SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 3.15.2024
My wife and I have lived in the Richmond District since 1976.
The neighborhood portrayed in this week’s string of media commentary is reflective in no way whatsoever of the Richmond where we raised two children and have been home owners nearly 50 years.
What I read in the Richmond Review and in two recent pieces in the SF Chronicle is cherry picking of the crime stats to achieve a political goal.
Publicizing several tabloid material horrific crimes. Portraying these anecdotal events as representative of the neighborhood atmosphere.
This is incorrect. It is dangerous rhetoric to appeal to fear and paranoia. At play in both the Richmond Review and The SF Chronicle is a hard nosed political campaign to tar incumbent Supervisor Connie Chan as being soft on crime. And grease the wheels for her ouster next November. So that the so called “Moderate” well funded law and order GrowSF; TogetherSF; Garry Tan, et al. crowd can hang another “Progressive” trophy on the wall.
Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 3.14.2024
Residents of quiet S.F. neighborhood say they’re ‘traumatized’ by break-ins and rising crime
After a lifetime in San Francisco’s Richmond District, Sam Hom is considering moving out of the neighborhood due to a series of unnerving events last year.
His surveillance camera caught someone trying to pick the lock of his home. Down the street, police shot a man who had stabbed his own mother and her dog. And finally, someone attacked the 66-year-old’s car while he and his wife were driving to the post office on Geary Boulevard.
“My wife doesn’t feel safe going out without me these days,” said Hom, a captain with his neighborhood watch program.
The couple are far from alone in worrying that the city’s west side is changing for the worse. Over the past few years, residents of the Richmond District — a residential area bordered by Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach and the wooded groves of the Presidio — have hardened their homes and garages against potential intruders by installing surveillance cameras and using chicken wire and safety locks. They’ve also flooded community meetings on public safety and posted on social media about crime. A recent jump in burglaries, robberies and homicides and a spate of headline-grabbing incidents have put some residents and businesses even more on edge.
Though the Richmond neighborhood remains one of the city’s safest and reported violent crime is down in the neighborhood so far this year compared with the same period in 2023.
Crime will probably be a major issue in November’s supervisor race for District 1, which includes the Richmond District.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/richmond-district-san-francisco-18599211.php
This wealthy San Francisco neighborhood could be deciding factor in hotly contested supervisor race
Sea Cliff resident Rita Williams hasn’t always been a Democrat.
Williams was raised in a “right-wing” Sacramento family, lives in one of San Francisco’s most affluent and conservative neighborhoods (Sea Cliff), and voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
“But in San Francisco, it’s kind of lonely to be a Republican,” Williams said.
Williams isn’t so lonely lately. She’s now a registered Democrat and part of a highly motivated group of Sea Cliff residents hoping to shape the future of the Democratic Party in San Francisco.
Their main target now is her district’s progressive supervisor, Connie Chan.
Top photo: Campaign poster hung by Connie Chan’s November foe at busy intersection of 25th and Geary critiquing her record on crime
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