Impressively, all four homicides that occurred in the Tenderloin in 2008 were solved, and many types of crimes were reported less frequently. Jimenez chalked that up to police officers building trust within the community, which, in turn, allows residents to feel comfortable coming forward as witnesses. Disturbingly, that same idea of community trust was then used to justify an increase in reported sexual assaults. Up from 30 in 2007, 44 sexual assaults were reported in the Tenderloin last year.
Given the relatively small numbers, that's not a hugely significant jump. But Jimenez assigned it significance, anyway. Without any statistics or studies backing him up, he said he believed the victims simply felt more comfortable reporting the assaults. By that convenient logic, the more sexual assaults reported, the better job the SFPD is doing.
If Jimenez is correct -- that a jump in the number of sexual assaults is simply the mark of newfound comfort with the San Francisco Police Department -- then shouldn't the number of reported rapes have correspondingly increased? Well ... it didn't. There were 13 in both 2007 and 2008. And that doesn't make us comfortable at all.
Last week we wrote about a statistic too beautiful to survive: The San Francisco Police Department was boasting a 100 percent arrest rate for homicide cases in 2009. Well, the 21-day hot streak seems to be over (at least for now) after 23-year-old Leo Jia Jian Yu was murdered in the Western Addition this morning.
There apparently was no 300-pound man to sit on the suspect till the cops arrived, nor surveillance video footage that allowed for a quick capture of the gunman, as there had been in the first two homicide cases of the year. The police have no suspects.
tenterhooks during the past week as rumors flew that UHW-West's Oakland
offices might at any moment be taken over by Stern's operatives.
conflict between labor leaders Stern and Rosselli began five years ago,
when SF Weekly uncovered a secret deal in which the SEIU lobbyists
would seek legislation discouraging nursing home patients and their
families from suing for negligence. In exchange for supporting this
industry-backed measure, the union obtained the right to organize
certain nursing homes under management-approved template contracts. In
a subsequent story, SF Weekly revealed that these contracts included
provisions prohibiting the union from speaking out against patient
neglect or abuse.
Bay Area residents rejoicing over the historic inauguration of Barack
Obama might want to take heed of an assessment of their elected
representatives featured yesterday on Politico, the political news Web site.
Writer Glenn Thrush posted a top-ten list
of Democrats who pose a threat to Obama's agenda. As it turns out, this
elite group is stacked with legislators from the Golden State. Three
Californians are on Obama's potential "White House Frenemies List," including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (No. 2), Rep.
Henry A. Waxman (No. 4) of Los Angeles, and the East Bay's Rep. Barbara Lee
(No. 8). (Pictured are Feinstein, right, and Lee.) No other state offered more than one.
Whatever you make of Politico's assessment, there's no denying that California pols have been quite visible in the first days
of the Obama presidency. One of the principal dramas of the transition period was Feinstein's tantrum over Obama's selection of former Monterey Congressman Leon Panetta as CIA director.
On Tuesday, more West Coast pageantry was offered up on the national stage: Among the prominent attendees
at the inauguration in Washington, D.C., were state Attorney General
Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. Needless to say,
Bill O'Reilly was thrilled.
The White House handover has put us in a contemplative mood here at SF Weekly. Time passes, the seasons change, and the wheel of fate turns. But some things are constant -- among them the intellectual rigidity of San Francisco's Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo), a little-noticed board that has an outsize influence on city energy policy.
San Francisco was abuzz yesterday with the announcement of appointments to Board of Supervisors committees. Missing from the coverage was the new constitution of LAFCo. Joining Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi on the commission will be rookie Supe David Campos (pictured), ensuring that LAFCo's fanatical devotion to public power, or some iteration thereof, remains intact.
Don't fault yourself if you've never heard of this commission. As SF Weekly managing editor Will Harper explained yesterday,
LAFCo is a paragon of bureaucratic anomalies in a city with no shortage
of them. For eight years, the commission -- on taxpayers' tab -- has
kicked around various ideas for wresting the city's power grid from
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. It is now playing a leading role in
shaping a dubious Public Power Lite venture called CleanPowerSF, the subject of a recent SF Weekly cover story.
