The San Francisco Citizen

From the quote of the day over at bluoz. Check it out.

“…is designed to prevent people from going to jail for committing a petty crime. If a person does a carjacking, wouldn’t you rather they get services than be thrown in jail?”

Does the above suggest that carjacking is a minor offense? A petty crime? 

Carjacking is straight-up robbery. So if you get a couple convictions of even the pettiest of carjackings, you are just one strike away from the perfecta of the three strikes law.

via giarose

Once you have two carjackings under your belt in California, a subsequent crime such as stealing four chocolate chip cookies can land you in the hoosegow for 25 years to life.

Carjacking is a felony per se. Something to think about…

The Guardian Angels, those unarmed volunteer citizen crime patrollers, are on the rise in the San Francisco area lately.

Here’s what they looked like last year in Oakland. Click to enlarge:

via ruth-o-rama’s Photostream

And here’s who showed up in San Francisco’s Mission District yesterday, per San Francisco FYI net.

Some parts of the Mission certainly can use a little help these days. You can explore these issues with those who march tonight at 7:00 PM on 24th Street.

See you there.

(Or “set their sights,” it works either way.) Some feel there’s a big dilemma over San Francisco’s Dolores Park, but really now, you NIMBYs, what were you thinking when you moved in there?

Please consider the silent majority, 419 of whom whom give DP a five star rating. And don’t get the impression that only a park ranger can do something about crime. If you see a real crime going on, the SFPD is prepared to head on in there and deal with it - you don’t have to wait for a Ranger to show up.

If you want to be a help, try to deal with specific issues as opposed to sounding like you’re upset at people enjoying themselves.

Another dreaded sunny day at Parque de Dolores. The horror:

Click to enlarge and get a better view of all that crime going on.

You, a concerned citizen, can always check out CrimeMaps to see what your “neighborhood crime trend” is like in San Francisco. But some people don’t like this online tool, and for good reason.

Supervisor Tom Ammiano wonders why homicides don’t show up on the system. Interesting question. Well, the SFPD is working on it and they’ll have something to say about software and hardware updates tonight at a Police Commission meeting starting at 5:00 PM.

But wouldn’t it be nice to have access to an ”Incident Report & Analysis Tool” (it works, just give it a little time for the video to load) from UniversalMind or something? Click to enlarge:

You’ve seen the video, now it’s time to play with a demo yourself. What you’ll see is crime incident data, as you’d expect. The data is a little out of date, but this it’s just a demo.

In this orderly universe of mayhem you’ll see the expected constellations of crime, but also planetes asteres, wandering stars. Click on these dots to start playing.

It’s a live video feed from the Crown Vic of Officer Heinz! Hear him as he comes under automatic weapons fire and uses salty language. Oh no! Wonder what’s in his weapons cache? A .40 caliber Smith & Wesson, 9mm Luger, and .45 Colt. Natch.

(But wouldn’t he be better off trading in his PR-24 Nightstick for an enchanted Heavy Gnoll War Club or similar two-handed mace? And how much gold does he have?)

This future of live crime reporting will get here when it gets here, but fixing CrimeMaps should be something doable in 2008, dontcha think?