San Francisco football fans aren’t the only ones gearing up for Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVII between the 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens.
The police department is ready to deal with the crowds of people who will likely pour into the streets of San Francisco following the pigskin matchup – whether rejoicing or crying.
After the San Francisco Giants clinched the World Series title last fall, celebrations in the streets of downtown San Francisco turned dangerous. People swung from traffic lights and ignited fireworks in the middle of Mission and Valencia streets. As the night progressed, dumpsters were set ablaze, cars were flipped over and businesses in the Mission District vandalized.
“Traditionally, this is where people come to celebrate,” said SFPD Capt. Robert Moser following a monthly community meeting at the Mission police station on Tuesday.
The department is increasing police presence across the city on Sunday evening, but “a significant amount” of resources are being directed specifically to the Mission District, Moser said.
Police will be stationed along all of the major traffic corridors in the Mission, including 16th, 24th, Mission and Valencia streets. Traffic will not be allowed along Mission and Valencia following the game. Vehicles traveling along Cesar Chavez will be rerouted north to Guerrero Street, Moser said.
Law enforcement officers will also conduct alcohol compliance checks in downtown bars and other venues serving alcohol during the game, he said.
The raucous street action following the World Series victory culminated with multiple fires burning in the streets. In one case, a Muni bus was set on fire.
Most of the fires were started with trash from garbage cans and dumpsters. To help avoid that problem, garbage crews will add routes Sunday morning in various locations around the Bay Area, including along Mission Street.
Overall crime was down in mid-December, Moser reported at Tuesday night’s meeting. From Dec. 16 to Jan. 12, both property crimes and violent crimes decreased by 27 percent. As a result, arrests were also down, he said.
Still, a rash of recent robberies along the southwestern edge of the Mission drew concerned citizens to the meeting. A local neighborhood-watch group consisting of residents along Elizabeth Street coordinated efforts to attend the meeting and share their experiences in recent weeks.
“People are feeling so unsafe even to walk to the corner store,” said Raquel Andreatta, a local resident.
Patty Escobar told of driving her 22-year-old daughter to the 24th and Mission BART station at 6 each morning so she can get to her new job at the airport. On Tuesday, Escobar’s daughter called on her way home, at 5:30 p.m., to tell her about a masked man walking near the BART station who was making her nervous. She was too scared to walk by him.
“I watched this guy look my daughter up and down as she got into the car,” Escobar said. “It freaked me out.”
Moser told the concerned mother to call the police in a case like that.
“But you don’t feel comfortable pulling out your phone” near the 24th Street BART station, said Lani Kapur, who lives in the neighborhood and noted there has been an increase recently in the number of cell phone street robberies. “I don’t feel safe until I’m inside my house.”
Violent crime, especially robberies, is up in this part of the Mission, which Moser agreed is unusual.
At the back of the small community meeting room was a black-and-white rendering of a man police believe is a suspect in an attempted sexual assault on Jan. 6 at 23rd Street near Church.
The suspect is described as an Asian or Hispanic man about 25 years old, 160 pounds and 5 feet, 10 inches tall with a buzz haircut and a slight beard growth. A photo of the forensic sketch is posted on the police department’s website, www.sanfranciscopolice.org.
Detectives are investigating the crimes that have recently occurred in this neighborhood, said Moser, and he urged residents to call 911 if they witness a crime or believe a crime is about to occur.
As white person you guys have more money to keep ur kids in programs such as sports ,activities and etc but in a Latino neighborhood people might of had edu. in there countries but they had to move here to help there family. So when they come here there kids don’t have time with there parents sometimes there kids have to stayed home by there self because there parents are working extremely hard . U guys encouraged your kids, but for a Latino parents they expected there kids to do good but sometimes as a teen they don’t, as a kid they need love , they need a good home situation , but they don’t have that. Thats when all this kid get in trouble .white person u guys have a easier life. ……. Not sounding racism or nothing but u guys talk about how a black/brow ppl vandalized and commit so much crime. In the days of Martin Luther king Jr u guys were looking extremely down to black ppl. I talked to a lot of them they told me u know they use to treat are ancestor like this ,so why show them respect know. I don’t agree what they had told me but this how ppl are feeling
I agree with quiterumors in sum of the things ,, if u guys go to YouTube.com search (24th mission) a girl at the scene recorded it, the video show how a police grabs a young black teen is going overboard with him , I was at the scene when this happen ,the guy was walking he had a discussion with a person (just argueing) the police was close by ,and saw him the black guy walked away, the police with a motorcycle try to make him fall and they grab him literally smash his head with the concrete and the police officer by a little more would of broke the guys arm. If a white guy would of got stop they wouldn’t have got treated like this , not even when they vandalized the mission on giants game let me tell u white ppl were going crazy , so they arrested one of the guys that took a shyt in a police car they didn’t treat him like that . So that’s my point of view,, u might feel safe but other see it different
Here’s the video to which you referred:
Thanks for posting this and I hope everyone on this website who is always cheering the police on will watch it. The day the 49’s won the playoffs, I saw motorcycle cops drive up on the sidewalk on 24th/Harrison trying to intimidate and bully people who were just standing there.
