An annual report detailing how many Californias were the victims of violence over the past year finds a slight dip in reported violence among most populations, but a sharp increase in reported violence against transgender people.

San Francisco is arguably the birthplace of the trans rights movement. We recently crowned a trans woman as Miss San Francisco, and of course SF also established the first legally recognized Transgender Cultural District in the world. Yet even San Francisco has seen several notable incidents in anti-trans sentiment lately, from an anti-trans event at a North Beach restaurant in May, to last month’s anti-trans conference at the SF Hilton, to even SF music legend Carlos Santana spouting anti-trans nonsense on stage.

In that context, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise that today’s Chronicle brings us the news that a new academic report shows trans people in California report being victims of violence at much higher rates than the cisgender population. That finding comes from the fourth annual California Violence Experiences Survey, a study conducted by the UC San Diego Center on Gender Equity and Health and Tulane University, which found that the overall percentage of Californians who reported being victims of violence is down this year, but much higher levels of violence were reported by trans victims.

According to the full 43-page report, “Non-binary respondents are more likely to have experienced physical violence (14%) compared with both women (4%) and men (6%).” The study also notes that “Transgender adults are 7x more likely to report past year physical violence than cisgender adults (27% vs 4%).”

Overall, the rate of reported violence was down 3% among the general population compared to the same organization’s 2022 survey. And this is not just a San Francisco study, but a statewide survey of 3,500 respondents across California.

It’s important to note that this was the first time that the UCSD/Tulane study tracked responses for non-binary and trans people. So technically, it would not be accurate to say the study found that reports of violence against trans and non-binary people are “up,” because there is no data from the previous year for comparison. But it is certainly a wake-up call that a nationwide trend of violence against trans people is also impacting the state of California.

Related: Protests Planned as Anti-Trans Women's Conference Comes to SF Hilton [SFist]

Image: Transgender flags hold by people on a demonstration (Getty Images)

In a charged address at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim Friday, Donald Trump made headlines with a mix of familiar attacks and grievances, as well as a concerning call for violent retribution against criminals.

Some of the topics of the complaints in Trump’s wandering 90-minute speech: crime, forests, homelessness, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, electric vehicles, and, of course, alleged election fraud, according to the Chronicle.

He reportedly called retail thieves “Marxist monsters unleashing mayhem in Los Angeles and San Francisco,” and said he send “every asset” he could to “shoot” them — apparently drawing applause from the 1,500-person crowd. Going off-script, he said, "If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store," emphasizing his call for violent punishment.

Trump also wants to “wet” forest floors to prevent wildfires, per the Chronicle. But then he said that rich people in Beverly Hills smell bad because they're denied water, as KCRA reported.

Going after California's Democratic leadership, Trump blamed them for issues such as homelessness, high taxes, and inequality. He reportedly accused the state of being a "dumping ground" for prisoners, terrorists, and mental patients, pledging to "reverse the decline of America."

Naturally, Trump has no shot of winning the state, but California is set up to play a pivotal role in the Super Tuesday primaries, so the state's GOP support is valuable — he currently leads the primary race among likely Republican voters, according to a recent poll, per the LA Times.

Also in attendance at the convention were other Republican contenders, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who expressed support for law enforcement without advocating violence, according to the Chronicle. But Trump’s legal challenges still loom as he faces felony charges in four criminal cases.

While he was in Southern California on Friday, he went to a gun store and may have bought a handgun, as the Washington Post reported. A staffer reportedly posted a picture of him with a gun, and federal prosecutors are questioning if that counts as a violation of the gag order imposed on him amid his criminal trials because the image could be construed as a public threat.

“The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so,” the court filing says, per WaPo. “It would be a separate federal crime, and thus a violation of the defendant’s conditions of release, for him to purchase a gun while this felony indictment is pending.”

Feature image of former U.S. President Donald Trump greeting fans during the California GOP convention on September 29, 2023 in Los Angeles, California, via David McNew/Getty Images.

A crowdfunding campaign set up just yesterday for the elderly Chinese woman assaulted on San Francisco's Market Street on Wednesday has already raised over $300,000 — likely due in no small part to the fact that the victim in this case was seen fighting back and did enough damage to her attacker that he was wheeled away on a stretcher.

KPIX spoke to the injured woman, 75-year-old Xiao Zhen Xie, at her senior living facility on Thursday, with her daughter Dong-Mei Li serving as interpreter. Li says her mother is "very traumatized, very scared and this eye is still bleeding," adding that "the right eye still cannot see anything and still bleeding and we have something to absorb the bleeding."

