San Francisco D.A., police chief defend their response to crime
SAN FRANCISCO -- At a community meeting in San Francisco's Sunset District Thursday, residents had a chance to question police chief Bill Scott and district attorney Brooke Jenkins about violent crime in the city.
The fatal stabbing of tech business executive Bob Lee has reinforced the belief that anything can happen to anyone anywhere.
"I've been downtown in the streets at night and I've been alone. It is scary but I don't think it's unique to San Francisco," said Margaret Graf who has lived in San Francisco for more than 60 years.
Graf and a friend sat in a packed community center in the Sunset District, hoping to hear some solutions to the rise in crime.
Bob Lee's stabbing death was just one of the issues addressed at the meeting. The crowd also heard a presentation of the city's approach to dealing with drugs and homelessness.
"The police can't even take care of this problem. So it's going to be going on and there's no resolution anytime soon," Dorothy Lathan concluded.
There are residents that are asking for more proactive patrols but, with the police department down more than 560 officers, Chief Scott says it's going to take time to get back to adequate staffing levels.
"We can't do everything on overtime but that definitely helps and it helps us stabilize our deployment. So we have a plan to just try to stay stable. The good news is our hiring and our applicant pool is up significantly and it's going to mean more people out of the academy but it's going to take years..." Chief Scott said.
The chief says the renewed collaboration with the district attorney's office to prosecute the criminals police arrest is a welcome change.
"We have to remember that the police are charged with enforcing the law but somebody else wrote the law. We're the people who elected people to write those laws so it basically comes down to us," Graf said.
As for the Bob Lee case, Chief Scott says the SFPD is following several leads but no arrests had been made.