“@mission local – please come outta the law enforcement’s ass… They’re not the benevolent helpers you always seem to be trying to make them out as”
Pretty much. Funny how a site that ostensibly represents a largely latino community seems to be so uncritical of the same police who constantly harass those of us who are brown or black.
Just a question for you, isn’t the majority of violent crime in this neighborhood committed by brow/black people?
You haven’t heard about the new white hipster street gang taking over the Mission??
Hardly any blacks in the mission
This kid I was next too the other day waiting for the bus and all the sudden 5 cop cars, 3 unmarked swarmed our bus stop and
Got in his face until they decided he was the “wrong guy” all cuz he “fit a description” aka young and brown. @mission local – please come outta the law enforcement’s ass… They’re not the benevolent helpers you always seem to be trying to make them out as
If a woman is raped and she describes the man who did it, police are obligated to question those that fit the description. I hope all people would want the police to do as much as they could to catch the person. They didn’t arrest the innocent person, did they? Exactly. Race is simply a factor in the victim’s description. They have not control over that.
Lucy, without going into tons of details here about the glaring evidence showing that increased policing / incarceration rates has had little to no direct positive impact on reducing sexual assault – and in fact there’s a fair amount of evidence to show that depending on who you are calling the cops after being assaulting just means putting yourself at risk for MORE violence (see INCITE Women of Color Against Violence for more on this topic)i DO want to point out, and do so as a white person, that there’s a word for the practical impact of the assumptions your comment is rooted in, that word is “structural racism”… your comment puts forth a racist / white supremacist narrative that people of color should be ok with, even expect to be harassed by police who are “just doing their job” looking for criminals all simply b/c the color of their skin matches that of the accused. That’s hella F’ed up. If the coin with flipped and white hipsters were getting roughed up by cops every time someone called the police about an “unidentified white person” the city, much less the police dept, would be shut down.. but its somehow suppose to be ok when it happens to youth of color? F that noise. Walking while a POC is not [shouldn’t be] a crime!
If you’re white as you say you are in your post, why are you talking about the experience of being non-white in the Mission? That seems a little racist to me.
Stop trying to be so dramatic. I’m a person of color, yet I’ve never ever been harassed by the cops in my entire life. And I live in the Mission, too! Why aren’t they shaking me down?
Agreed.
It’s not just “drama”. My son, now in his early 20’s, grew up in the mission and during his teenage years was stopped and harassed by police often for “fitting a description”, which was “clean cut, blue jeans, black jacket, black backpack.” The offense supposedly committed was usually tagging. I called Mission station to complain and that is what the captain at the time told me. They even made him late to school! All this does is make young people feel angry and threatened. He was simultaneously stopped often and “checked” by gangsters to see what color belt he was wearing, even though he avoided 24th St. and everywhere below 22nd on Mission, it happened. So yeah, the police are not your friends if you fit a description and for people who are in favor and stop and frisk type policies (Fred Sharples et al) it’s obvious that you don’t, and that you have no idea what it’s like not to be not in the white privilege bubble.
Darn, I put an extra “not” and ruined my dramatic conclusion.
Should say “not to be in the white privilege bubble”.
FTP – I thought we wanted less guns on the streets. Mission area cops have a history of harassing, physically / sexually assaulting, shooting, racial profiling, robbing people in this neighborhood. They’re worse than any other gang here. Talk about looking someone up
And down and feeling threatened – try being a young person of color in this neighborhood like
You don’t want police protection in our neighborhood, then move.