San Francisco Bay Area TV news crews hit by series of brazen robberies

SAN FRANCISCOPolice have arrested two people in connection with a robbery of a KRON 4 television news crew Friday night that resulted in a shooting. It is the latest in a series of brazen robberies of TV news crews in the San Francisco bay area.

San Francisco residents Armani McFarland, 19, and John Woods, 19, were arrested in connection with the incident, which occurred around 8 p.m. in the Bayview District, police told CBS station KPIX.

McFarland is in custody on suspicion of two counts of robbery, conspiracy and a firearm charge, while Woods is being held on suspicion of robbery and conspiracy.

Police said KRON 4 reporter Jeff Bush had just finished an interview near Third Street and La Salle Avenue when two men armed with a gun demanded his camera and gear. During the robbery attempt, the security guard accompanying Bush shot one of the suspected thieves in the leg.

No one in the television news crew was injured, police said.

One of the suspects walked into San Francisco General Hospital a short time later with a non-life threatening gunshot wound, police said.

The KRON 4 security guard recently retired from the Oakland Police Department.

Bay Area television stations, including KPIX, regularly hire security guards for news crews in areas that pose a security risk, especially in light of the numerous recent incidents. The bulk of the previous incidents, however, have happened in Oakland, where journalists have been robbed and accosted, some in the middle of the day, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Among the most brazen incidents, according to The Guardian, happened when "a KPIX crew was filming outside a school in Oakland at noon and were live on air when five men descended on them and grabbed the camera from their tripod."(Watch a recording of what viewers saw at left.)

The reporter was allegedly punched in the face before the robbers sped off in a Mercedes.

Last month a different TV news crew was "robbed at gunpoint of its camera equipment in West Oakland, with journalists made to prostrate themselves on the ground as the assailants fled."