San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/public-safety/)
On several streets in the Mission, you can spot sticky notes in the windows of some homes. They’re blank, but they’re sending a message: The residents would like to signal their interest in participating in a neighborhood effort to address crime, trash and visible homelessness in the neighborhood. Nuala Bishari reported on the initiative for the San Francisco Public Press. She talked with “Civic” about what she found and how she learned it.
Sunnyvale’s Department of Public Safety includes fire, medical and police services and all first responders are trained across all three disciplines. Department Chief Phan Ngo said the different roles mean officers see themselves as caretakers, building their reputation as public servants with residents.
Almost two weeks ago, protesters in Portland, Ore., were detained by federal police and taken away in unmarked cars. Five days later, President Trump said that he would send federal agents to a dozen other liberal cities, including Oakland. For some of the Bay Area’s Central American residents, there are parallels between this moment and their own experiences with authoritarian governments in their countries of origin. Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, director at advocacy and social service nonprofit CARECEN SF, spoke to “Civic” about how the Bay Area’s Central American diaspora is reacting. “One of the things I always ask myself, like, why doesn’t the American people rise up?
When a tech executive helped bankroll a private network of security cameras in San Francisco, it was touted as crime-fighting technology that would not be directly in the control of law enforcement. But a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy advocacy group, shows that the San Francisco Police Department gained remote access to this private camera network for days at a time during protests in late May and early June. The privacy group says that access was a violation of San Francisco law. The camera network in question is managed by the Union Square Business Improvement District. Emails obtained by the foundation show that the group received, and approved, a request from SFPD to obtain remote access to the cameras for 48 hours on May 31.
From automated license plate readers to drones to devices designed to identify gunshots, law enforcement agencies use a variety of tools to gather data. Many are visible, if not immediately obvious to casual passersby. Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher with the digital privacy nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been keeping a close eye on the proliferation of surveillance technology and helps educate the public on how to identify it.
Stanford students Craig Nelson and Shelby Perkins have been researching which law enforcement agencies in the Bay Area use which technologies and mapping the results. Nelson and Perkins have also been tracking whether and how well agencies are complying with a state law that requires them to publish their standards, policies, procedures and training materials online. “When people are going out into the world we are now constantly surrounded by surveillance technology and it has become somewhat invisible to us even though it’s just right there in front of our eyes.
With hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets in recent weeks to protest police killings and racism, the law enforcement response has been highly visible. But in less obvious ways, law enforcement officers also gather information about protesters both online and in public. Cyrus Farivar, a reporter on the tech investigations unit of NBC News in San Francisco and author of “Habeas Data” has covered some recent cases in which law enforcement surveillance of social media posts about protests has resulted in real life enforcement actions, including arrest by the FBI. Read Farivar’s reporting at NBC News. “I think for most of us we understand, like, OK: The police are looking for one criminal mastermind and they’re taking extraordinary measures to go after one person.
At the demonstrations against police brutality and racism that have brought thousands to San Francisco’s streets in recent weeks, many protesters have carried signs carrying a demand to “defund the police.” The uprising sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer has turned a spotlight on this proposal, and locally, Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Shamann Walton have announced they are developing a proposal for something in that vein. How much money exactly is in play is unclear, but Walton and Breed have indicated they intend to redirect a portion of the SFPD’s nearly $612 million budget to benefit the city’s African American community. At a June 9 protest in front of City Hall, the crowd cheered and clapped when Breed brought up that proposal in her remarks. “Civic” spoke with people demonstrating about whether the idea of defunding the police department appealed to them, how drastically they would reduce funding, and what they would like to see money reinvested in. “I think that the defunding is different than reform.
An estimated 10,000 people packed the streets around Mission High School on Wednesday, then marched around the city to call for justice for George Floyd, killed on May 25 by Minneapolis police officers, and other black people and other people of color disproportionately killed by police.
Demand among homeless San Franciscans for the 40 slots the city is making available in its Haight-Ashbury safe camping site has outstripped supply, even as more than 1,000 hotel rooms and trailers meant for vulnerable residents sit empty. Around 60 people have requested to stay at the site, which has space for only 40 tents, said Mary Howe, director of the Homeless Youth Alliance.
San Francisco remains under an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew in the wake of a nationwide civil uprising over the death of George Floyd, an African-American man killed at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis. During a Monday morning press conference, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he is cautioning Mayor London Breed not to end the curfew too soon.
The morning of Nov. 8, 2018, a fire sparked in rural Northern California. It grew to disastrous proportions faster than some fire experts thought possible, and ultimately destroyed the town of Paradise and devastated several nearby communities.
