Sep 5, 2008 8:54 pm US/Pacific
SFPD Seeks To Reduce Mission District Violence
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5 / KCBS / AP / BCN) ―
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SFPD Chief Heather Fongs talks to reporters about the recent violence spike.
CBS
San Francisco police planned to increase patrols in the city's troubled Mission District after two people died and three others were wounded in two separate shootings Thursday night, the police chief said Friday.
More police officers, in and out of uniform, will be deployed in the Mission neighborhoods and in schools as part of a new strategy to calm a spike in violence that has now claimed a total of six lives during the past two weeks, Chief Heather Fong announced.
"The violence in the Mission is unacceptable," Fong said. "The people who are involved in gang activity, drug activity and have totally no regard whatsoever for the community have taken it upon themselves to shoot and harm and kill."
The chief said the additional uniformed and plainclothes officers would be deployed especially in areas where drugs are being sold and gang members are known to congregate.
She also said police would work more closely with probation and parole officers, since many of the city's homicide victims during the last two years either had prior contact with police, or were on some kind of probation or parole.
Fong acknowledged that the SFPD still needs additional resources in the form of new hires, and added that the department can't begin pulling officers from other police districts out of fear criminal activity might then spike in those areas.
She decried the recent killings and other attacks in the Mission District as "senseless" and "vicious."
In the latest violence, a double-fatal shooting occured along the border of the Mission and Potrero Hill districts on Thursday night.
Police said the slain men were with a woman at 24th and Utah streets when two men approached them and opened fire before fleeing in a waiting minivan. The woman also was hit, but she was expected to survive.
The victims were identified by the San Francisco medical examiner's office as 19-year-old Noel Espinoza and 23-year-old Matthew Solomon.
Police said a few hours earlier, a gunman opened fire on a couple who were sitting in a car with their young child in the back seat at 18th and Bryant streets. The two adults were critically wounded, but the 4-month-old child was unhurt.
No one had been arrested in either shooting as of Friday afternoon.
The fatal shootings were the 70th and 71st homicides reported by police in San Francisco this year, according Sgt. Neville Gittens. There were 80 reported at the same time last year.
The deaths also marked the 10th and 11th homicides so far this year in the Mission District, he said.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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