The photographer being manhandled at around 20-25 seconds in is Luke Thomas of Fog City Journal. (Or so we're told.) Then, at the end, the camera operator receives a serious (and seriously questionable) smackdown by an SFPD officer. ...

After their American Idol hour was unforgivably interrupted by the San Francisco Police Department making an announcement last night, a reader writes to SFist asking: At about 8:55pm tonight, my viewing of American Idol was disrupted by the SFPD making an announcement in the middle of our street that there will be several rounds of LIVE AMMUNITION fired in the next few minutes as they test a new gun fire detection system. I live......

Over at the five-star Clift Hotel, home to the (in)famous Redwood Room, hotel employee Christian Rojas was arrested after he allegedly raped a hotel guest in her room. According to officials, the 30-year-old man used his keycard to enter the victim's hotel room, attack her, and then leave. According to the Clift's director of sales and marketing: The safety and privacy of our guests is our top priority. We are cooperating fully with the San......

What a care- and crime-free life SF is living right now,right? And we don't believe any of it. According to local media outlets, SF is safe and sound. But according to a few SFist tipsters: - "Okay, that sure sounded like three gunshots at Alamo Square park, at the northwest corner, around 9:21pm. Anyone concur?" - "Heard four more gunshot-like explosions at 10:49 in the same area. Saw four cops heading east on Fulton......

Huh. The San Francisco Police Department has put the kibosh on tomorrow's Dolores Park free cash giveaway care of Cash Tomato. Check it: This Saturday 23rd February at 10am, we had planned to hide hundreds of tomatoes with cash attached in Dolores park, a tomato/cash treasure hunt if you will. Yesterday, 21st February we received an email from SFPD telling us that we are unable to do this, that by giving away money within......

This is most exciting news, folks. The theater scene here sucks so hard now that even the San Francisco Police Department is working on the problem. Check it: Subject: Broadway Community Meeting with SFPD's Captain Dudley Thursday, February 21, 6PM, Tel-Hi Neighborhood Center, 660 Lombard Street. Captain Dudley from Central Station will hold a meeting to update neighbors on the current situation on the Broadway corridor. Topics to include:......

47-year-old Antonia Vargas was found lying dead on her porch in Richmond today. Her body was found on the "2400 block of Andrade Avenue by a colleague who normally drives her to work," and she was attacked with an "edged weapon." There were no reports of suspicious activity in the area that night and the fuzz hasn't a clue yet as to what occurred. If you know of anything, sleuthy readers, snitch to the......

Choppy footage: San Francisco Police Department via the Chron And speaking of cameras... While Chicago has seen crime rates plummet to their lowest numbers in over four decades due to the windy city's Big Brother program, San Francisco's attempt at panopticon-ish camera security is failing. Ever since the 68 city-funded cameras started rolling, our city's surveillance program has resulted in a single arrest. That was over 19 months ago. Why the lag, you ask?......

This is rich. The San Francisco Police Department are now having to investigate their own brethren. It appears that last Saturday morning, SFPD missed finding a firearm on a female suspect being booked into the Tenderloin station. A police spokersperson would only confirm that "officers heard a shot come from the holding area just after 11:00 Saturday morning. When they went in officers found a woman detainee and a small handgun on the floor.......

Oh my God, you guys, no way. Get this: the New York Post was wrong. What's next: Intelligent Design? Celebrity weddings? Our meth-induced epiphanies that the CIA, in cahoots with the Norteños, are reading our emails and listening in on our phone calls? See, it seems that "[n]o slingshots have been found" and that the NY Post was wrong. And we refuse to believe anything Rupert Murdoch-related is less than perfect. Thankfully, according to......

A few hours later after a car hit a man at the same intersection in Portola, a Muni bus stuck and killed a pedestrian on Thursday night at around 8:30 p.m. The 9X killed a woman in her 30s at San Bruno Avenue and Bacon Street. According to CBS 5 (via Bay City News), "details of the incident were unclear. Muni spokesman Alan Siegel confirmed the accident occurred but said he wouldn't comment on......

Perhaps in an effort to appease the masses for screwing them over on insane parking ticket allocations, the San Francisco Police Department, the Mayor's Office, and city prosecutors are working together to stop the city's most "overlooked crime": smash-and-grab auto burglaries. (Also known as "Boosts." Oh, that's fun name!) With an average of 41 smash-and-grabs per day in SF, the Mayor's office created a special task force that arrests one boost-happy hoodlum per week,......

Like a pesky gnat, the U.S. Supreme Court swatted away an appeal by former San Francisco Police Department Chief Earl Sanders yesterday. He claimed to have been nailed to the wall unfairly over his part in a little known thing called fajitagate....

Behold! "VideoGate" Officer Andrew Cohen's addictive blog that goes deep -- deep! -- inside the San Francisco Police Department and its many machinations. What's it called? Why, Inside the SFPD, of course. Today's feature: a delightful Santos/'Twas the Night Before X-Mas parody. But the entire site seems to be coming along swimmingly, and we invite you to read and comment at your leisure. Note to chicken-shit trolls: you can comment anonymously. (God help you,......

It must be oddly freeing to have an ongoing, very public work-related crisis, because Officer Andrew Cohen seems to have a lot to say these days. And why the heck not? It's an interesting opportunity to take a look into the mind of what a veteran police officer -- one that no longer has to play politics -- really thinks. We got his opinion on the recent 'use of force' at AT&T Park. ...

A $20,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the hit-and-run driver who caused the death of Presidio jogger Ashlyn Dyer. Offered by The City and the Presidio Parks Trust, the “no-questions-asked” reward is offered in hopes of solidifying the tenuous leads the Park Police have in the case. Anyone with information is asked to call the Park Police at (415) 561-5150 or the San Francisco Police Department's anonymous......

SFist interviews Steve Jones, city editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian...

It wouldn't be San Francisco if people weren't deluded into thinking anyone cared what we say. Which is why protest events have been long planned in response to this election. As one coworker pointed out yesterday, "All we have is a choice of which horse to ride to Hell." So don't think people wouldn't have taken to the streets had Kerry been elected. The major event of the day will be a march put......

Warrant issued for the murder of Timothy Griffith....