Police Beat: Capt. Richard Corriea

Looking for tree vandals
Since May of this year, one or more persons have been vandalizing trees and bushes in Golden Gate Park. While the crimes have occurred in several different areas of the park, and may involve more than one suspect, they do not appear to be random acts. Several dozen young trees have been chopped off near the ground, but many are sprouting new growth.

On Aug. 18, a suspect(s) attacked the park's rose garden. The vandal's attention was focused on three types of rose bushes: White Delights, Broadways and Perfect Moments. In all, 41 bushes planted in three different beds were trimmed of most of their branches. The rose garden is one of the park's crown jewels and draws a significant number of visitors and many volunteers.

Violent crime and your safety will always be the police department's first priority; however, the cutting down of roses, plants that seem to exist only to add color and beauty to the environment, is a purposeless act that disturbs people greatly. My sense is that our community is outraged by all the senseless acts of vandalism in our now green 1,000 acres of former sand dunes known around the world.

At Richmond Station we are taking the incidents very seriously and collaborating closely with park staff to make arrests in these vandalism incidents and to assure your continued safety in the park.

San Francisco Recreation and Park Department Director Phil Ginsberg's sense of duty about protecting the park is inspiring. He has provided our officers and inspectors with the support of his entire staff. He and I have even patrolled the park together several times in pre-dawn hours this summer.

Out of this relationship came the Richmond Station's "Operation Safe Summer in the Park," which provides for increased police activity every day in the park.

As for the roses, Recreation and Park Department gardeners believe most of the bushes will survive and bloom again in the Spring.

The Police Department is actively investigating all of the incidents. Our investigation of the rose garden crime has produced several leads, which we are pursuing. If you have any information, or even a suspicion, concerning the person(s) who have been vandalizing trees and roses in Golden Gate Park, please call Richmond Station Lt. Mark Mahoney at (415) 666-8042. If you wish to remain anonymous you can call our tip line at (415) 668-7387 and leave a voice mail. Currently, there is a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator(s).

Outside Lands Festival
The Outside Lands Festival took place on Aug. 14 - 15. Our officers were quite busy during the event but generally things were peaceful. We did have occasion to arrest four individuals and issue criminal citations to six others. There were 66 medical calls, many of which were related to patrons who were intoxicated. Calls to the community hot-line totaled just more than a 100 for the abbreviated two-day event, and about 70 concerned noise complaints, a significant decrease from the number of complaints received in previous years.

Some of you may have seen videos online showing individuals jumping fences to enter the event without paying. Indeed, there was some of this activity and some of the video is rather dramatic. However, the event was contained inside to several perimeters and those successful in breaching the outer perimeter were stopped by guards at a heavily-guarded inner fence line and ejected.

The SF Department of Parking and Traffic, along with two tow trucks, were detailed to the Richmond District to handle calls of blocked driveways. This system worked well and it appears that we did not have any significant delays in responding to driveway calls, which had been a problem in years past.

The cost of policing the event was borne by the promoter and our staffing levels were, when combined with more than 200 private security personnel, adequate to assure a safe event.

Robberies on the Decline
Robberies in the district were down 40 percent in August (six incidents) as compared to July (10 incidents). I believe the decline is related to several robbery arrests that Richmond Station officers made in July, including the arrest of an individual who was responsible for as many as 15 robberies citywide.

We have increased traffic enforcement significantly in areas prone to robberies, which in addition to affecting the immediate behavior of motorists, serves to discourage robbers, who of course don't like to operate in areas where police are concentrated.

Next Police Community Forum
Our next Police Community Forum will be on Sept. 21, at 7 p.m., at the Richmond Station.

Please join us to discuss public safety in the Richmond. We will also have a representative from the Hardly, Strictly Bluegrass event on hand to discuss this year's event, which will be held in Golden Gate Park on the first weekend in October. Irina Chatsova from SFSAFE will be on hand as well. Please join us.

Capt. Richard Corriea is the commanding officer at Richmond Station.