In lieu of calling 911 or you local police station when you need to report a crime anonymously, now you can do so via text messaging. And it's too easy! At least according this article in today's Examiner it is. A brilliant idea, right? All you have to do is this: Text "TIP584 [insert dramatic tale of criminal wrongdoing]," and then send it to 274637 -- or CRIMES. After that, you'll receive a response......

In the city of Richmond this weekend, a woman was "brutally raped" on the Richmond High School campus while walking home from the grocery store at around 11 p.m. The suspect was identified (though his name is secret from the press as of now) and arrested immediately after the attack.Carlos Padilla-Ovedio, 25, stabs to death Jesus Hernandez, 33, of Daly City, inside Cafe Durango in Daly City. Hernandez, it seems, made a "rude remark"......

The San Francisco Police Department gets trashed (again), this time care of Karl Vick's Washington Post post article on the foibles of our very own Keystone Cops. In it, basically, he reveals that our police force, in a word, sucks. A few stellar examples are cited. Take, for example, the "Cadaver Van Case" where the fuzz waited eight days before checking out a van, "even though their cadaver dogs signaled it might contain something......

Yesterday afternoon, A man was shot and killed in the Bayview District. After reporting to call of gunfire at the "the unit block of Navy Road," police officers found the body of a 37-year-old man lying in the street suffering from a gunshot wound. He was rushed to SF General where he lated died. No arrests have been made in this most recent killing in one of San Francisco's most notorious neighborhoods. This brings......

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. ...

Photo: SFist Just seconds ago we came across frantic police activity at Boss nightclub (on Harrison Street between Third and Fourth streets). Police informed us that they found a dead body, and declined to give any further details. We'll update you with more info as it comes in. Update: According to the building security guard next door to Boss, three "homeless couples" who have been living outside of BOSS have been feuding. Apparently, a......

In the Tenderloin on Saturday night, three men were heatedly arguing in an apartment building over on the 400 block of Jones Street (at Ellis). During the fight, one man died after he suspiciously fell down an elevator shaft, landing on an elevator car several floor sbelow. So far the details are sketchy. Although the deceased is still unidentified (as well as the two men arrested in connection), he's described as being "in his......

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......

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......

Ten-year-old Mireya Zapata was reported missing from her home in the Tenderloin District at about 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning. She was wearing a black jacket with gold lettering that either says, "South Park" or "South Pole," black jeans, red and black sneakers with a heart print, and she was carrying a pink backback. She has a small black freckle near her mouth. She is about 5 feet tall, weighing 75 pounds. Update: Recent reports say......

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......

The big cat grottoes re-open for public view....

All together now: We declare our right on this earth to park our cars within 50 feet of our favorite coffee shops, to be drivers, to be respected as drivers, on this earth, in the Mission, where we intend to find parking wherever we can by any means necessary....

While Oakland received tons of press over the weekend for its recent spate of murder, this Mission murder, which happened near 25th and South Van Ness (be careful, Phone Booth patrons!), went all but unnoticed. Around 6:45 p.m. last Friday, two men approached 21-year-old Jose Reynoso and shot him in the head and chest. He was taken to SF General Hospital where he died the following day. Police have "sketchy descriptions of the killers"......

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:......

Chez Panisse mafia don Alice Waters speaks to Charlie Rose. [Eater]Your alt weekly lawsuit word count. [Guardian 796, SF Weekly 1,559]SFPD deputy chief demoted. [SFGate]Minor earthquake grooves Pacifica. [Examiner]CBS 5 done got themselves a blog, they did. [CBS5]Tablehopper does Playboy? [Tablehopper]......

Look out, Alamo Square! A "hot prowl" has been reported! We have no idea what that means -- maybe SF Crime knows? -- but oh lord how it makes us giggle. Time to send in the Hot Cops! We've really been digging this "EveryBlock" website, which aggregates news, crime reports, photos, reviews, health inspections, and lots of other details about neighborhoods. But unfortunately, the SFPD's data-sharing tool CrimeMAPS is pretty old-fashioned (it says it......

-- On Saturday Friday at around 10:40 p.m., Jan. 26, 24-year-old Ernesto Williams was shot and killed while standing outside his car at the Chevron station at Sixth and Harrison streets. While waiting with his 26-year-old girlfriend, police claim a suspect drove up to the couple, exited his vehicle, and then "approached the victims and started shooting," killing the Oakland man and wounding his female companion. The suspect then "returned to the vehicle and......

50-year-old Chiu Chun Wong of San Lorenzo was killed yesterday after a 15-ton section of concrete came toppling down on him. Ouch. According to the Gate, the fatal workplace incident occurred at "J.C. Steel Fabrication at 220 Michelle Court shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday." It seems that while Wong and another worker were putting a chain "around the bottom of the 20-foot-by-12-foot wall," the chuck of cement slipped, fell, and struck Wong, killing him......

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.......

Before & After Save for the tagging still remaining on Obscura Digital's door--leave them be, racialists!--the Neo-Nazi public art has all but disappeared. Sigh, we hardly knew ye. The culprit of this week's spray paint melee was possibly uncovered and hotly debated by our fantastic sleuth readers. While we won't point any fingers as to who decorated Stillman Street with eye-popping Neo-Nazi flair, and the Vacaville-based MySpace page supposedly harboring the young hate monger's identity......

Round 4 goes to Dennis Herrera...

Festishizing that "authentic, old-school New York experience," Adam Fisher moved to NYC to frolic with hipsters, sing selections from Rent, or snap his fingers to the jazzy beats along with the other bohemian artists when he moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn. Unfortunately, his time there was a bit too real. Severely beaten and mugged of $28 while at the Morgan Avenue L subway station, Fisher hightails it back to his hometown, San Francisco. In his......

Even with all the nasty weather, this weekend proved to be yet another violent one in San Francisco. For sure. After five shootings took place within a 24-hour time period, two people lost their lives. Let's go to the rewind, folks: Yesterday, on Rosie Lee Lane in the Bayview district, Torrance Gray, 16, was found dead of multiple gunshots wounds. SFPD were responding to a call when they found him. A few hours earlier,......

What's on the cell phones of those who survived the recent tiger attack? ...

According to the Chronicle, SFPD are looking into whether or not one of the victims of SF Zoo tiger attacks "climbed over a waist-high fence and then dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of a moat that kept the big cat away from the public." With evidence of a shoe and some blood found in the area between the gate and the edge of the 25- to 30-foot-wide moat, as......

SFPD arrived at the zoo to find the critically endangered cat on top of one of her victims. According to CBS 5, "the tiger then started moving toward [the] group of approaching police officers, and they opened fire with handguns," killing Tatiana. As of now, it's not known just how the tiger managed to escape, well, captivity....

Well, for those of you dying to know what the feds got when they raided erstwhile District 4 supervisor and criminal defendant Ed Jew's house, the records have been unsealed! From Ed's house, $10,000 in cash in $100 bills and some computers. More intriguingly, though, you may remember that the feds also raided Ed's buddy Robert Chan's house (though he was referred to by the mellifluous name "Co-Conspirator No. 1" at the time). Not only......

Well, the bad news is still that we've hit a 12 year high for homicides in the City and County of San Francisco, with two weeks left to go in the year. On the statistical side, though, the SFPD year to date murder count has moved down by three victims, from 100 to 97. What happened to those three victims? Well, they're not any less dead, unfortunately. Rather, three of them were reclassified into non-murders.......

Guess when the Busan leaves S.F. Bay!...