Xie has lived in San Francisco for 26 years.

Xie says that the attack, which took place at Market and UN Plaza around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, was entirely unprovoked, and her immediate instinct was to fight back with a stick that she found nearby.

Reportedly there was a second victim as well, an 83-year-old Asian man, and a 39-year-old suspect (the one seen bleeding on the stretcher in the Twitter video below) is being investigated for the assaults. According to KPIX, "police say they are working to determine if bias was a factor."

Update: NBC Bay Area reports that the suspect has been arrested, and he's identified as Steven Jenkins. And it may be that Xie's act of self-defense was not what put him in the hospital — police now say that Jenkins was hospitalized "for an unrelated medical condition." And apparently a security guard who learned of the attack on the 83-year-old man, which came first, chased Jenkins down — and during the chase, the assault on Xie occurred. The guard is credited with detaining Jenkins until police arrived.

Xie's grandson, John Chen, writes on the GoFundMe page, "I am amazed by her bravery."

"This traumatic event has left her with PTSD," Chen continues. "Although she has health insurance that covers the basics, there are still many medical expenses that cannot be covered on her own. She is a cancer survivor and she also has had diabetes for over 10 years now. The funds that we receive will be used to cover her medical expenses, her therapy treatment, and her bills that we will have to pay constantly from now on."

A spokesperson for GoFundMe tells the Chronicle that the page was the most-viewed fundraiser on the site Thursday, with donations coming from over 8,000 individuals in all 50 states, and 42 different countries.

"We want to thank everyone that is donating and that has shown my family massive support through this very traumatic event," Chen writes. "My heart is with all the other elderly Asians that has also been seriously injured or killed in this wave of attacks towards the Asian community."

The incident quickly followed on the mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of them Asian women, and it follows on multiple violent incidents in the Bay Area and elsewhere in which elderly Asian Americans have been targeted.

On Tuesday, a 59-year-old Filipino man from Vallejo was attacked and badly bruised on Market Street, while walking down the street with his Trader Joe's lunch. His name is Danny Yu Chang, and he tells the Chronicle, "Nothing is safe here in California. Especially for the old people." And he adds, "All this hatred of Asian Americans, I don’t know why it’s happening, but it’s got to stop."

Also, a 75-year-old Asian man was killed in a strong-arm robbery while out for a walk in his neighborhood in Oakland last week. Two suspects are being held and are facing murder charges.

In related news on Thursday, a UCSF study found that there was a large uptick in anti-Asian hashtags on Twitter in the days immediately following a tweet from President Trump last year referring to COVID-19 as the "China virus."

Previously: Elderly Asian Woman Attacked On Market Street Pummels Her Attacker With Stick

In the latest salvo from the Trump Administration against sanctuary city policies, Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan spoke out during a White House press corps briefing Thursday vowing to crack down on cities like San Francisco that he calls a "magnet" for crime by immigrants.

As CBS 5 reports, and as you can hear in the video above, Homan took the opportunity to lash out at sanctuary cities during a press briefing about the MS-13 gang and some recent violence attributed to them on Long Island.

President Trump himself visited a county on Long Island Friday to give a speech that blamed poor border enforcement and lax immigration policies for the MS-13 gang violence. As the Washington Post reports, the president also spoke out against sanctuary cities and "used his remarks to push Congress to boost funding for the administration's immigration crackdown, including the start of construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, 10,000 new ICE agents and 5,000 new Customs and Border Patrol officers."

But Homan focused specifically on sanctuary cities in his remarks Thursday, saying, "I’ll say it once again — sanctuary cities are a criminal’s best friend. If you are an alien smuggler and you are smuggling people illegally into this country, that’s one sales pitch. We can get you to a sanctuary city where that city will help shield you from immigration."

He vowed to send "additional resources to look for [immigrants] at [their] home[s]" in sanctuary cities, suggesting that ICE agents can not get access to immigrants in county jails in sanctuary cities — which is false in the case of violent criminals.

"Sanctuary cities not only endanger the public’s safety, but they endanger my law enforcement officers because when we can’t get a violent alien out of county jail, it means that one of our officers will be forced to knock on a door which anyone in law enforcement knows that is one of the most dangerous things to do," Homan said, adding that MS-13 gang members "walk out of country jails everyday."

CNN argues the opposite side, speaking to several gang members and FBI agents, saying that the MS-13 gang may be emboldened and growing under the Trump Administration because immigrant victims fear going to the police thinking they may get deported themselves under the current crackdown.

As the Washington Post notes, ICE arrests of illegal immigrants went up by almost 40 percent during Trump's first 100 days in office, and Honan said today that ICE has arrested 3,311 gang members so far this year.

