a multi-layered approach to deal with present crime as well as future crime.
Yo Chief Jorge, any of those things going on in Nob Hill?
The Examiner article gives some hope that Harris is really going to go after convictions here:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Cops-clean-up-Tenderloin-56795097.html
Wow I knew we had commuter criminals but man!
* Every police district in S.F.
* Antioch
* Berkeley
* Daly City
* Fresno
* Hayward
* Marin City
* Oakland
* Pleasant Hill
* Richmond
* Sacramento
* San Mateo
* Santa Rosa
* Stockton
* Vallejo
hell of a lot better than milquetoast tail between my legs fong
It doesn't matter who the Police Chief is.
There will never be the political will in San Francisco to do what needs to done in the Tenderloin. Ever.
As long as they're all in one place, SF is good with it.
Futile is the last word I'd use to describe what's happening in the Tenderloin. I've lived there since 2001 and I have never seen the place feel so good.
I walk down Leavenworth and Hyde Streets every day on my way to BART and the last few weeks have felt genuinely normal. Those streets are usually a nightmare mix of freaked-out junkies and aggressive dealers, and this morning Leavenworth was full of mothers walking with their children, people hanging out enjoying the morning, delivery trucks bringing produce - you know, like a real neighborhood where people live instead of a war zone.
The Tenderloin has the largest concentration of children in the city - more by many counts than Noe Valley. If George Gascon can keep this up, we may have a real neighborhood in our future. The real story is how successful this sweep has been.
Agree. I walk the TL every sunday morning on my way to heart of the City farmers market and I've seen some improvement too. No neighborhood deserves to be written off.
Its worth it to give Gascon's plan to weed out the few dozen hardcore repeat felons a chance to work as long as they increase foot patrols too. I'm not as afraid of the newjacks.