UPDATE, August 7: The hearings that had been scheduled for Friday and next Monday have been rescheduled. Bernalwood will provide details on new hearing dates when they are available.
Neighbor Sarah is Bernalwood’s official unofficial liaison with local law-enforcement agencies, and she brings this update on the criminal proceedings now underway for the suspects arrested in connection with last winter’s violent mugging spree in Bernal Heights:
I emailed the assistant DA on the Bernal robbery suspects’ cases, and she had a few updates.
– No plea deal was reached at the meeting last Weds. The DA is open to a plea bargain but with serious prison time (10+ years) attached.
POSTPONED: –
The evidentiaryhearing IS scheduled to go forward this Friday (8/9) and Monday (8/12), but the defense has filed another motion to continue (ie, reschedule). The DA’s office plans to oppose this. The judge will decide whether to move forward or not, and we will not know this before.So, as was the case before, we want to show community support for our neighbors who were victims or witnesses to these crimes and who must appear if the hearing does go forward.
The suspects have consistently had many supporters in the courtroom, and testifying in any hearing or trial can be an unnerving proposition. So if you have time or can make time to attend on Friday, even if it’s only for an hour or two, I know our neighbors would appreciate it.
Right now, only two people have signed up.
Use this form to sign up (ignore the hearing for 7/31, which has already occurred). And many thanks for the community support as this schedule has dragged out (which is, unfortunately, common).
Bernalwood 
Great work by Sarah, our Bernal community policing leader. Let’s turn out to back our brave neighbors who have testified vs. the thugs who mugger them a few months back in Bernal. The wheels of justice turn veeerrryyyy slowly. But at least the arrestees have remained in jail during the process. It’s important that Bernal keep working both ends of the street crime issue – attacking the roots causes through programs like the Bernal heights Neighborhood Center’s youth program, while working to remove violent criminals from the those streets. Kudos to sarah and the many folks working to keep our community safe.
I agree. I wish I could come but I work every Friday and cannot take off. I was mugged a few years ago and the police response was excellent but they couldn’t find the guy. I no longer just saunter along. I keep aware at all times and if I see something that doesn’t look right I cross the street.
I will also be at the Hall of Justice on 8/12 as a victim of a robbery on the 24 bus in 7/26. I was lucky that I didn’t have a gun pointed at me like my friend, Jeff, and that the thief was immediately captured by undercover police at the corner of Eddy and Castro.
It was almost exactly five years ago that Tong Van Le was robbed at that little market he owned on Cresent and he had the guts to testify. So some members of the “Bernal Hill community” followed him to his home in Novato and shot and killed him is his driveway while his wife and two young kids slept inside.
Just because those particular thugs were arrested doesn’t mean others are still out there. The parklet crowd says things like “bring the neighborhood more together” thinking only of the daylight hours. Those that can sleep all day and wander around at night, hey’ll also have a place to sit, to hunker down out of the wind, maybe get that pipe lit, watch who walks by.
The change doesn’t happen overnight, they probe constantly, they don’t have anything else to do. Tong Van Le got killed essentially by the same type of people that killed Consuelo San Augustine at the Muni stop a block from his market and fifteen years earlier. She had 200 people at her memorial but churches like Saint Kevin are basis for a real community, unlike parklets and bike lanes and whatever else the recently arrived New Urbanist crowd think is “real city living.”
We have a great police force on Cortland and I am sure they will check the parklets constantlyat night especially.
I don’t expect we disagree about public safety, but..
“they’ll also have a place to sit, to hunker down out of the wind, maybe get that pipe lit, watch who walks by.”
a parked car provides all of those things, too.
You do have a point but as I stated before the police do patrol Cortland at night and they check to see what is going on. They are very vigilant and I expect all will be okay.
I agree about the Officers who work with us out of Ingleside Station. And also – and especially – the ones under Sgt. Larry McDevitt who patrol Holly Courts and Alemany public housing developments – and Sunnydale, too. With the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, public housing residents from Holly and Alemany, with hundreds of their Bernal neighbors, fought hard to get those public housing patrols a number of years ago. Chief Greg Suhr asked BHNC and our community to help him draft new SFPD regulations on community policing, because Bernal does it best.