It's been nearly two weeks since a midday shooting at Dolores Park injured three people, one of them critically. But since then an investigation into the attack has shown few visible results, and assaults and robberies in the area continue, with the latest occurring just this morning.
Mission Local has the latest on the August 3 shooting at the park, in which as many as five men with faces covered with bandanas stormed the foot bridge at Church and Cumberland Streets at 3:05 p.m., shooting a 37-year-old man, a 16-year-old male, and a 69-year-old man. But the latest isn't much, as no arrests have been made and police "have different hunches, few solutions."
The very bridge where gunfire broke out on Aug. 4 has, for generations, been known as an outpost for gangs and drugs. Per multiple San Francisco Police Department sources, this attack had everything to do with the former — but little, if anything, to do with the latter.Dolores Park, numerous SFPD gang and narcotics officers say, is the territory of the “Dolores Park Locals,” which they characterize as a Sureño clique. Over the past year, police say they have documented increased gang graffiti in the park; violence has flared up and tensions have been simmering (cops summed up other recent incidents, such as a May mob attack, as cases in which “outsiders” wandered into locals’ territory).
“It’s, like, the ebb and flow, man,” said one veteran Mission cop. “There’s a lot, and then there’s not. Or maybe it’s the same amount of guys and they’ve just got somebody pushing a hard line up there.”
While much of the purported graffiti has been of the MS-13 variety, that’s not who our sources thought was responsible for this month’s violence. Who shot whom in an ongoing investigation isn’t something police are in the habit of talking too much about, but one source did state he believes the shooting was the work of “young Norteños trying to make a name for themselves.” He adds, reassuringly, “I haven’t heard it’s a war yet. I’m not hearing names and stuff yet.”
According unnamed sources cited by Mission Local, "cops who work the park candidly say that, beyond serving as 'a visual deterrent,' they don’t have any advanced notions of how to quell the next daylight shooting." Nor, it appears, do they have any "advanced notions of how to quell" other violent crimes, including one at 2 a.m. Wednesday.
According to the San Francisco Police Department, the victim in this case was a 34-year-old man in the area of 20th and Dolores Streets, at the southeast tip of the park.
Police say it was 2 a.m. Wednesday when the man was surrounded by three "unknown male suspects who demanded his property.
The trio hit the victim, police say, causing him to fall to the ground. They then took everything he had — his backpack, wallet, cell phone, and tablet, police say.
They then fled the scene on foot, heading north on Church. As of publication time, they remain at large and no arrests have been made, police say, something that is likely to continue if the unnamed source who spoke to Mission Local is right.
SFPD will "have a big enforcement plan," the anonymous source says. "You’ll see a ramped-up effort for a month, two months. And then it’s back to business. You can’t sustain it. Cops, at this point, are like firefighters. There’s a big fire at Dolores Park? Go put it out. Monitor it a while. And then, in the future, you and I will be having this same conversation.”
Related: More Details Released On Dolores Park Shooting Victims, Suspects Still At Large