OAKLAND (KPIX) — Police in Oakland are investigating a fatal early morning stabbing Sunday in a Lake Merritt neighborhood that has seen multiple homicides in recent months.

Police said a man was stabbed multiple times just after 3 am near 1200 Lakeshore Avenue.

That makes four homicides on the same lakeside street in less than six months.

“I heard a big commotion and I came outside on the balcony and I saw, like, about five people beating up this guy,” said a woman who declined to provide her name for fear of retaliation.

She said the attackers were two women and three men.

“They just were really beating him up, beating him up and, all of a sudden, the women said ‘Oh, let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!’ So they all jumped into a car. The (victim) got up, then he stumbled, then he fell,” she said.

She said the victim had blood all over his chest and that there were other people standing nearby, including a security guard for her condo building. Those witnesses tried to help the victim after the attackers left.

Oakland police said it’s the fourth homicide on this long dead-end street since Nov. 2021. It is unclear what motivated the stabbing. Police said the previous homicides, involving guns, were over robberies.

“Unfortunately, not surprised because there’s been so much of it,” said Michael Ziolkowski, who lives on the block.

“It’s really discouraging sometimes. I still love the neighborhood but I don’t think I would be comfortable sitting on a bench here after dark, honestly,” said neighbor Krista Sumida.

Area residents said they are fearful to leave their home at night. In addition to the four homicides, the East Bay Times reported there have been seven non-fatal shootings in the cul-de-sac since May 2021.

“We need a greater police presence on this cul-de-sac,” Sumida said.

“If (the police) drive through with their lights flashing, that kind of makes a lot of the cars move and get out,” Ziolkowski said.

One neighbor was seen with a large moving truck on the block moving out. He said he was tired of the violence and shootings.

“We’ve had three neighbors just moved out of this building in the last eight months,” Sumida said.

The dead end stretch of Lakeshore Avenue is a popular hang-out spot for young people to park their cars and party at night. Neighbors said that makes those people easy targets for robbers and some of those parties have led to fights and shootings.

“My message to our mayor is to please step up, pull your leaders together and come up with a viable way where we can be safe,” said neighbor Colette McPherson.

Police hadn’t released the victim’s identity by Sunday evening, pending notification of next of kin. The man suffered multiple stab wounds and died after being transported to a hospital. He was in his 30s.

Police were still looking for the suspects.

Sunday evening, Oakland city council president Nikki Fortunato Bas called on the city to do more

“Enough is enough,” Fortunato Bas tweeted. “Last night, another life was lost to violence in the Lakeshore cul-de-sac. I’m calling for immediate action. Parking restrictions must be enforced, including ticketing + towing to help prevent violence from occurring.”

The District 2 councilmember wrote that she wants the city to expedite the process for residents of the area to use the current no-parking zone “and help prevent harmful activities.”

She also said Oakland police should increase patrols in the area and better coordinate with private security. She also called for gun reform and “accountable, neighborhood-based policing.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact the OPD Homicide Section at (510) 238-3821 or the TIP LINE at 238-7950.

© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report

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Homeless on the streets of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, Calif. on Oct. 30, 2021.

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Homeless on the streets of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, Calif. on Oct. 30, 2021.

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, whose early and robust moves to contain the coronavirus made the city something of a national model, is now urgently trying to confront another public health crisis – drug overdoses and disorder in a long-challenged neighborhood in the city known as the Tenderloin.

Over the past two years the city has seen more than 1,360 drug overdose fatalities – more than double the total COVID-19 death toll there. The majority of those deaths were in the Tenderloin and neighboring SOMA district, city data show.

“What’s so important is that we have solutions and we don’t just say, ‘We don’t like it, we don’t want to see it,’ ” Mayor Breed tells NPR. “This is about trying to help people, and that’s exactly what we’re going to keep fighting for.”

Breed announced an “emergency declaration” for the area last month saying drug deaths, open-air drug dealing, street chaos and violence there had gotten “totally out of control.” She vowed “tough love” for those who break the law and expanded access to help for those with alcohol and substance use disorders.

The declaration allowed the city to fast-track creation of a “linkage center” that recently opened. It’s a walk-in one-stop shop for expanded city services – access to drug, alcohol mental health services, as well as homeless support that includes possibly a shelter bed and eventually permanent housing. At least, that’s the hope.

Breed says she has no illusions that the new linkage center will quickly transform the Tenderloin. But she hopes it offers a new lifeline that meets people where they are.

“The fact is people who struggle with addiction, it’s not as easy as they’re just going to walk through the door and ask for help or we can’t force them into treatment,” she says. “Part of the goal is to make sure that they know that there’s a place where they won’t be judged and when they’re ready for help or assistance they can get help or assistance.”

Inequality and other social challenges in the Tenderloin are tough to fix

The Tenderloin’s problems – homelessness, poverty, substance abuse and crime – have plagued the area for decades. And it’s become even more a kind of containment zone for those challenges amid the steady rise of Bay Area tech wealth and its staggering inequality.

