If you’re a westside resident, and not already subscribed to the Taraval Station’s daily crime report, emailed out by Captain Paul Chignell, well, I’ll once again recommend it to you. It’s a great way to keep tabs on what’s going on around your home, and occaisionally provides some really eye-opening information. It also provides information on local events in the community as well.
Today I’m going to highlight two incidents: one of the “OMG crime on MUNI can be really bad” variety, and the other in the “Wow, criminals are stupid” category.
First, our Scary MUNI indicident. All I can say is that I’m glad in this case, when unruly teenagers threatened passenger safety, the police were on hand to administer some justice. Anyway, here’s the incident from May 14th.
05/14/09 4:48 pm Holloway and Beverly
Officers Juan Gala, Duane Elzey and Jose Guardado were flagged down by a bus driver who had a large group of unruly teenagers on the bus and who kept opening the emergency windows. One of the suspects then stole a wheel block that the driver had placed against a wheel when he had to park the bus to deal with the suspects. The officers located the suspect with the wheel block walking up the street. The suspect resisted arrest and had to be taken to the ground to be controlled. Eventually, that suspect, who lives on the 1800 block of Great Highway, was cited for malicious mischief, theft and resisting arrest. Two other suspects, who live on Ridge Court and the 700 block of London, were cited for terrorist threats. Case #090502367
I’m glad the SFPD were on the scene here, but this is a more common occurance than one might think, and I would hope with the millions in work orders MUNI pays out, we could see more lawbreakers who threaten harm to passengers and drivers arrested for committing crimes.
This next one is a situation where you really just want to walk up to the person, shake them and say “What the HELL were you thinking???”. Read on (emphasis added):
05/16/09 2:45 pm 1300 block of 46th Avenue
Officers Jennifer Fiorello. Scott Biggs and Chris Oshita were inside a 7-11 store when they observed a man take a beverage from a cooler, put it in his pocket and walk past the uniformed officers and out of the store without paying for the merchandise. The officers stopped the man and arrested the resident of the 500 block of 36th Avenue for theft. He was charged with felony theft due to having prior convictions. Case #090509573
So many criminals are caught in this area because they seem to think it’s a good idea to speed on neighborhood streets with expired tags, and keep large amounts of drugs in plain sight in their car, or drive under the influence. Which is fine with me, but it’s still a bit unnerving.
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There’s a book: “Arrest-Proof Yourself” by Dale Carson (former law-enforcement officer, now defense attorney) which categorizes many of the people who find themselves on the wrong side of the bars as “clueless”. They’re not vicious thugs, just terminally stupid. On the other hand, there are some who need to be locked up permanently for the good of everybody else (in an ideal world, they would be taken out and shot, but that’s a bit difficult to actually implement).
Oh, and 1800 block on Great Highway–is that a real address or a disabled motorhome?
1800 block is at Noriega and the Great Highway frontage street. Lots of good houses in that area.
On a different note, stuff like that happens all the time at the 7-11 and on those four corners. There’s a family owned mini-mart across the street, the N stop and the 18 in addition to the 7-11, and it’s a haven for not-so-nice people of all sorts going towards or away from the beach. I’ve seen plenty of really unruly crap go down from my window (I can see the intersection really clearly and it’s made me a looky-loo, I’ll admit) and most of the time the police are nowhere to be found. They have a presence in the area, I won’t deny that, but it takes a call, an accident (like the one mentioned), or some serious hoo-ha to be happening before they really show up. They roll down the Great Highway (proper) a lot more because it’s an easy pickup.
That being said, I never feel unsafe in the neighborhood and I don’t know how much more they could actually be doing, so I’d say as far as keeping it realistic in what the police can do in that area, they’re doing a bang up job.
“Two other suspects… were cited for terrorist threats.”
Terrorist threats? Seriously? Because they “kept opening the emergency windows”?
Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like they were a bunch of hoodlums being complete assholes, and I’m sure there was more going on than irritating window-opening, but calling them terrorists is senseless fear-mongering and giving them WAY too much credit. If you can’t handle a few kids being dicks on the bus, maybe you shouldn’t be living in San Francisco.