Some 60 residents on Monday evening said over and over that prostitution on Shotwell has never been worse, and they made it clear to District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen and Mission Captain Gaetano Caltagirone that their official efforts have been too slow and ineffective. “This is the worst it’s been — the density of prostitutes,” said 77-year-old David Brownell, who...
A man and a woman were arrested for taking a 17-year-old girl into a car against her will on 19th and Capp streets at 3 a.m. Sunday, police say. The 17-year-old was standing on the corner as the suspects’ car approached. As two of the suspects jumped out of the car and demanded the young woman get in, the victim...
A three-foot-tall, three-foot-wide object described by firefighters as a “lithium battery pack” ignited in a garage near 21st and Shotwell streets at around 9:30 p.m. Monday, spewing toxic fumes around the neighborhood. SFFD Battalion Chief Anita Paratley was just getting into her car to leave the scene around 9:45, as the fire had been contained with minimal damage to homes....
Shootings & shots fired A 22-year-old woman was shot by two men believed to be in their 20s at 22nd and Mission streets around 1:10 a.m. Sunday, police report. Police found the woman shot after they heard gunfire and saw the vehicle driving away. The woman was transported to the hospital in non-life-threatening condition. No arrests have been made. Around...
Shotwell Improvements The 21st and Shotwell intersection will be getting new streetlights and crosswalks in the next few months, according to Sandra Zuniga of the city’s “Fix-It” team. PG&E will be installing four new streetlights at the corner of 20th and Shotwell, and the SFMTA is recommending the installation of more prominent crosswalks. Zuniga said she also requested more street...
Stephanie Grant was getting comfortable living on the streets of the Mission. It was Spring 2016, and she had recently fallen in love with a man she would see in her tent encampment on Folsom Street. “He had this swag about him,” she recalled. “I called him Casanova.” They moved around the streets of the Mission together, and in April...
Jose Coronado Playground at 21st and Shotwell streets will soon be getting new trees, signage and resurfaced athletic courts — but the sex workers, johns and pimps that neighbors have long complained about are unlikely to leave anytime soon. Captain Bill Griffin from Mission Station said the prostitution is not as “linear” as citing loiterers around the park. And it...
A federal judge on Monday set October 22, 2018 as the trial date for a civil suit brought by the family of police shooting victim Luis Gongora Pat against the city and the two San Francisco police officers involved. The trial will come more than two years after the April 7, 2016 anniversary of the fatal encounter between Gongora Pat,...
At the StoreFrontLab on Shotwell Street Friday, the floor was strewn with protest posters and banners, and neighbors sat together at long tables creating still more of them. The community space has a history of planning events centered on social justice and activism. Jacob Palmer, a curator there, said the space had hosted several sign-making events in preparation for protests...
The San Francisco City Attorney’s office said on Thursday that two San Francisco police officers lawfully killed Luis Gongora Pat, a Guatemalan immigrant, when they confronted him earlier this year in the Shotwell Street homeless encampment where he lived. The statement from City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office came in response to Gongora Pat’s family who filed a lawsuit two months ago naming...
Since a five-alarm fire in June displaced Kimberly Walley and her husband, Henry Texada, from the single room occupancy hotel where they had been living for some five years, the couple had fallen on hard times, seemingly unplaceable by officials who had promised to find homes for all of those displaced in the fire. But on Thursday, Walley stood in...
Pacific Gas and Electric has installed temporary light fixtures at its Shotwell Street yard that the company said are an attempt to ramp up security measures, in part as a result of recent conversations with neighbors about homeless encampments in the area. The lights elicited a mixed reactions from those living in the tents, some of whom consider the bright...
Mission organizers and police alike are mobilizing to address a spate of violence including shootings in the Mission and in Bernal Heights that have sent five victims to the hospital in the past two weeks, one of them a 13-year-old boy and one a man who was shot in June and died of his injuries on Oct. 3. On Monday,...
The family of the 45-year-old Mayan homeless man shot by police near a Mission District tent encampment on April 7 filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and the two officers involved on Friday. The lawsuit was filed on the six-month anniversary of Luis Gongora Pat’s death and comes on the heels of an autopsy report released last week....
For three months, Fidel Amezcua, known to most by the name Happy, fought for his life. But on Saturday the 29-year-old, who worked as a custodian for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, succumbed to the injuries from a gunshot wound to his abdomen that had left him in critical condition on June 26. “I want people to know...