The MS-13 gang last made headlines in San Francisco following a brazen 2008 triple murder in the Mission of a father and his two sons, shot while driving through the neighborhood. The accused killer, Edwin Ramos, was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, and it came out in the investigation that the shooting was a case of mistaken identity, and a retaliation for a gang killing earlier that day. Ramos was tried and convicted in 2012, receiving three life sentences with no chance of parole.

A "Patriots Day" rally is scheduled in Berkeley's Civic Center Park on Saturday, April 15, and authorities there are, rightly, concerned that it will just be a repeat of the violent events of March 4, when pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions faced off in this park leading to multiple scuffles and arrests. This time, however, the regularly scheduled farmers' market that typically happens adjacent to the park has been canceled, as a precaution, according to East Bay Express.

Presented as a "free speech rally," the Patriots Day event shows over 200 people going on Facebook, and over 300 "interested," and a counter-protest and cookout scheduled simultaneously in Civic Center Park shows 180 going so far and 477 interested. On the Patriots Day page, among the comments, several attendees say they are coming up from Southern California to attend.

Much like the March 4 rally, the event is not permitted.

Says one of the Patriots Day organizers, Rich Black, who was involved in the March 4 event as well, "I know there are many concerns regarding allegations of the LRA and this event having association with Neo-Nazi, White Supremacist, or Workers Party groups. I assure you that we do not have any association with anyone who promotes these radical views or hateful rhetoric."

And while the alt-right likes to refer to the militant end of the resistance as the "antifa," including Breitbart — which takes great pleasure in the farmers' market cancelation detail — the anti-Trump faction from Strike Against Gender Bay Area calls for their supporters to "drown out the embarrassing attempts of racists and nationalists to display their hate-fueled support for Trump."

Berkeley Police Sgt. Andrew Frankel tells CBS 5 that following the chaos of March 4 and complaints that there was not enough police intervention, they will be bulking up the police presence ahead of Saturday's rally. "We’ve staffed accordingly and we’re preparing for a number of different contingencies," Frankel says.

The East Bay Express reports that the rally is set to feature "a cadre of contentious speakers, including Pizzagate-believer and AltRight.com contributor Brittany Pettibone, Twitter personality “Baked Alaska” (whose racist and anti-Semitic tweets got him uninvited from the “DeploraBall,” ... and Lauren Southern, a Canadian college student and female men’s rights activist, who broke into internet fame for shouting at rape victims." Southern announced her attendance at the rally in the YouTube video shown below, explaining that everyone should be prepared for the violent behavior of the "Berkeley antifa" who shut down Milo Yiannopoulos.

So, once again, Berkeley is being made to be Ground Zero in the battle between alt-right and far left, and both sides seem to be itching for actual, physical battle, even though both sides will likely characterize the other as inciting violence first.

Furthermore, at this rally, the EBX says that two alt-right groups, The Oath Keepers and 12 Million Bikers, have signed on to provide "security" at the event.

Berkeley police have still been on the hunt for several suspects who were photographed engaging in violent behavior at the March 4 event, releasing three more photos just this week.

Previously: Pro-Trump Rally In Berkeley Turns Predictably Messy, 10 Arrested

#BREAKING 16 year old girl dead following a shooting in downtown Oakland @nbcbayarea 11 pic.twitter.com/DxIWVsaDIC

— Cheryl Hurd (@hurd_hurd) June 15, 2016

A 16-year-old girl was killed in an unusual broad-daylight shooting in downtown Oakland Tuesday that injured six others, boys and girls in their teens and twenties.

Two gunmen on foot opened fire near 13th and Franklin Streets, the Chronicle learns from the Oakland Police Department, near a family memorial gathering on 14th Street. That event: A vigil for two Oakland teens who drowned in a reservoir some weeks ago.

Police arrived at the scene around 5:40 p.m. Officer Kyle Hazen tells the Mercury news.

Witnesses describe the scene as chaotic, with "people running every which way,” according to one man at the scene, Mason Stone, who ducked behind a car. An unidentified witness said he observed the shooting and alleges the violence was instigated by an argument which took place among a group of men shooting dice. The vigil participants were caught in the crossfire, according to that witness.

“The really scary thing, coming on the heels of the shooting in Orlando, you wonder is it gang related or is it a crazy gunman,” Stone said, “I guess you figure sooner or later if you live in a city like that you ... realize anything can happen at any time.”

