San Francisco's most pleasant neighborhood had its cheery, safe veneer shattered this morning with a shooting -- 8:50am, Steiner and McAllister. We are shocked, simply shocked. Surely, city officials, police leaders, and representatives of the nearby public housing will take swift and effective action to ensure that this is the only time citizens ever feel unsafe while walking through the Western Addition.
SFist_Jim was fortunate enough to be in the neighborhood at the time, that lucky thing. We'll be posting pix of the scene just as soon as they roll in.
Update: Jim reports that the victim was doing well enough to converse calmly with paramedics, and that the area was very quickly secured. (Readers, however, report that there were three victims in total.) Be careful, everyone, please. And don't shoot people.
Update on the update: SFGate reports that three victims were conscious and transported to hospitals.
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Shit, I was on my bike going to work at the same time -- a block away. I had no idea.
Wow. Up until a month ago, I lived right there. That part of the W+, around Alamo Square, actually is pretty cheery--it's the part of the neighborhood the Redevelopment Agency didn't ruin--although spillover crime from points east was not unheard of. Yikes. Stay safe, old neighbors.
i ride by there everyday. today i rode by about 5 or 10 minutes before this incident. that is really scary. but i gotta say...that's one industrious thug, up before nine capping people.
ah the beloved projects! I hear North Beach is now grappling with a buncha shit also since theirs have re-opened.
Can it actually be stressed enough that SF is unable to oversee these beloved housing jewels in our fair city?
Oust Greg Fortner, Mr. Mayor, he is a black eye, a walking reproach and a constant reminder of tragedy. Call in those mightyass feds to kick some ass and do some actual oversight, please.
Thanks,
a lowly minion who probably will vote for you again, sadly
The shooting was at Friendship Village apartments, between Fillmore and Webster/Mcallister and Fulton (behind the church there). I was pushing my son to daycare in his stroller when it happened, we were about a block away. Apparently three people were shot.
Another example of why Supervisor Chris Daly's call for funds to be shifted away from public safety (additional officers and the community justice center) and towards more affordable housing (in addition to what is already in the Mayor's budget)is ill-timed. This is not the time to take proposed dollars away from public safety - and I hope Dufty has the spine to stand up, Ammiano the common sense to stand up, Mirkarimi the better sense of what is best for the City, and Elsbernd the sensibility he has already shown time and time again to stand up to Chris Daly, The Decider, and to tell him he is out of touch with the needs of San Francisco on the budget this year.
If people are prisoners in their own homes because they fear stepping outside and getting caught in crossfire or randomly shot (like happened in SOMA a couple of weeks ago), all the affordable housing in the world ain't worth a darn.
Effective policing and administrative policy is what we need.Not another class of 50 doing the same-o same-o lame-o
J, the police are currently being offered more money for even less protection, and their track record seems to get worse every day. They don't give a damn. Do you think throwing even more money at them is going to do a darn thing?
The police are about 300 short, sfmike.
They appear whenever I've called. It's the DA and the judges here who have been lax in prosecuting crime.
But you can't be an effective prosecutor if you have ineffective police investigation which is up to the charging police.
If the police are 300 short, why is it they can spare the manpower for a 20-man escort of the limousine of the ambassador from Borneo? What about those two shift who are still directing traffic at Post & Kearny, for more than two years now?
SFPD manpower is badly mismanaged. More manpower may be needed, but better management needs to happen first.
I agree - it seems that we need more effective policing like New York and Los Angeles. The crime mapping of hotspots should serve as areas to have a concentration of police ready to bust some criminal ass. If that means putting extra police around every housing project (making the gross assumption that crime is a bit higher around housing projects), then that's what needs to happen in addition to getting more police on the streets.
I want to see more traffic cops - we have a free for all in this City when it comes to drivers ignoring traffic laws, and the results are deadly. Just like children will leave their rooms a mess, scream out "I want candy!" until they get it, and otherwise abuse their parents as much as the parents allow the abuse to go on, drivers in San Francisco will drive excessively fast until they actually think there is half a chance they'll get pulled over and ticketed if they drive faster than the speeds we as citizens of this City have agreed should be the maximums.
If all else fails, I guess we'll all just have to start packing pistols to protect ourselves and make up for the lack of police in numbers and in focus.
