For some residents of San Francisco’s Mission District, the eruption of gunfire at a community block party last week was an all too familiar reminder of the neighborhood’s backslide into violence after the pandemic’s punishing isolation.
“It’s lawless here,” said Lisa Brewer, longtime operator of Mission Art415. “It’s like, what happened to our Mission?”
From her Mission Street gallery, Brewer has been a leader of the district’s sprawling street art and graffiti scene, watching the neighborhood fight to retain its cultural identity in the face of gentrification and skyrocketing cost of living. But, as she sees it, COVID-19 shattered that sense of collective spirit, ushering in what she described as a palpable increase in “crime, gang activity and drug use.”
She is hardly alone in questioning whether to move out of the neighborhood. Residents interviewed by The Chronicle in the aftermath of the mass shooting that injured nine people Friday night said a cloud of unease has settled on the neighborhood, leaving some feeling unsafe, especially after dark.
Mission Art415 gallery owner Lisa Brewer looks at freshly etched graffiti in the window of her shop in the Mission District on Wednesday. “It’s lawless here,” she said.
Jessica Christian/The ChronicleOn Wednesday, San Francisco police arrested Javier Campos, 22, days after he was named as a “person of interest” in the “targeted and isolated” incident, which took place at 24th Street and Treat Avenue while revelers gathered for a block party celebrating the sixth anniversary of a local apparel store. Three days later, another burst of gunfire erupted in the area, with stray bullets hitting homes and cars.
The back-to-back outbursts joined a spate of shootings across the Bay Area in recent days, part of a surge in gun violence that has gripped the nation since 2020. According to a Chronicle analysis of crime data, San Francisco has recorded nearly 550 gun-related incidents so far this year — on par with last year.
According to San Francisco Police Department crime statistics for the agency’s Mission Station, reported robberies in the area so far this year are down about 7% from the same period last year, while assaults are up almost 2%. Last year, Mission Station officers responded to eight homicides between January and mid-June, according to the Police Department’s data. During the same time period this year, Mission Station officers have responded to one reported homicide.
Still, Mission residents rattled by the recent spasm of violence said they feel less safe and more suspicious than they used to.
Tensions in the vibrant neighborhood run deep, where taquerias, fruit stands and bodegas sit next to upscale restaurants and curated clothing stores. Underscoring the Mission’s cultural and demographic changes, city reports indicate the district’s street conditions are deteriorating as tent encampments spring up and sidewalks become flourishing markets for unregulated merchandise sales.
“There are some very compromised humans on the street here,” Demetre Lagios said while out walking his dog near Mission Dolores Park Tuesday afternoon.
A San Francisco native, Lagios has lived on 20th Street near the park for two decades. Until recently he had relatively few safety concerns, he said. Then, in February, Lagios, 81, was attacked by a skateboarder who he said “socked him in the jaw” after an altercation with Lagios’ dog. The blow caused brain swelling that required surgery and left Lagios with memory loss — a harrowing experience he blames in part on the neighborhood’s fraying social fabric.
Lagios said he and his wife were considering selling their Mission District home because of the attack.
Santiago Lerma lives near the site of the shooting and was out walking with his 3-month-old baby just one hour before the attack. He called the apparently targeted shooting an “extremely rare” occurrence and said he does not fear for his safety in the family-friendly neighborhood. The presence of homeless people, drug users and street vendors may “psychologically create the sense of lawlessness,” even if they are not violent or threatening, said Lerma, an aide to Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents the Mission District and spoke to The Chronicle on Ronen’s behalf.
“From what we know, this was an unfortunate incident that highlights the proliferation of guns on the street, the lack of mental health interventions for youth and the impact of social media,” Lerma said, noting that online conflicts appear to have motivated the alleged shooter. “Those factors,” he said, are “outside the control of the city” and require national, as well as local, solutions.
Ronen has in recent years sought to redirect more money and city resources to the Mission District, vocally frustrated by what she sees as an overemphasis on programs that serve the Tenderloin and South of Market districts while neglecting nearby neighborhoods.
A mass shooting that took place during a block party for Dying Breed clothing store on June 9 in the Mission District left nine people injured and some residents in the neighborhood shaken up. Police data for the Mission Station says that homicides and robberies are down, though assaults are up, compared with last year.
Jessica Christian/The ChronicleThough Ronen supported Mayor London Breed’s 90-day state of emergency in the beleaguered Tenderloin last year, she has previously said she fears the Mission may be following in the Tenderloin’s footsteps.
Lerma said the office is monitoring whether a coordinated federal, state and local crackdown on the city’s drug trade will push people from the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods into the Mission.
Breed has fiercely defended her controversial policy to use public intoxication laws to arrest and detain drug users — a policy Ronen’s office fears will backfire, with the Mission District bearing the brunt of users’ displacement from heavily policed areas.
“Arresting folks is not going to get them into treatment,” Lerma said.
Adrian Valdez has witnessed the changes from his popular flower shop, Floreria La Poblanita, on Mission Street. On Wednesday, he wrapped a bundle of roses and sunflowers for a customer as he pondered his 31 years in the neighborhood. He said he no longer feels safe walking after dark when he closes his shop each night at 6:30 p.m.
Luckily, he said, flower sales remain strong, and the recent spate of violence had not affected his business. But the chaos had taken a toll.
“People are getting stabbed, shot,” Valdez said. “It’s crazy.”
Reach Nora Mishanec: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com
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