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An argument among a group of young people turned violent late Tuesday afternoon, ending with two women being taken to the hospital, one officer said. Officers said around six people were involved and a bat and knife were recovered at the scene.

“It was a fight between a bunch of girls and later maybe their boyfriends,” said Officer T. Fowle, who along with nearly a dozen other officers on Capp Street between 24th and 25th streets, was trying to figure out exactly what happened. Lieutenant Dave Smith said the brawl was the latest confrontation in a feud that started a week or more ago.

Smith said the two women’s condition was unknown, but one’s injuries appeared to be non-life threatening. A witness speaking with police had bloodstains on his sweatshirt. One bystander said one of the victims had blood all over her face.

Laurie Buenafe Krsmanovic, a community contributor who first alerted Mission Loc@l to the incident,  said she was strolling with her son nearby when she heard a woman or several screaming loudly and saw a crowd gathering and heard sirens.  There was a woman, her face covered with blood standing in the middle of Capp street screaming loudly, she wrote in an e-mail message.

At least three people were taken into police custody, Smith said.

Smith said gang activity may have played a role in the skirmish and the Gang Task Force will most likely handle the investigation.

One officer stood guard over a young man slumped against the apartment building at 949 Capp St.  “All I know is I was told to watch him,” the officer said.

Across the street a young woman in her late teens talked to police.  Residents came out of the building or around the corner from McDonald’s to see what happened.

“These are the youth that I work with, ” said Ray, a 30-something man who identified himself as a member of the Community Response Network. “They (the police) don’t know who was involved so they grabbed everyone. It’s racial profiling.”

One witness, who declined to give her name, said she saw three girls involved in the fight slip under the yellow tape and leave. Two other witnesses, who also declined to give their names, said a lesbian was involved and had been attacked, but this could not be independently confirmed.

However, Smith said he did not believe that the fight was a hate crime, “It was not to do with a protected category.”

One man, who did not witness the incident, said the fight was between Latina and Samoan girls. Leiutenant Smith said he had also heard the girls described in that way but could not confirm whether it was true.

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Founder/Executive Editor. I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019 when I retired. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still there.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

Right now I'm trying to figure out how you make that long-held interest in local news sustainable. The answer continues to elude me.

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