Mission Mission

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA)’s awesome Instagram account, which primarily shares photos of crazy items the TSA has found while screening airline passengers, is not new, but it did see significant new attention on the Internet this week. Whoever is running it has made an effort to include wild finds from many different airports across the U.S., including several from San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport. At SFO the TSA confiscated a brush dagger and a bullet-knife, child’s play compared to the novelty bomb belt, throwing star, seven pounds of weed, and 81 more pounds of weed (pictured) taken at OAK. Wow, you’d think that last one would’ve just slid right through, huh?

The TSA’s photos offer a fascinating look at human naiveté, stupidity and stubbornness. They expose some very weird parts of the black market. The TSA’s Instagram is great, but I can’t help but notice an alternate purpose that it serves: scaring us into liking and trusting the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security by giving us the impression that “threats” are much more frequent than they actually are. The Instagram gives the illusion that the TSA is constantly confiscating tons of weapons, many deviously disguised, in every airport. A few hundred or thousand weapons is certainly many weapons, but it’s not so many when one considers that the TSA screens 600-700 million passengers every year. That means the TSA finds ~3 firearms for every million people it screens. The TSA’s posts are entertaining, but whether they intend it or not, and whether we realize it or not, they serve another purpose too. Thoughts?

-Jackie Potzdorf

CBS Local reports:

San Francisco police are investigating a Thursday night officer-involved shooting in the Mission District that left a robbery suspect dead.

Officers responded to the area of 24th and Folsom streets at about 9:45 p.m. in reference to call about a Hispanic man with a knife.

San Francisco police Chief Greg Suhr told KCBS that two plainclothes officers came upon the scene and saw the suspect with a large knife chasing another man on Folsom Street.

“The officers drew their weapons, demanded for man to drop his knife–he refused. We have several witnesses that heard this,” he said.
The situation escalated, and the officers, who had their department issued stars visible on their clothes, fired six shots at the suspect, Suhr said.

The suspect, described as being his 20s, was shot and pronounced dead at the scene.

Read on.

[Photo by @gpechenik]

Last night around 8:30 I was coming down San Carlos toward 18th Street when I saw a young man dragging a burning pile into the middle of the street. He then stomped on it and poured a water bottle out over it to extinguish the flames. It wasn’t a large fire, but it had been placed under the construction site on that block. After the fire was out the man told me that he had seen a man, who he thought to be homeless, put a pile of clothes down, light the fire, then run away with another bundle under his arm. He figured the man was out to set more fires, so he drove off to see if he could catch up with him. I went to nearby Mission Station to tell the police what had happened. As soon as they learned that the fire was out they could not have seemed less interested. I was happy to wake up this morning to see that there weren’t any other fires lit last night.

Three buildings in the Castro burned over the weekend. Many homes were burned in an Alamo Square fire on February 1st. A man was arrested on February 2nd while trying to start a fire in a building on Valencia near 16th. A man lost his life, and multiple families lost their homes in a large fire on 22nd and Mission on January 28th.

Check your smoke detectors, look out for each other, take whatever preventative measures you can. This city has an uncomfortable history of fires and with all these recent incidents, and an arson on the loose, here’s hoping this doesn’t become a bigger thing.

Seriously!  This is even worse than that time someone stole a cat from a homeless guy.  Hopefully this story has a similar happy ending.

UPDATE: Got an email from attorney Stacey E. Stillman…

It was voluntarily surrendered by an individual to a nonprofit organization that cares for dogs.  There were concerns about the dog placement with this individual.  The individual then filed a police report claiming it had been stolen and the police file is closed because the dog was not stolen.  The posters unfortunately continue.  We are concerned the story based on the false claims on the posters has gone viral and could endanger the dog which is now safe, and anyone who may be seen with the dog.  I am the attorney representing the organization to which the dog was surrendered.

[Photo]

[via Jenny]

SF Weekly reported yesterday that two men had been stabbed on Bryant Street the night before, within a few hours of each other. The first victim, a 31-year-old man, was approached by three attackers at 5:25pm, and the second, a 23-year-old man, was approached by eight attackers at 1am. Details were scarce, until this chilling update:

Officer Albie Esparza says in both cases the suspects were gang members and asked the victims who they were affiliated with before stabbing them. Neither victim is related to a gang, police confirmed. [link]

You know how sometimes you’re playing GTA and you blow out a tire but you think you can keep going for a while, except thanks to the game’s realistic physics engine you quickly realize how bad of an idea that is?  Well, it looks like this guy has never played GTA

Unfortunately for him, his ploy failed and his vehicle ground to a halt, a couple minutes after which a squad of police arrived on the scene, automatic weapons pointed with shouts to get out of the car.  The driver was promptly apprehended, but it is unclear at the moment whether this is just an extreme DUI or a getaway from another prior crime.  It all went down on San Jose Ave around 23rd St.

We’ll update with more info if we get it, but for the time being we’re hiding out indoors from potential bullets.

[Video by our pal Veljko]

I guess it’s not as bad as when somebody parked a $138,000 Maserati in a Muni maintenance trench around the corner, but I mean, what is with people and not being able to park right in this part of the neighborhood?

Capp Street Crap reports:

Just after noon on Sept. 23, a man in his 30s walked into a store in the 4000 block of Mission Street and put two bottles of baby powder in his backpack. When the clerk confronted him, the thief punched him several times. [link]

Here in the Mission, gentrifiers still have about 4 months left til “soldiers” “come out gunnin’” for “hipsters and the yuppies” as promised by some graffiti on a neighborhood wall.

In NYC, it’s already happening. Gawker reports:

Two Brooklyn women have had enough. This weekend, Precious Parker, 30, and Sabrina James, 23, allegedly forced their neighbors out of their Flatbush apartment building at gunpoint.

According to a police source who spoke to the New York Daily News, Parker and James knocked on their neighbors’ door around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday and “held a 34-year-old man, a 37-year-old man, and a 25-year-old woman at gunpoint demanding they move out or be killed.” The trio complied, and Parker and James squatted in their apartment until police arrived. Cops say one of the women told them she didn’t like “that white people were moving into the area.” [link]

No blood was shed, and Precious and Sabrina pretty swiftly ended up in jail, but… it’s happening.