Tag: san francisco

No Math Behind San Francisco’s $5M-per-Person Reparations Proposal

No mathematical calculations justify a San Francisco committee’s recent proposal to provide $5 million in reparations to long-term black residents of the city, according to a report by the Washington Post.

As Breitbart News reported last month, the committee, formed in 2020 amid the Black Lives Matter movement, “proposed that each long-term black resident of the city receive $5 million, though California entered the Union as a free state in 1850.”

The proposal came despite the fact that the city is facing a staggering budget deficit as businesses and residents have fled.

Now, the Washington Post reports, “conservatives” (among others) are questioning the price tag, which was largely invented out of thin air:

“There wasn’t a math formula,” said Eric McDonnell, chair of the reparations committee and the principal of Peacock Partnerships, a San Francisco-based consulting firm. “It was a journey for the committee towards what could represent a significant enough investment in families to put them on this path to economic well-being, growth and vitality that chattel slavery and all the policies that flowed from it destroyed.”

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San Francisco’s $5 million proposal, magnitudes larger than amounts being discussed in other communities, has drawn intense backlash from conservatives who lambaste the idea as financially ruinous for a city with an annual budget of $14 billion that is still recovering economically from the pandemic. The proposal doesn’t explain who would qualify, but if even a fraction of the city’s 50,000 Black residents met the criteria, it would consume a huge amount of the city’s annual budget.

Separately, the State of California has its own reparations committee, which recently considered a more modest proposal to pay each black descendant of slavery up to $233,000 in reparations.

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San Francisco Art Gallery Owner Arrested for Spraying Homeless Woman with Hose

The owner of a San Francisco art gallery who was caught on video spraying a homeless woman on the sidewalk with water from a garden hose has been arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery in the incident.

Video of the encounter was posted to the Internet and went viral. As Breitbart News reported last week:

A San Francisco art gallery owner was caught on video spraying a homeless woman with a garden hose on the street in front of his storefront because she would not move down the street — and she was later hospitalized.

Debate raged online about whether the man was justified …

San Francisco has suffered an exodus of businesses due to crime, open-air drug use, the growth of a large homeless population, and the availability of work-from-home options for many workers in the tech industry.

Police have now acted, the Los Angeles Times reported, after the man publicly admitted his actions:

Collier Gwin, 71, faces a charge of misdemeanor battery after being accused of intentionally and unlawfully spraying water on a woman who was sitting on a sidewalk outside his gallery, according to the San Francisco district attorney’s office, which said it issued an arrest warrant for Gwin after reviewing the evidence from a police investigation.

Gwin was arrested at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and was booked at a county jail on the arrest warrant. The case remains an open investigation, police said in a statement.

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If convicted, Gwin could face up to six months in county jail and a $2,000 fine, prosecutors said.

The art gallery had publicly apologized for the incident earlier this week, the San Francisco Chronicle noted.

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San Francisco reparations panel pitches $5M — each — to black residents

A San Francisco panel studying reparations has proposed a one-time payment of $5 million to each black resident of the city deemed eligible as recompense for the “decades of harm they have experienced,” according to a report on Monday.

“A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population … and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that​ ​Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and​ ​unintended harms perpetuated by City policy​,” the San Francisco African American Reparations Advisory Committee said in a draft report issued last month, Fox News Digital reported. ​

The proposal could cost the city, which has a 2022-2023 budget of $14 billion, roughly $50 billion, the Daily Mail reported.

The committee also proposed wiping out all debts associated with educational, personal, credit card and payday loans for black households.

The 15-member pan​el was established by San Francisco supervisors in May 2021. A separate task force created by California’s legislature is also studying reparations.

The city group’s report says: “Reparation​ ​must be adequate, effective, prompt, and should be proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered.​”​

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San Francisco will allow police to deploy robots that kill

Supervisors in San Francisco voted Tuesday to give city police the ability to use potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots n emergency situations — following an emotionally charged debate that reflected divisions on the politically liberal board over support for law enforcement.

The vote was 8-3, with the majority agreeing to grant police the option despite strong objections from civil liberties and other police oversight groups. Opponents said the authority would lead to the further militarization of a police force already too aggressive with poor and minority communities.

Supervisor Connie Chan, a member of the committee that forwarded the proposal to the full board, said she understood concerns over use of force but that “according to state law, we are required to approve the use of these equipments. So here we are, and it’s definitely not a easy discussion.”

The San Francisco Police Department said it does not have pre-armed robots and has no plans to arm robots with guns. But the department could deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” when lives are at stake, SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement.

“Robots equipped in this manner would only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives,” she said.

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San Francisco police consider letting robots use ‘deadly force’

The San Francisco Police Department is proposing a new policy that would give robots the license to kill, as reported earlier by Mission Local (via Engadget). The draft policy, which outlines how the SFPD can use military-style weapons, states robots can be “used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option.”

As reported by Mission Local, members of the city’s Board of Supervisors Rules Committee have been reviewing the new equipment policy for several weeks. The original version of the draft didn’t include any language surrounding robots’ use of deadly force until Aaron Peskin, the Dean of the city’s Board of Supervisors, initially added that “robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person.”

However, the SFPD returned the draft with a red line crossing out Peskin’s addition, replacing it with the line that gives robots the authority to kill suspects. According to Mission Local, Peskin eventually decided to accept the change because “there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option.” San Francisco’s rules committee unanimously approved a version of the draft last week, which will face the Board of Supervisors on November 29th.

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San Francisco Launches Guaranteed Income Program for People Who Are Transgender — Using Taxpayer Money

San Francisco has launched a guaranteed income program for people who are transgender, and taxpayers are stuck footing the bill.

