Were you awakened by the sound of the helicopter circling low above Precitaville at around 12:30 am last night? That was a California Highway Patrol chopper that was brought in to assist the San Francisco Police in a coordinated search for auto break-in suspects who tried to run down an SFPD officer on Mirabel.
SF Chronicle reporter Kale Williams explains what happened:
A police officer was injured in San Francisco Sunday night when an auto burglary suspect tried to run him over, pinning him against his patrol car, authorities said.
Around midnight, officers responded to reports of the burglary on the 100 block of Mirabel Ave in the city’s Bernal Heights neighborhood, said Officer Carlos Manfredi, a police spokesman.
As the officer stepped out of his cruiser, the suspect, who was sitting in a stolen BMW, tried to run him over, Manfredi said, pinning him against his vehicle.
The suspect, whose name was not immediately released, then attempted to flee but was blocked by another patrol car, which he also hit, Manfredi said. He was arrested at the scene.
The injured officer may have suffered broken ribs and injuries to his legs. He was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where he was in stable condition early Monday morning.
Yikes. Bernalwood sends sincere gratitude and get-well wishes to the injured SFPD officer.
Bernalwood 
Wishing the officer well and many thanks to him and his colleagues who put their lives on the line every day.
Will prop 47 have these guys on the street before the close of business tonight?
I was listening to NPR last week, a program on re-alignment, and the experts gathered there insisted that re-alignment has not affected crime rates, and in fact that crime has gone down since. Anecdotal evidence conflicts with the experts’ evidence. Is it just perception, or have car break-ins & package thefts increased? Last week our neighbor across the street came out to find his car ticketed for expired registration – it was explained to him by the police that thieves are stealing & selling yellow 2015 stickers.
There is an easy solution to this – cut a few slits in your registration sticker with a razor blade. When someone tries to peel it off they’ll only get a small piece and it will be useless to them and they’ll quit.
Realignment and Prop 47 have not increased rates of violent crime in CA, however auto theft rates have increased by 17%: http://ppic.org/main/publication_quick.asp?i=1164
“In-depth research shows no evidence that realignment has increased violent crime….
The only crime increase attributable to realignment is a modest rise in property crime, driven entirely by auto theft. Lofstrom and Raphael (2015) estimate that realignment raised the auto theft rate by slightly more than 70 per 100,000 residents. All else equal, California’s auto theft rate is about 17 percent higher than it would have been without realignment.”
Before you cut those slits, razor off all your old stickers!
This is an old timey crime–happened to me 25 years ago.
Assault and battery on an officer is not covered under Prop 47.
A chopper was circling and spotlighting a house at the corner of Alabama and Precita Ave. at about 1:20am last night. Same incident? Apparently someone was running amok in the mission lighting trash bins on fire as well. Thought maybe the heli was trying to assist on that front, but maybe not.
While the Mirabel manhunt was underway, there was also a report of a prowler on Alabama near Precita, so the heli was diverted there to assist.
I live across the interior block from this house on Alabama, and was woken up to a helicopter spotlight in my window. It looked like there were a half-dozen cops on the roof and the helicopter was spotlighting all the backyards in the block for around 5 minutes. It was definitely interesting.
I was awakened by the cop screaming “noooooooo stoppppppppp ahhhhhhhhh” – it sounded terrible.
This line is interesting – “Two other people were detained at the scene and police believe that there are no other suspects” – considering they clearly spent a long time looking for people a fair distance from the scene of the crime.
I thought that was odd too! From the Chronicle story it sounds like a pretty open-and-shut case, but last night on Twitter there were rumors of lots of arrests, a more widespread search, etc. But apparently the suspect was arrested at the scene? What was the CHP helicopter doing for like a hour?
An old-timey Bernal Heights weekend night. Another fool, probably loaded to the gills, tries a cowboy escape from the law. Best wishes for the recovery of our policeman.
Thanks for the police being there as the crime was in progress. Quick recovery to the officer.
I sincerely hope the injured policeman will have a quick recovery.
According to what I was hearing on scansf.com, the police had two suspects in custody at Mission and Powers, another blockade at Mission and Fair, and they had Coleridge sealed off from Coso to Virginia while they brought in the helicopter to search for a third. So I’m not sure that “arrested at the scene” is completely accurate.
I live on Mission and Fair, had my windows open last night and apparently slept through all of this!
i live on winfield, and at one point, a (civilian) car went tearing up our street at at least 40mph – followed by 5 cop cars; then, it seemed that they nabbed someone up at esmerelda (by the slides) – any talk on your police radio about this?
According to the Police Scanner there was one driver and potentially 3 other suspects. Two were scene running up Montezuma from Shotwell by a neighbor.
The fact that an officer was injured meant any available units were diverted to the area to hunt down all potential suspects.
Heard the chase and followup, knew something was up almost instantly due to the speed of the cars and then followup by other police cars.
Seeing 14 police cars parked at Coso / Mirabel was pretty crazy, as were all the rifles and drawn guns.
This is becoming a fairly regular occurrence, unfortunately. We had the same scene about a week ago, at the same corner.
Tonight (Tuesday) around 9, there were about 10 police cars on Tompkins near Moultrie. Most of the activity was concentrated in front of that little yellow house (that used to have a plastic horse in the yard) that sold recently. There were two people in a car surrounded by police, and then there were several officers on foot the next block of Tompkins.
Don’t worry folks, I’m sure our esteemed supervisor, the honorable David campos, is working hard to solve the crime problem…it’s not as if he only cares about affordable housing in the mission!
When you hit and strike the police, it’s bye bye baby!
http://www.sfexaminer.com/man-charged-with-attempted-murder-of-san-francisco-police-officer/
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