San Francisco Police evaluating flood of gun violence

By Brent Begin and Matt Wynkoop, Bay City News Service

February 21, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (BCN) - San Francisco police said today they have been doing their best to bring to an end a series of shootings that has added to a rapidly increasing murder count in the city.

In 2007, the San Francisco homicide detail has picked up 20 new cases - a number that doesn't include a triple homicide that occurred in the Bayview district on Dec. 30. At the current murder rate the city would see around 120 homicides this year.

"Homicide trends are not predictable," police spokesman Sgt. Steve Mannina said today.

"There could be a long period when a homicide does not occur. It's important to understand that the Police Department constantly evaluates homicide trends and deploys resources accordingly, doing what it can to stem the violence."

Police said they have instituted several measures in neighborhoods that have been hit the hardest. Special investigators and violence reduction squads are often sent out during times of peak activity, according to Mannina.

For example, extra police patrols were deployed in the area of the Ocean View Recreation Center Tuesday night in an effort to prevent recent violence in the Ingleside district from continuing, according to night police Capt. Al Casciato.

But the increased presence did not prevent the city's latest homicide, at Broad Street and Capitol Avenue. Marvin Evans, a 34-year-old San Francisco resident, was shot to death and found at approximately 12:05 this morning.

Only about an hour earlier, at around 11 p.m., a man was seriously injured after being shot near the intersection of Arch and Shields streets, Casciato said.

Another man remains in critical condition this morning following a shooting around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning near the intersection of 19th Avenue and Byxbee Street.

Just hours later, shots rang out in the 400 block of Alemany Boulevard at around 2:50 a.m. Monday, injuring one man.

Increased patrols in the Ingleside neighborhood are likely to continue today, and a continued presence in the city's Western Addition, where two homicides and several shootings alarmed the community last week, is expected to continue as well, according to Mannina.

This week's violence comes on the heels of two murders over the holiday weekend, in which a man and a woman were shot to death in apparently unrelated incidents in the Bayview district. Mannina said the Bayview station is constantly staffed with a relatively large amount of officers and special patrols.

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