Photos like the one above will be a thing of the past, should a San Francisco Supervisor have his way. After years of crimes at one of the city's hottest tourist areas, city leaders are now saying the spot should be closed from dusk until dawn — apparently the only solution they can find for the issue.
We're talking, of course, about the top of Twin Peaks. For the last few years, police say that it's become a locus of crime, with muggings and car break-ins at the top of the list. In February of 2016, two people were shot and killed there. Fantasy Decuir and Lamonte Mims allegedly shot well-known location manager Edward French there in July of this year during a robbery, killing him as well.
According to San Francisco Police Department Captain John Sanford, who spoke with NBC Bay Area, "a lot of these incidents that have occurred after" dark.
Issues there include "partying, which is one thing, drinking and so forth," Sanford says. "But that leads into fights, which has happened quite a bit up there."
But while the 2016 slayings led then-SF Supe Scott Wiener to call for a stronger police presence in the area, now-SF Supe Norman Yee has a new strategy for 2017: Just shut the whole thing down. He's proposing "gates at both entrances that lead up to Twin Peaks to keep vehicles out of here from dusk until dawn," NBC Bay Area reports.
"If you put it down half a mile, most kids, most people that are going to do bad things are not gonna walk up the hill," Yee says. And, obviously, their innocent (and oft-tourist) targets also won't be up there either, blocked as they are by the gates.
Police tell NBC that the patrols that followed French's slaying have definitely deterred crime, but apparently that's not enough for Yee, who I can only assume during his years as a teacher did that thing where if one kid misbehaved the whole class got punished.
But, of course, we're not talking about classroom shenanigans, we're talking about robbery and murder. And if the police can't effectively police the area, perhaps the only solution is to remove it from full-time use?
Yee tells NBC that he has "a lot of support from other members of the board." If things go his way, he hopes to have those gates up and running by the end of the year.
Previously: A New Law Enforcement Algorithm Helped Free Twin Peaks Shooting Suspect 5 Days Before The Crime