Crimes in Our Community

Crimes in the Bay Area

One of the most violent and consistent crimes in the San Francisco Bay Area results from gangs; gang violence is generally not visited on the general public, but rather, gangs in the Bay Area aim their violent assaults on each other. Recently the City of San Francisco has beefed up its "Community Response Network" and has allocated $30,000 in an effort for city officials and police to "reach out to youths to calm tensions and steer kids away from gang life" (Sabatini, 2012). This paper discusses the crime problems in the Bay Area due to gang violence and gang activity, and poses possible solutions for gang crime.

Three Body Paragraphs Describe the Problem

In the Mission District of San Francisco, the "…temperature is hot right now between the Hispanic gangs," according to the Chief of Police in San Francisco, Greg Suhr. The police chief is referring to the two main Latino gangs, the Surenos and Nortenos. Recently a 20-year-old man was shot and killed in an apparent robbery, a Latino gang-related shooting according to police, quoted in an article in the San Francisco Examiner, written by journalist Joshua Sabatini. In that incident two suspects have been apprehended and the weapon used in the killing has been confiscated. Just a week before that homicide, a 19-year-old man was killed, and another man was shot and wounded; and earlier, in October, 2012, another 19-year-old, believed to be a gang member, was also shot and killed (Sabatini).

What worries authorities is the escalation of gang violence; for example, in the neighborhood where the two Latino gangs fight for territorial advantages, there were 8 homicides in 2012 (and overall in San Francisco there were 58 homicides in 2012 compared with just 44 the previous year) (Sabatini). Gang violence has been a problem for many years in major cities, but the number of shootings that are gang-related recently in San Francisco is of great concern.

Another article about the recent rise in gang violence was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, and it quotes the police chief saying that the violence isn't just due to fighting between gangs, but in fact there is "an internecine war that is tearing the gangs apart" (Derbeken, et al., 2012). Not long ago a gang called "Down Below Gang" was tight-knit group and "all were friends," Suhr commented. But now, "they have turned on each other," the chief continued. The victim killed in August, 2012, was 26-year-old Edmundo Sandoval, who was killed in a drive-by shooting; his uncle, a 53-year-old man, was also shot in that drive-by incident and suffered a serious bullet wound to his chest and was in critical condition (Derbeken, p. 2).

Plausible Solutions to Gang Violence in the Bay Area