Oh brother, you guys are more terrifying than the shooting.
I'm glad that you agree J because I agree with marc solomon,that is where I got the idea.
Hmm. A triple shooting at 9 am is awful no matter where it happens, but sadly it's easier to believe it went down at Friendship Village than at Mac & Steiner. It was clear that there were a handful of bad actors living and hanging out in that complex. For instance, a year or two ago the SFBC was warning riders away from that stretch of McAllister because kids were swatting at bikers with lead pipes. And I would not infrequently hear "cars backfiring" late at night over in that direction.
Now would maybe be a good time for the city to start thinking up ways of providing affordable housing without ghettoizing people in these pockets of poverty and despair. This particular complex seems to have been explicitly designed for maximal gloom, up to and including the street sign that reads "END FRIENDSHIP."
Sigh. I hope at least that the injuries aren't serious.
Unfortunately this is just another example of a dead idea. Public housing complexes are an outdated and dangerous solution to problems that no longer exist.
Newsom wants to rebuild these disaster areas, as long as they're not on his block.
Mr. Newsom, tear down these walls!
I want to know where all the new construction set asides monies are going in oder for us to demand 30 million out of the budget,The Mayors Office of Housing should explain.
thugs is thugs. the city is full of them. Kamala needs to get off her butt and do some work to prosecute.
Info for Potrero Hill residents/workers interested in public safety issues:
There's been a lot of discussion recently about an increase in strong
arm robberies and similar crimes on Potrero Hill.
The next Potrero Boosters meeting is entirely dedicated to crime and
safety issues - let's get the facts, get organized, and make our
neighborhood safer!
The Boosters meet on Tuesday, June 26, 7 to 9 pm, at the Potrero Hill
Neighborhood House.
Everyone is welcome to attend!
www.planpotrerohillsf.org
Public housing in and of itself isn't dangerous - but the notion that folks who find it very difficult to break above the lowest boundaries of our socioeconomic ladder are entitled to rob a little out of cars and homes is totally dangerous. Despite the material desires of folks', we all have to live within our means and without robbing/mugging/shooting others.
I still want to know what the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice actually does.
what does any of his offices do?
The sooner you guys move to 'burbs the better.
People want safe streets, but not to fund early childhood education, job training, after-school programs, etc... I don't condone violence of any kind but was anyone surprised that CA spends more on prisons than education? Its all systemic, and will only get fixed when we have the will as a society. Sure we run around and try to fix global warming (which is good) but where's the will to fix basic school and class inequality? So just move to El Cerrito already and interact with lesser classes only when they're serving you.
Poverty & despair?
Honey, I see garages with Lexus' and Land Rovers in them in the Hayes Valley North and South "projects".
If that's poverty and despair, can I have a piece of that pie? Thanks.
Acutally for my money, I'd settle for a vintage Vespa, but I'll take what I can get.
the fear of crime is the greatest soapboxing used by political pundit's.It captivates the audience.
I believe fear is used by corporations, politicians, religious pulpits, and in the home for grabbing attention and persuasion. Like the "There's shit in the meat" guy who stands in front of the Westfield Centre mall... Or the father who snaps his leather belt at the child to remind him/her she's going to get whooped if he/she doesn't behave... Or whatever it is Catholic and protestant church figureheads do to motivate parishoners to belly up to the collection plates and keep coming to church every week (fear of hell or whatever).
Chris Daly's proposed cuts to public safety and the Community Justice Center are just damned stupid at this point in time with the realities of how folks ignore our laws due to a lack of concern about being caught/prosecuted for coming to San Francisco.
... coming to San Francisco to commit the crimes.
Shut the Bay Bridge. Most of these morons are commuting in from the East Bay to shoot at each other.
When was the last time have you heard that the San Francisco's police detectives solved a homicide?
KomedaSF - Lame. The "welfare queen" cliche is very 1994.
periqueblend - I'm basically with you, but job training and after-school programs alone aren't going to do it. Chicago has the right idea:
www.thecha.org/transformplan/plan_summary.html
Tom, do you live near a project housing development?
I do--1/2 block away from one. I would've said the same thing you're saying 3 years ago when I lived in the comfort and cleanliness of a Diamond Hts condo. Things have changed though.
I am merely pointing out what I'm seeing, jack.
