Lessons From The Muni Crime Hearing

Supervisor Bevan Dufty invited all persons who have been a victim of crime on Muni to speak at Monday’s meeting of the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee.

Eager to hear the sad yet fascinating stories of Muni crime victims, I hustled on down to City Hall to hear the testimony. Here is what I learned:

1. Teenage girls are the most fearsome creatures on Muni. Of the six stories of assault, three involved middle school to high school-age girls. My mother can verify that I, too, was possessed by the devil from the ages of 14 to 18. Incidentally, this phenomenon might explain the Salem witch trials.

2. Bus drivers will not stop the bus and help you. Take your pitiful pillaged pleas elsewhere. The most a driver can do is press a button to alert Central Command, an institution which is at worst, completely fake, and at best is a windowless room sporadically staffed by stuffed animals. But hey, the driver gets to say, “Central Command has been notified.” (Note that Central Command doesn’t help when drivers are attacked either, which may explain the antihero button policy.)

3. Police hate to ride Muni. Probably for the same reason I do: It’s dangerous! In an effort akin to forcing doctors to go to a hospital, district station captains are now requiring police to ride Muni bus and train lines where the most incidents occur and during peak crime times, like right after school lets out. (See Observation 1.)

At the hearing, new MTA Deputy Chief John Murphy explained a new policy of using statistics to make Muni patrolling efforts more effective. Of course, after years of nonexistent to lame law enforcement on Muni, crime is likely underreported, which affects the reliability of those statistics.

And so it is incumbent upon Muni riders to make a leap of faith and once again attempt to report crimes. Apparently, calling 911 from a cell phone in San Francisco gets you a police station in Vallejo (I’m not making this up) so program these SFPD numbers into your phone: (415) 575-4444 for calls and 847-411 for texts. (Type “SFPD” then the tip.)

Comments

[Madness]

Dialing 911 from an area without Enhanced-911 (E911) means that your cell phones hits repeaters, triangulates your location (depending on your service carrier), then is sent to CHP Dispatch in Benicia. Once CHP Dispatch determines your location and chief complaint, like Fire/EMS/Police, it gets sent to the appropriate agency. Can be a pretty quick process, as in sub 30 seconds from call sent to transferred to appropriate dispatch agency. And it's not like CHP just says "okay, well you'll be transferred to SFPD, tell them what happened." They take the initial info, which gets sent to SF dispatch and a "run" is generated while the transfer is in process. I believe SF is in the process of enabling E-911, which basically takes the CHP part out of it- once your phone hits repeaters in an area with E-911, the call goes right to the local dispatch, which does the same thing as CHP. As far as cops not wanting to ride Muni, email me.

[Melissa Griffin]

Madness -

I trust what you write here is correct since I can't call 911 to verify (that's illegal). To give you context: Deputy Chief Murphy, at the 11/23 hearing, specifically said that people should call the SFPD directly "instead of using 911 on your cell phone, because frequently when people call 911 on a cell phone it will go to the C.H.P. in Vallejo."

Whatever the ease with which the call is transferred, it was not enough for the police to want people to continue to use it from cell phones.

Regarding cops on Muni: I was writing about observations from the hearing - and there was universal criticism at the hearing that police (a) try to get out riding Muni, and/or (b) do a half-assed job while on Muni. It is one reason why (supposedly) district captains are now cracking down and demanding accountability. This was not a statistical study, nor was it an indictment of all police. It was merely an observation based on the testimony. I do not doubt that there are plenty of police who do a great job of patrolling their assigned routes.

Thank you for writing!

-Melissa