But the pandemic’s dislocation mixed with the spread of a dangerously powerful synthetic opioid have recently made things here even worse.

Supervisor Matt Haney during a press conference at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif. He says the ripple effect from Fentanyl has been devastating.

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Supervisor Matt Haney during a press conference at City Hall in San Francisco, Calif. He says the ripple effect from Fentanyl has been devastating.

San Francisco Chronicle via Getty

Fentanyl creates a state of emergency in the Tenderloin, where it accounts for about three quarters of all overdose deaths

“What is new here is fentanyl, that’s the state of emergency,” says city supervisor Matt Haney of the drug that can be up to 50-times stronger than heroin.

Haney lives in and represents the Tenderloin. He points out the city is averaging nearly two overdose deaths a day. Almost three quarters of all the overdose deaths in the city involved fentanyl in some form, often mixed with other drugs.

“If you’re smoking or shooting a fentanyl, that’s like Russian roulette. People are dying within minutes or seconds of buying drugs on a corner, and it has ripple effects throughout the entire neighborhood that are devastating,” Haney says.

He says San Francisco’s agile handling of the pandemic shows the city can do better in the Tenderloin. Government moved fast and forcefully to confront a health crisis. “Coordination, resources, urgency, staffing, facilities,” Haney says. “Now we need all of that now if we are going to stop this drug epidemic.”

The emergency order signals City Hall’s potentially sharp break from a reliance on a system of nonprofits that have long aided the vulnerable in the Tenderloin but what some critics say has become a kind of homeless services industrial complex: agencies that provide important short-term help – food, showers and other support services – but don’t really move needle on the larger systemic issues of substance use disorder, mental health or housing.

“Let’s be clear, this city spends more money on social services in the Tenderloin community than any other community in San Francisco,” the mayor said. “So just pouring money into this or just doing the same thing is not going to give us a change.”

Residents and business owners say change will need everyone’s involvement

So far, residents and businesses in the neighborhood – and across much of the city – are backing the mayor’s moves to “take back our Tenderloin.”

“They’re tired of open-air drug dealing, seeing other people suffer and die on the street from drug overdoses and they’re tired of crime in the Tenderloin,” says Rene Colorado of the Tenderloin Merchants Association.

Aref Elgaali, right, and a customer talk outside his restaurant, Z Zoul Cafe.

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Aref Elgaali, right, and a customer talk outside his restaurant, Z Zoul Cafe.

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So far he says early fears the city’s declaration would lead to harassment of the unhoused or sweeps homeless tent camps have not materialized. He’s hopeful this is the start of ending what he calls a sense of anarchy and unsafety afflicting too many of the neighborhood’s streets.

“That’s what success would look like to me,” Colorado says. “It’s tough because to do that you need police; you need to make arrests. And that’s something that for some reason or another people who don’t live in the Tenderloin are uncomfortable with. But residents here don’t want drug dealing here.”

The mayor’s order certainly risks undermining San Francisco’s reputation for compassion and free-wheeling tolerance, an impression that’s more myth than reality.

“Despite the view from the outside world the governance of San Francisco today is not the Haight-Ashbury liberal ’60s version that I think people imagine,” says criminal defense attorney John Hamasaki. He’s a member of the San Francisco Police Commission, a police oversight and policy watch group appointed by the mayor and Board of Supervisors.

Hamasaki remains only cautiously optimistic the emergency plan will prove successful and mark a bigger shift toward non-police responses to the problems of the Tenderloin and throughout the city.

“Historically, and this has never been fair to police, we have said, ‘You are in charge of cleaning up all of society’s problems,’ ” he says, “so you don’t have to say defund the police to believe that we can address society’s problems by employing the proper professionals. Ultimately, there are better trained responders to deal with a lot of the low-level police calls,” he says, especially those that include mental health and substance abuse.

Business owner Aref Elgaali says more than a month into the city’s emergency order he’s already seeing modest, yet positive, changes. He runs a Sudanese restaurant in the Tenderloin and is active in the local business community.

“We want to see secure families,” he says pointing to a group of Pre-K children and their teachers crossing the street near his restaurant.

“Asking for police, more enforcement, is to keep those (kids) safe, to tell them that, yeah, the Tenderloin is a still a place that we can raise our kids on,” Elgaali says.

But many of the homeless and street dwellers you talk to in area, those most affected by the policy shift, say so far nothing’s really changed.

“Hell no!” says Shy Brown when asked if she’s seen changes or even heard about new options. Brown says she’s lived in the Tenderloin – mostly on the streets – for about a decade. She’s sitting half in, half out of a small sidewalk tent as pigeons busily pick at remnants of a hand-out dinner. “I wanna know what the strategy plan is and how we gonna execute it, you see what I’m saying?” Brown says. “And I don’t see that happening. I just don’t. No, it’s not gonna work.”