A security guard at the 14th Street gathering place, Venue, registered his surprise and disturbance. “This is very strange,” he told the Chronicle. “Downtown Oakland has changed a lot. Downtown is one of the safest places now. This was an isolated incident.”

Related: Violent Crime On The Decline In Oakland As Murder Rate Drops

Though the Ferguson-related fracas has stayed mostly across the Bay in Oakland this week, Black Friday brought a chaotic night with a couple hundred protesters to the middle of San Francisco. Several dozen people gathered in Union Square for a demonstration around 5 p.m., as KTVU reports, which ultimately turned violent when a group of a couple hundred others marched up Market Street from the Embarcadero to meet them, ultimately being turned back by police who tried to keep them out of Union Square. Protesters threw bricks and smashed and/or vandalized store windows, including Crate & Barrel, Macy's, and the Apple Store, forcing flocks of Black Friday shoppers to huddle inside behind locked doors.

Two police officers were injured in the melee, which seems to have lasted less than an hour. CBS 5 has it that 50 to 75 people were arrested.

The Chronicle says the group numbered "about 100" by 7 p.m. as police began herding them back toward Market Street. And according to them only "several" arrests were made.

In the video below from CBS 5's Joe Vazquez you can see the crowds gathered at Union Square waiting for the Christmas tree to be lit, with the sound of a protester on a megaphone breaking through.

The first group of protesters at Union Square changed "Black Friday doesn't matter. Black lives matter," and hoisted this lit sign in front of the tree lighting.

Protesters didn't exactly stay on message, thought, between the attacks on retail storefronts, and the chant, as noted by KTVU, "Missouri, Palestine, justice now."

But they remained consistent in their anger toward police, as you can see in the Vine below, where an officer gets hit by a thrown sawhorse.

Later, smaller groups of protesters spread out to the Mission by 9 p.m. where both the 16th Street and 24th Street BART stations were temporarily closed due to chaos on the streets above.

Throughout the Mission, protesters were reportedly setting off fireworks, and one smashed a window of a CBS/KPIX news van and threw a lit flare inside. There was also a confrontation with police involving bricks at Potrero and 22nd Street.

Friday night's disorganized violence stands in contrast to the peaceful, highly organized demonstration earlier in the day in which 14 protesters were arrested for chaining themselves to two BART trains at West Oakland Station. That demonstration managed to cripple BART service for about 90 minutes, and stop all east-west traffic through the Transbay Tube.

Not shockingly, the safest city in the Bay Area is also the richest. And once again Oakland is rated the most dangerous, according to the FBI's annual "Crime in the United States" report, released this week.

In 2013, an estimated 1,163,146 violent crimes took place across America, representing a decrease of 4.4 percent from 2012. So that's good.

However, here in San Francisco we saw a 22 percent increase in violent crime. And though Oakland is trending downward in violent crime according to the city's reports, it still leads the state in violent crime with a rate five times the California average. And once again it rates as the Bay Area's most dangerous city, as it has every year.

Here, as counted off by the Chronicle, are the area's safest cities of over 10,000, based on the number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents. Note that the state average for that is 3.93.

Hillsborough: 0
Clayton: 0.18
San Ramon: 0.36
Danville: 0.39
Foster City: 0.46
Orinda: 0.54
Moraga: 0.66
Cupertino: 0.68
Los Altos: 0.76

Now, the most dangerous cities. Sorry, Oakland:

Oakland: 19.77
Emeryville: 12.67
East Palo Alto: 11.93
Richmond: 10.36
Antioch: 8.80
Vallejo: 8.61
San Francisco: 8.47
San Pablo: 6.69
Berkeley: 4.84
Fairfield: 4.59

Bullets flying through windows and a double hit-and-run resulted in the injuries of four people on Tuesday in the Bayview, one of whom is an 80-year-old woman. The woman initially believed she'd been shot after a bullet crashed through her apartment window near Third Street and McKinnon Avenue, but she was able to walk downstairs and tell her building manager, who then called police and an ambulance. She turned out to have non-life-threatening injuries caused by flying glass.

Right around the same time as the reports of shots being fired came in, there was a hit-and-run accident two blocks away at Thomas and Lane Streets involving a vehicle that may or may not have been connected to the shooting. The car, with an unknown number of occupants, appeared to be fleeing something, and subsequently crashed into a second vehicle at Third and Revere Avenue, at which point the occupants of the suspect vehicle tried to flee on foot and were detained.

In total, three people were injured in the course of the two hit-and-runs, one with life-threatening injuries, and all three were taken to the hospital.

As the Chron reports, "Authorities originally believed the occupants were involved in the shooting and had crashed because they were fleeing from the scene, but their involvement is unclear."

According to ABC 7, "An employee at the Bayview branch public library, located near the shooting, said it appeared there was a carjacking that led to the shooting."

The SFPD says that no arrests have been made in connection to the shooting that injured the 80-year-old woman.

[Chron]
[ABC 7]
[Examiner]

The latest hot-button issue for Facebook, as discussed yesterday, is beheading videos, and today Facebook issued a new statement clarifying that, well, maybe not all beheading videos will be appropriate for the site.

The topic came up after a video of a masked man beheading a woman in Mexico circulated on the site in the context of rallying people to "condemn" the act. Ultimately they decided that the video "improperly and irresponsibly glorifies violence," and they therefore removed it.

While Facebook says it will continue to allow such postings, within reason, so long as they are in the public interest and not purely for "sadistic pleasure," they now say they will try to "strengthen" the process by which they review and approve such violent or graphic content.

Per the statement:

"When we review content that is reported to us, we will take a more holistic look at the context surrounding a violent image or video. Second, we will consider whether the person posting the content is sharing it responsibly, such as accompanying the video or image with a warning and sharing it with an age-appropriate audience."

While they're at it, they might also want to "strengthen" the means through which they're reviewing sexually offensive content, since apparently an image of two burly men kissing, from the shoulders up, was deemed offensive enough to get a gay user's account suspended recently.

[NYT]
[Daily Mail]

As SFist's 49ers reporter Daisy Barringer can attest, violence at Candlestick Park is an increasingly dangerous problem.

In addition to Barringer's assault, which you can read all about here, a 40-year-old Niners fan suffered a concussion as well as a broken arm and nose at the Stick on Sunday.

SFGate has more:

The assault on the man — who police originally identified as a 15-year-old boy, but later corrected to 40-year-old man — happened early on in the game. Police say a 29-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of beating the man for allegedly urinating in his car.

The above photo also showed a scuffle between two unidentified men at Sunday's game. Deplorable.

Security was beefed up at the soon-to-be-demolished stadium a couple of years ago after two shootings and a brutal beating erupted during a preseason game with the Oakland Raiders. Sounds like they could use more.

The violence in Oakland showed no signs of sluggishness over the weekend. Two men, who were shot in separate incidents, are expected to survive the most recent reports of East Bay terror. First up, a 25-year-old man was shot in the Trestle Glen area Sunday night a little before 9:30 PM.

"Investigators said the man, whose name was not released, was actually shot more than a mile away in the 1400 block of Fifth Avenue," reports Harry Harris of the Oakland Tribune. "Police believe another person drove him to the 900 block of Grosvenor Place near Underhills Road before leaving him there beside a bullet-riddled Acura. That person is being sought."

The victim remains in critical but stable condition.

The second shooting victim, a 52-year-old man, fell victim to gunfire a little before 5 PM last night in the 7700 block of Krause Avenue. According to police, the man was approached by four men trying to rob him. "But before the suspects took anything the man was shot by one of them." The suspects took off before police arrived. The shootings are not believed to be related.

In other news, Oakland citizens have taken to hiring their own private law enforcement in lieu of relying on police and/or Oakland City Hall.

[Oakland Tribune]
[Chron]

Violence continues to plague parts of Oakland. Two people, a man and a woman, were shot Monday morning while sitting in a car. The shooting happened just after midnight in the 9100 block of Olive Street.

"The two were sitting in a car when someone from outside the vehicle started shooting at them ... They were able to transport themselves to a hospital where they are expected to recover from their wounds," reports Oakland Tribune. "Police don't have a motive yet and no arrests have been made."

This shooting comes on the heels of another shooting, a mere 14 hours earlier, where a man was slain and another injured. Similar to the aforementioned incident, the two men were sitting in a car when they were riddled with bullets in the 1400 block of 92nd Avenue near International Boulevard. "The men were sitting in a car when someone from outside the vehicle began shooting at them," notes the CoCo Times. "The 27-year-old Oakland man believed to be in the driver's seat was pronounced dead at the scene."

The guy on the passenger side, a male from San Francisco, was able "to get transportaton to a hospital." His condition is not yet know.

Alfredo Mendez caught this video of a couple of Dodgers fans getting into it with a Giants fan at Saturday's game. Bottles fly, drinks get tossed, few punches are thrown. (Menendez, it seems, was also knocked in the jaw, which, fortunately, was not captured on video.)

Not cool, gentlemen.

Presumably, the guilty parties were all kicked out of AT&T Park posthaste. (Oh, and the Giants won, too.) Melee below.

[YouTube]