The Guaranteed Income for Trans People program (GIFT) will provide low-income transgender people with a $1,200 monthly check for up to 18 months.

Unlike other welfare programs, the checks will be handed over to be spent on anything the person wants, without rules or limitations.

In addition to the free money, people approved for the program will also be offered services, including “gender-affirming medical and mental health care” and financial coaching.

“Our Guaranteed Income Programs allow us to help our residents when they need it most as part of our city’s economic recovery and our commitment to creating a more just city for all,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a statement obtained by KTLA. “We know that our trans communities experience much higher rates of poverty and discrimination, so this program will target support to lift individuals in this community up.”

The report explains that “Lyon-Martin Community Health Services and The Transgender District are leading the program’s design and implementation, with support from the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, the Office of Transgender Initiatives, and the Treasurer & Tax Collector.”

The program, which ironically discriminates based on “gender identity” is necessary because trans people are poor more often, according to activists.

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Surveillance shift: San Francisco pilots program allowing police to live monitor private security cameras

Last week San Francisco city leaders approved a 15-month pilot allowing police to monitor live footage from surveillance cameras owned by consenting businesses and civilians without a warrant.

The 7-4 decision by the San Francisco board of supervisors was a major loss for a broad coalition of civil liberties groups that had argued the move would give police unprecedented surveillance powers. It also seemingly marked a departure from the progressive stance on surveillance the city’s leadership had previously maintained.

In May 2019, the board had made history by making the city the first to ban the use of facial recognition by any local government agency. At the time, supervisor Aaron Peskin said, the city had an “an outsize responsibility to regulate the excesses of technology”.

But more than three years, a pandemic and many protests against police injustice later, some members of the board now say they need to balance concerns for privacy with the need to allow law enforcement officials to “utilize certain technologies to make San Francisco safer”.

Privacy advocacy groups say the shift is part of a larger phenomenon in cities across the US, where fears of both perceived and real increases in crime have prompted police and elected officials to expand the use of surveillance technology, even if there isn’t always clear evidence those technologies are effective at deterring or solving crimes.

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Witnesses: S.F. Police Caught Catalytic Converter Thief Red-handed, Let Him Go

San Francisco police caught a man red-handed sawing off a catalytic converter from a stolen car — and let him go, even helping him find the bus stop, according to shocked eyewitnesses who said the experience left them feeling unsafe in the city.

Lauren Lindsay and Morgan Heller, roommates who live in the city’s Richmond district, heard the noise of a man using power tools to cut the converter from the car — at 3 a.m. Catalytic converters are popular targets for thieves because they include trace amounts of precious metals, such as platinum, that help reduce the toxicity of emissions from combustion engines.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

[Officers] responded to a 911 call about a man cutting a catalytic converter from the underbelly of a car. The officers arrived to find the alleged thief at the scene of the crime, learned he was on probation for a previous theft and then let him walk off, car jack in hand — even giving him directions to the nearest bus stop.

Roommates Lauren Lindsay and Morgan Heller witnessed the incident and bizarre police response from their apartment at 24th Avenue and Anza Street in the Richmond neighborhood and were left dumbstruck. They’d done everything right: called the cops, kept their eyes on the person the entire time, answered all the officers’ questions and agreed to participate in the case.

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“Even if you package it all together with a bow on top, it still doesn’t go anywhere,” said Lindsay, 26. “It makes you feel like the police don’t really care. It makes you feel helpless.”

Crime has risen in major cities across the United States, thanks in partly to the Black Lives Matter and “defund the police” movements, as well as left-wing prosecutors who have often benefited from lavish spending by billionaire George Soros.

But San Francisco is almost in a class of its own. A statewide prison reform referendum, Proposition 47 in 2014, reduced sentences for many crimes, allowing thieves to escape jail time for thefts less than $950. And left-wing district attorney George Gascón, who was appointed after Kamala Harris left for the Senate, oversaw “reforms” that saw petty crime rise.

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San Francisco wants real-time access to private surveillance cameras

Lawmakers in San Francisco are deliberating on a law that would give the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) real-time access to private security cameras, like those in retail shops and even residential doorbells. The city’s Rules Committee is set to vote on the ordinance on July 18.

The draft ordinance is an amendment to the city’s 2019 surveillance ordinance, which requires the SFPD to get permission from elected officials and the general public before launching or using surveillance systems. Without the law, the SFPD could conduct surveillance without the knowledge of the public.

We obtained a copy of the draft for you here.

The law also prevents SFPD’s real-time access to surveillance videos from CCTVs and other cameras. Currently, the police are only allowed to get historical surveillance videos from privately-owned cameras for specific cases.

The proposed amendment was promoted by Mayor London Breed following a weekend of theft and burglaries last November in the Bay Area.

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“Gary Is Just Making Up Random #s” – San Francisco Homeless Officials Caught Lying About Fabricated Data

The operator of San Francisco’s supervised drug use site fabricated the number of people who the site allegedly served, according to a San Francisco Department of Public Health executive, whose emails were released as part of California’s Public Records Act.

“I think Gary is just making up random #s,” wrote Dr. Rob Hoffman, Special Project Manager with the San Francisco Department of Health, in a February 8 email to other city employees including ones with the Department of Emergency Management and city homeless service agencies.

Gina McDonald, co-founder of Mothers Against Drug Deaths, filed the public records request, and was the first to report that of the 23,367 drug users who have visited the Tenderloin Linkage Center, just 18 have received drug treatment. 

The Gary in question is Gary McCoy, an employee of city contractor HealthRight360, which is one of the private sector operators of the Tenderloin Linkage Center, which San Francisco Mayor London Breed created last December as part of her proposed crackdown on the open drug market in United Nations Plaza in downtown San Francisco.

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