Capt. Sandra Tong: Improving the District

September is Traffic Safety Month
You are cordially invited to the kick-off event for Traffic Safety Month at the Richmond Recreation Center, 251 18th Ave., Thursday, Sept. 8, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

In September, the SF Police Department and California State Automobile Association (AAA), will host a traffic safety campaign in the Richmond District. The kick-off event will begin at 11 a.m. with a ceremony featuring guest speakers, including SF Police Chief Heather Fong and Merry Banks, special projects manager at AAA, and local officials and community leaders.

Following the ceremony, the groups will host a barbecue and provide informational material concerning child, pedestrian and motorist safety. The event is free to all and will run until 2 p.m. Come join the fun!

Now you can "adopt an intersection." Choose a location or intersection that you deem dangerous or unsafe and organize your neighbors, merchants or friends and agree upon a time and date to educate motorist and/or pedestrians on traffic laws to make that location safer.

If you let me know all the information regarding which intersection you adopt, I will work with you to provide signs and perhaps a patrol officer to cite violators. This traffic safety campaign is a team effort and we will work with any neighborhood or community group to conduct traffic enforcement and traffic safety education. You can send me a letter to the Richmond Station, 461 Sixth Avenue (94118) or e-mail me at SFPDRichmondStation@sfgov.org. regarding your adoption of an intersection.

Safety Starts With You
The fourth annual National Night Out will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 2, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., at the Anza Mini Park, located behind the Richmond Police Station. The Richmond Station will provide hot dogs and we invite you to bring a potluck item to share with your neighbors. There will be a crime prevention demonstration by the SFPD's bomb unit.

If you can't make our event, organize one on your own block to get to know the neighbors and police in your neighborhood. Inspector Earl Wismer from the fraud detail joined us for the July Police/Community Forum Meeting and spoke about Internet safety. He made some very good recommendations that I want to pass along here.

Concerning Internet scams, if an offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Secondly, Wismer warned against opening e-mails from addresses you do not recognize. This is one way to prevent yourself from falling prey to Internet viruses or being seduced by scam artists.

Several other tips Wismer made were:
- Always disconnect from the Internet when you are finished with online activity. This prevents hackers and viruses from gaining easy access to your computer;
- Install an updated anti-virus program and run it frequently;
- Completely turn off your computer when not in use;
- Don't open e-mails with files that end in "exe";
- Don't use links to Web sites provided in sites that are questionable as these can be masked. It is best to always type the address of the site you want to visit into the address bar to ensure you are visiting the authentic Web site and not being redirected to a fraudulent site;
- When making purchases with a credit card on the Internet make sure that you see "https://" in the address bar windows. The "s" after "http://" indicates that the Web site is secure. Hopefully, none of you will become victims to the myriad pitfalls that criminals have devised to use the Internet to their own mischievous ends.

Capt. Sandra Tong is the commanding officer at the Richmond Police Station.