The idea of public housing is a pretty bad, non-working cliche.
* Renew the physical structure of CHA properties
* Promote self-sufficiency for public housing residents
* Reform administration of the CHA
Same thing here except one thing Tom Mayor Newsom would rather have a Justice Center fill a few pot holes and have another class of ineffective police class and so forth.But what do you want Tom.
See upthread. :) Until very recently I lived right by the housing project referenced in this very story. Now I live a few blocks further away.
Look, it's no secret that there are some potentially lucrative but extremely risky "careers" that draw heavily from public housing. I would hazard a guess that both the expensive cars you saw and the shootings SFist_Jim heard are related to these careers. I mean, come on, do you really think that there are people with good jobs and steady incomes who decide to live there because it's awesome?
Those people are trash no hope nor value in society, we already fucked them up beyond repair; and need to be killed on site or picked up with a crane and put in a desolate area of montana or someplace we don't have to be affected by them or where they will never make it to any civilization before they die of starvation and exposure
don't outlaw guns. Yet.
the way it stands right now, then only criminals and the police will have them and you will have no protection nor security.
why support the police payroll when they don't do anything. they just look the other way until they "have" to get involved. In some ways they are as frightening as these losers out there acting like little boys but with real toy guns
Jeffery those cops at Post and Kearny are working on thier own time (days off) and are paid for by the construction company doing work on the building at Kearny and Market. If the cop who worked on his day off was not thier when the transfomer blew up that lady who was injured might have died. She was lucky he was onscene when it happened.
Many Homicides have been solved. I know of a case though where the inspectors serveing a search warrant found a gun in an apartment and the Da's did not file the charges until a few weeks later and a second gun was found on same dude.
Bad cops out there, sure. Every work place has bad/lazy employees but there a a lot of good ones who do thier best.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think we'd be better off without public housing in SF? If public housing in SF magically went away, who among us would be surprised to see a dramatic decline in serious issues such as murders and drug dealing, and less-serious issues such graffiti and double-parking?
I don't mean to suggest we shouldn't subsidize housing for the poor. I just struggle to understand why we subsidize housing for the poor in one of the most expensive markets in our country.
wait.. how is this steiner and mcallister? the article says friendship court...
This is the most unrealistic, ridiculous post of "events" I've ever seen. It's amazing what people can publish and get away with it. Not only are the facts of the shootings wrong, but whoever is responsible for this article is completely masking a terrible nightmare occurring for youth in the Western Addition. You are perpetuating the lie that keeps these kids oppressed and unable to obtain the resources they need to either get out of there or stop this madness.
Number 1-this is not a cheerful neighborhood.
Number 2- "simply shocked?" Are you serious? What rock have you been living under?
Number 3-The SFPD are completely failing this community. "Swift action" is nothing but a lie.
This is what happens when the internet lets completely unqualified journalists spread their ideas. Lies. And the deaths just multiply because if the general public got the truth, they might get more involved.
ghostsareeverywhere, it's called sarcasm. The posting was dripping with sarcasm. What rock were you under in English class?
Did you all miss the part where 4 MORE people were shot, on almost the exact same spot, less than 12 hours before this shooting?
3 men were shot by seven assailants, and a 4th innocent bystander was struck by a stray bullet. So 7 people shot on the same block, in less than half a day.
The city attorney is going to court to ask for gang busting authority from a judge. Why not save time and police resources?
Round the gang shitheads up and ship them off to the most volatile part of Baghdad. There they would carry signs around with vile anti-Islamic curses written in arabic. Or maybe send them to downtown Singapore each with a bag o'crack in hand. The punishment there is a naked public whipping then beheading.
Shits not new dont be all shocked and amazed. This is what happens when yuppies move into the hood they blog about it. haha.
and come on be real there are no gangs in the fillmore its all just young kids wit fucked up lives who dont give a fuck if white people see what happens. give em guns and people get shot get over it you live in America we were born to kill baby.
guest 43
R U Yogo's roomate?
VIOLENT music if U can call that hip hop puke music
VIOLENT movies
VIOLENT videos
Any connection to VIOLENT crimes by youth? Naaaaw.
Hey Einstein--Next time you burn on a blogger for missing sarcasm, you might want to defend a well written article. Ghostsareeverywhere.