More S.F. residents share stories of police standing idly by as crimes unfold:

[tenderfoot]

‘They didn’t want to be bothered’

After weeks battling the bewildering bureaucracy of San Francisco’s criminal justice system, Danielle Kuzinich finally has some answers in the strange case of the thrashed parklet and the do-nothing cops.

Just before dawn on Dec. 31, firefighters witnessed a man wrecking the charming parklet outside the San Francisco Wine Society in the Financial District and notified police. Security camera footage from a nearby hotel shows police arriving, chatting with a firefighter, talking to a man sitting next to piles of parklet debris and leaving. It then shows the man continuing to trash the area.

Now, a man police believe is the culprit is in jail — busted only because he allegedly went on to commit more vandalism days after the Wine Society mess. But the episode spotlighted an issue bigger than one arrest: a pattern of some officers on the San Francisco force seemingly uninterested in dealing with crime.

:snip:

In a visit to The Chronicle newsroom Tuesday, Police Chief Bill Scott promised that’s not the case.

“I can confidently say that’s not happening,” he said. “I get a report every morning of last night’s activities, and there’s a lot of great work being done.”

He acknowledged, though, that the department has “serious morale issues” because of understaffing, intense scrutiny amid the police reform movement and tussles with District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Still, he said, that’s no excuse for not addressing crime.

“Despite the reason that an officer may be in that mental state where they might think it’s not a big deal for them to bother with it, it is a big deal,” Scott said. “And when they don’t do their job, I have to hold them accountable.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/SF-police-crime-16931399.php

Yep, MAGA cops sitting back and letting the DA take the blame.

[Watertown]

1. Very true but nothing new

Sadly, lack of response from SFPD is nothing new. This is why I moved out of there 20 years ago. I actually got yelled at by a cop for asking him to arrest a team of thieves stripping a car in broad daylight. And numerous other similar incidents. The only thing they're interested in there is giving parking tickets. Which they are very very good at.

[tenderfoot]

2. Interesting.

Last edited Wed Mar 2, 2022, 11:37 AM - Edit history (1)

I used to love San Francisco until tech took it over.

I spent a month in the bay area 7 years ago - well before Boudin - I couldn't be bothered to go into the city. It wasn't as interesting to me as it was back in the 1980s and 90s.

I spent most of the time in Berkeley and I wasn't impressed with that either.

My disappointment had nothing to do with homelessness or crime and everything to do with it being so ridiculously expensive that the eccentrics/artists/musicians that made it special had to move away.

[canuckledragger]

3. Reminds me of My home city, Kingston Ontario.

Where the cops there don't do anything for you if you don't look wealthy enough to hold them accountable with a lawyer.

Fit their pre-conceived notions of a drug addict looks like and they'll harass and arrest the piss out of you though...

[Kid Berwyn]

4. Wow! Had no idea...

Visited Kingston in October, 2019 to attend a concert in the Isabel Bader Centre at Queen’s University. Visited the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Miller Geology Museum and the Time sculpture. Loved the place and the people.

[canuckledragger]

5. Oh it's a nice place and all that for what you experienced.

But if you don't have money, it's very expensive to live in it, as it's rare to find anything around $20/hr unless you have college, or a trade at least.

Rents for simple 1 bedroom or more apts start at over $1000, and the city officials HATE the homeless here, but do nothing to stop from generating them, and have actually shut down resources available to them, more concerned about how it looks to tourists coming from elsewhere.

There's a LOT of various forms of abuse that go on behind closed doors here, and the while the city might pay lip service to being concerned about children in need here, they've actually shut down their own or hindered other resources that used to be available until they couldn't stay open any more. Like a walk in mental health outfit with counsellors available, a youth shelter, etc. there was a thing going on with homeless squeegee kids for a bit, until the city passed a law against the squeegee thing, leaving the the kids with nothing.

The only ones I ever Children's aid getting involved with...are the poor families that can't afford to do anything about such accusations, true or not.

There's a lot here that never reaches the papers or tourists, and it's designed that way.