Titled: Think the police will protect you?
TriggerFinger brings us news of San Francisco's lack of success in solving homicides and the difficulties of working with the police department to protect citizens. The original article from December 2005 at sfgate.com reports that 80% of homicide cases from 2005 remain open.
San Francisco supervisors turned their attention to the city's surging homicide rate Monday, holding an inaugural meeting of a new committee on gun and gang violence and receiving a grim briefing on the scale of the mayhem and failure to hold perpetrators accountable.
Words such as "surging", "grim", "mayhem" and "failure" do suggest that all is not well in the pistol-free City of Peace and Love.
Part of the explanation, police said, for the low rate of arrests and prosecutions is the reluctance of witnesses to provide testimony given their exposure to retribution.
The people are scared and don't want to talk.
The 94 homicides so far for 2005 is a 10-year high...
..."I'm a little stunned," said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, who represents District 5, which includes the Western Addition, a hot spot for the killings. "I'm just trying to figure out what the body count has to be in terms of what lessons are learned."
And the people in charge aren't sure what to do.
Mirkarimi said he wants to see a regular flow of reliable statistics on how San Francisco's Police Department is performing. Suggesting police officials are reluctant to submit to closer oversight, he characterized getting good information out of the department as a "cat-and-mouse game."
And don't seem willing to help...
Get out while you can.