By Chief Ken Craig of Community Patrol USA
Thank you to everyone who attending this evenings public safety meeting at Eureka Valley Recreation Center. While I was not presented with an opportunity to speak personally, a number of people approached me after the meeting to express concerns that the police seemed to be “unaware” of the significant violent assaults and robberies involving weapons and firearms that seem to have exploded in the neighborhood in the last six months or so.
Chief Ken Craig, Community Patrol USA
There undoubtedly have been a number of worrying and particularly violent incidents in the neighborhood and area patrolled by Castro Community On Patrol in the last six months, and clearly the broader community feels more unsafe in what they used to perceive as a safe and relatively violence free area of the city. The armed car jacking and ADW on Hartford, the stabbing and robbery on Sanchez, the armed and violent robberies of cell phones throught the neighborhood, the beating of the man on Hancock, violence surrounding Pink Saturday and Pride and most recently the armed robbery of two victims at Eureka Valley Recreation Center itself. I know that Chief Suhr, Captain Moser and Captain Corrales all know about these incidents, and they have been intimately involved in investigating them and trying to bring them to closure. Unfortunately these incidents in particular were not highlighted or discussed but CCOP and CP-USA has been in close communication with the investigating officers in all of these cases from the moment we found out about them. They are most definitely “on the radar” but for some reason they did not really come up at this evenings meeting.
In truth, if you look back at this very CP-USA weekly crime activity report you will actually find that the number of violent crimes has consistently gone down since 2010.
Aggravated assaults and ADW has gone from:
47 in 2010 to
46 in 2011 and
33 in 2012
and currently stands at 19 for 2013 to date.
Assault, battery, strongarm and robbery as also gone down consistently from:
385 in 2010 to
373 in 2011 and
347 in 2012
and currently stands at 206 for 2013 year to date.
While the CP-USA and the SFPD figures both show crime levels dropping, perception and awareness of incidents is on the increase through new mediums such as social media outlets. Within moments of an incident occurring, facebook, twitter and a whole manner of other sources are updated with the information. This is a GREAT thing as far as we are concerned. One robbery, one assault, one battery is too many in our opinion and CP-USA has been working with the SFDA, SFPD, Patrol Special Police and community groups since 2006 to make the community more aware of the general level of crime that goes on around them every day of every week in the year. Many people, despite so much social media attention, unfortunately continue to remain unaware and remain reluctant to take some simple steps to protect themselves.
It is very easy to point the finger at City Hall, at the DA, at the SFPD, or at Castro Patrol and demand that they do more, achieve more, and succeed more, but in truth it will take effort from EVERYONE in the community to reduce violent crime and robberies in our back yard. We should most certainly hold City Hall, the DA, the SFPD and Castro Patrol accountable, but we must also ask ourselves; what am I doing to help this situation? Are you part of your neighborhood watch? If not, join or start one. Do you take the simple precautionary steps recommended by the CCOP self-defense seminars? If not, take the next seminar or start applying the techniques. Do you report concerns and suspicions to the appropriate professional entities? If not, PLEASE start doing so.
Not everyone will want to make the effort to help in this way – but if a significant majority of the neighborhood did just “a little bit more” than they are doing now, the cumulative effect could be tremendously positive. The alternative is to sit back and wait for “someone else” to do it – and we all know when that will happen.
GET INVOLVED in whatever way you feel able to. YOU can make a WORLD of difference. Safety, after all, is a COMMUNITY EFFORT.