Shy Brown, outside her encampment, is skeptical about the city’s proposals to help people who struggle with drug abuse.

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Shy Brown, outside her encampment, is skeptical about the city’s proposals to help people who struggle with drug abuse.

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Longer-term programs already in place have brought slow progress

The city has boosted its program of “community safety ambassadors” in partnership with a nonprofit, people who hit streets to clean up garbage and deter drug dealing. And the city has greatly expanded distribution of Narcan, the life-saving opioid reversal drug, in easy to use nasal spray kits.

But in the biggest development the mayor and city leaders during the pandemic launched new Street Crisis Response and specialized Overdose Response teams comprised of specially trained and organized paramedics and clinicians from the fire and health departments.

There are some modest signs that the city’s overall efforts on overdoses are paying off. Preliminary data for 2021 show that accidental overdose deaths in 2021 were down about 7%, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. That follows years of an upward trend; 2021 marks the first overdose death decline in the city since 2018.

But a seamless coordination between the city’s new response teams and the police, so far, appears more aspirational than real. In a recent encounter police arrive to check on a homeless man in serious distress.

“I’m sure there might be some mental health issues,” says police Sgt. J Emanuel as he and fellow officers check on the man. But there’s really only so much they can do, he says. “I mean, we’ll do our evaluation but if he doesn’t fit the criteria for anything then that’s about all we can do: Check on him, offer some resources. That’s about it.”

The pandemic greatly worsened the longstanding problems here. “It really increased homelessness and decreased economic activity,” says Katie Conry executive director of the Tenderloin Museum, which is trying tell a more nuanced story about the area’s colorful history, she says, including playing a pioneering role in the early fight for LGBTQ rights.

The area “is starting to bounce back (from the pandemic)” she says, “but we’ve got some ways to go to make it and keep it a vibrant, safe neighborhood for everyone.”

On a recent day a man power washes the street after a free lunch giveaway near Glide, a non- profit that provides daily meals other services to the homeless and poor in the Tenderloin.

Jean Cooper, chief impact and strategy officer with Glide, hopes the emergency plan – and new linkage center- result in real change. But she also worries it’s just another patch addressing only surface symptoms.

“The reality is that the drivers to what we see on the streets here are deep-seeded systemic issues that not only San Francisco struggles with, but major cities across the united states are struggling with right now,” Cooper says, “and it’s around a lack of affordable housing, a lack of access to affordable, quality health care and that includes mental health and substance use treatment.”

A homeless man stumbles down middle of a street.

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A homeless man stumbles down middle of a street.

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To underscore the challenges, as if on cue, a homeless man stumbles down middle of the street in a daze. He’s mumbling. He’s not wearing a shirt or shoes and his pants are filthy and falling down. He’s unresponsive when people approach him.

“Our staff will get him a pair of shoes and a shirt, you know, give him something to eat,” Cooper says watching the man teeter nearby.

But could her agency or the other nonprofits on the street get the shirtless and nearly passed out man into a treatment bed or temporary housing?

“We don’t have access to beds,” Cooper says. “You know, so it’s not like we can actually get someone into a bed directly.”

And maybe that’s really the challenge: how does the city turn its “emergency” order and linkage center into a viable strategy for long-term solutions to long standing problems, ones that are more expensive and more complicated than the daily wave of triage in the Tenderloin?

“The measure of success is the number of people that we’re able to help get off the streets into housing,” Mayor Breed says, “the number of people we’re able to help get into treatment and get off of drugs. My hope is that we will really change and save lives here.”

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s (D) Initiatives targeting an area of ​​the city known for homelessness and drug overdose were criticized by some officials on Monday.

The mayor’s specific plans for the neighborhood known as Tenderloin included more overtime payments for the police and the allocation of more resources, from social workers to public toilets, in the area. Breed also said the city will continue to provide services and housing, but tougher its stance on those who refuse to help. The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

But prosecutor Chesa Boudin, board chairman Shamann Walton and public defender Mano Raju criticized the plan on Monday, saying it was based on guidelines that have already failed.

Speaking at the press conference on Monday, Boudin said he was “outraged” by the suffering in the area, but added that the city “cannot arrest and prosecute our way out of the troubles plaguing the tenderloin,” the newspaper said .

“Arresting drug addicts, imprisoning people with mental health problems, caging people who sell hot dogs or other food on the street, will not solve those problems, and they are certainly not the only means available,” he said.

Last week, Breed declared a state of emergency in the tenderloin. “The situation in the tenderloin is an emergency and requires an emergency response,” she said in a Explanation on Friday.

The mayor added that the city “will use this focus and coordination to stop the illegal activity in the neighborhood, provide people with the treatment and support they need, and make the tenderloin a safer and more liveable place.” to make for the families and children who call “. the neighboring house. “

Early last week, