San Francisco Police Department

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September 8, 2011 | 5:00 PM | By

Jostling continues on SFPD participation in JTTF

The debate over the San Francisco Police Department’s participation in the regional Joint Terrorism Task Force has slogged on for months after the American Civil Liberties Union revealed the agreement governing SFPD’s involvement in the anti-terror program disregarded long-standing LOCAL restrictions on police intelligence gathering and surveillance.

At a joint Human Rights/Police Commission meeting in May, dozens of local Muslims and civil libertarians called on the Police Commission to pull out of the controversial memorandum of understanding between the city and the FBI. The MOU was approved in March 2007 by then-Police Chief Heather Fong without the knowledge of the Police Commission, which is responsible for such policy decisions.

The ACLU and the Asian Law Caucus have urged San Francisco to follow the lead of Portland, Oregon, which pulled its police department out of the regional JTTF over concerns about over-broad homeland security investigations. In May, Portland entered into an agreement with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for Oregon to allow local police to participate in the JTTF on an “as-needed” basis.

SFPD Commander Michael Biel, who is in charge of the Investigations division, contacted the Portland City Attorney and the FBI’s Portland office to learn more about the state of affairs with Portland’s new joint resolution. At last night’s Police Commission hearing, Biel reported that under the new agreement, Portland Police officers did not have top-secret clearance nor access to regional, national or international intelligence received by the JTTF. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Portland, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Commission, San Francisco Police Department
August 31, 2011 | 11:06 AM | By

Edson Lacayo, 29, murdered on Hampshire Street in the Mission

Craftside

San Francisco and Oakland are experiencing a violent summer

A 29-year-old man was shot to death shortly before 11:30 PM last night on the 800 block of Hampshire Street. The San Francisco Medical Examiner’s office identified the dead man as Edson Lacayo, a San Francisco resident.

According to the San Francisco Police Department, officers responding to reports of shots fired around 11:29 PM last night found Lacayo lying on the street with three gunshot wounds. Emergency medical personnel pronounced Lacayo dead at the scene.

Police are unsure whether the shooting is related to the murder of 22-year-old Gaspar Putch-Tzek, a cook who was killed on 19th and San Carlos Streets early Tuesday morning after being mistaken for a gang member.

Officer Carlos Manfredi, an SFPD spokesperson, said residents reported seeing two suspects running away from the scene in an unknown direction. No identifying information was provided for either suspects. Officer Manfredi said the death is being investigated by Homicide inspectors, but SFPD has not yet determined whether the shooting is gang related.

Lacayo’s murder is San Francisco’s 34th homicide of 2011, compared to 32 killings as of August 27th last year.

FILED UNDER: Police, Mission District, murder, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department
August 26, 2011 | 11:44 AM | By

Murder in Bernal Heights, non-fatal shooting in the Mission Thursday PM

An 18-year old man was shot to death in a drive-by shooting on Alemany Boulevard in Bernal Heights shortly after noon on Thursday, and a 48-year-old man was wounded by gunfire on Mission and 18th Street later that evening. Kevin Hall, an 18-year-old San Francisco resident, was identified as the slain man by the Medical Examiner’s office this morning.

Hall’s killing is San Francisco’s 32nd murder of 2011.

According to San Francisco Police, Hall and another man were driving in a faded red Buick East on Alemany Boulevard around 12:30 PM. While stopped at the intersection of Alemany and Putnam Street, a silver, 2-door sedan pulled up alongside them. The passenger in the sedan, a black man wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt got out, walked up to the passenger window of the Buick and fired at Hall. Though his companion drove him to San Francisco General Hospital, Hall died from gunshot wounds.

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FILED UNDER: Police, Bernal Heights, Kevin Hall, Mission District, murder, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department
August 23, 2011 | 11:47 AM | By

Second Anonymous protest closes 2 BART stations, 45 arrested

As promised, the hacktivist group Anonymous returned to Civic Center yesterday for a second rush-hour protest against officer-involved shootings by BART police and the transit agency’s decision to cut cellphone service in Downtown San Francisco stations on August 11th. Last Monday, approximately 200 demonstrators forced BART to close the Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell and Civic Center Stations for two hours, snarling the evening commute.

Though only Powell and Civic Center stations were shuttered during yesterday’s action, police took a distinctly sterner tone with the protests, arresting four people on the platform of the Civic Center station before declaring an unlawful assembly and forcing roughly 40 protesters and journalists up to the street. The San Francisco Bay Guardian posted video of BART police arresting a woman on the platform of the Civic Center Station. Three more people were arrested in the station for chanting slogans critical of BART and holding a banner.

BART Deputy Police Chief Dan Hartwig said the arrests were made over concerns for public safety and the ability of people to move freely through BART stations.

“That platform is not designed for anything besides waiting for public transportation,” Hartwig said.”We’ve gone out of our way to be accommodating, probably flexible to a fault. It’s our responsibility to maintain a safe environment within this system. We can’t afford to have this be a weekly occurrence.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Community, #OpBART, Anonymous, BART, BART police, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department
August 12, 2011 | 4:15 PM | By

SFPD names officers in Kenneth Harding shooting

The two San Francisco police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Washington State parolee Kenneth Harding last month were named in a letter from SFPD to the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

In response to a Sunshine Ordiance request filed by ACLU Norcal attorney Michael Risher, SFPD identified Matthew Lopez and Richard Hastings as the two officers who fired on Harding.

Harding, who was 19 at the time of his death, fled from SFPD officers who were conducting fare checks at the Muni Platform on Third Street. Though the officers didn’t know it at the time, Harding was on parole from Washington State and was considered a person of interest in a Seattle homicide earlier in July. Harding fired on SFPD officers as he fled. Harding and Lopez returned fire, striking him in the leg.

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FILED UNDER: Police, Bayview-Hunter's Point, Kenneth Harding, Officer-involved shootings, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department
August 2, 2011 | 6:22 PM | By

Bloody summer as gunfire increases in San Francisco and Oakland

Craftside

San Francisco and Oakland are experiencing a violent summer

The summer of 2011 has been anything but calm on both sides of the Bay. Gun violence is on the rise in both San Francisco and Oakland, with the East Bay’s largest city struggling to cope with a sharp jump in murders, shootings and armed robberies.

As of today, there have been 71 murders in Oakland this year, up from 52 at this point in 2010. There have been five murders alone since last Friday. The most recent set of Oakland Police Department statistics reveal a 39 percent increase in shootings from last year as of July 31st, with 303 incidents of gunfire reported to police compared to 218 at the same time in 2010.

While San Francisco’s 29 killings so far this year are only one more ahead of last year’s murder rate, gun violence is claiming more victims. 141 people have been struck by gunfire so far this year, up from 119 by the end of July 2010. Twenty-six shootings took place between June 5 and July 2nd, up from the fourteen in May.

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FILED UNDER: Police, gun violence, murder, murder rate, Oakland, Oakland Police Department, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department
June 21, 2011 | 2:44 PM | By

Two murders in Oakland overnight: body found floating off Fort Mason

[UPDATE 6/23/11: The dead man found in the water off Fort Mason has been identified as 20-year-old Dennis Knowlton of Olympia, Washington]

Two people were shot to death in Oakland on Monday at opposite ends of the city. The first murder took place around noon yesterday on Bancroft and 73rd Avenues, close to the Oakland Police Eastmont Substation. 28-year-old Christopher Ingram, a Fairfield resident, was taken to Highland Hospital with a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead around 12:45 PM.

Roughly eight hours later, a gunman fired from a moving car at a crowd gathered in the 800 block of  32nd Street in Ghost Town. 18-year-old Dionte Freeman was fatally shot, and a pregnant 21-year-old woman and two 18-year-old men were also wounded by gunfire.

Aside from the two murders, there were two unrelated shootings in East Oakland, one on the 10700 block of Pippin Street around 2 AM this morning, the other around 9 PM on 84th Avenue near International Boulevard. The victims in both shootings suffered non-fatal wounds.

San Francisco Police are also investigating the death of a 20-year-old white man found in the water off Fort Mason this morning as a homicide. SFPD received a call around 6:30 AM this morning of a corpse floating near a pier by Fort Mason. Lieutenant Troy Dangerfield said the death may be linked to a trail of blood leading from a post office at Beach Street and Broadway to the Fort Mason Center parking lot. On Wednesday, the San Francisco Medical Examiner identified the dead man as Dennis Knowlton of Olympia, Washington.

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FILED UNDER: Police, East Oakland, Ghost Town, Marina, Mission, murder, Oakland, Oakland Police Department, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department
June 15, 2011 | 11:06 PM | By

San Francisco, there’s a new police chief in town

SFPD

Greg Suhr is San Francisco's new Chief of Police

This past April, a tearful Greg Suhr was sworn in as San Francisco’s Chief of Police by Mayor Ed Lee, who personally selected Suhr to head the department. Prior to his appointment, the 30-year SFPD veteran commanded the department’s Bayview Station, where he spearheaded a dramatic decrease in crime in one of San Francisco’s most violent neighborhoods.

Still, Suhr’s appointment as the citys 43rd police chief is surprising to some. In 2005, then-police chief Heather Fong demoted and reassigned Suhr from head of patrol to the Public Utilities Commission unit after a demonstration in the Mission turned into a riot. The demotion came just three years after “Fajitagate,” in which Suhr and the entire SFPD command staff were charged with obstructing an investigation into a fight by a group of off-duty officers, again, in the Mission.

So it’s been a long and windy road for Chief Greg Suhr. I sat down with the chief in his office earlier this week to discuss the chief’s plans for his police department. (Transcript after the jump)

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FILED UNDER: Politics, Greg Suhr, San Francisco, San Francisco Police Department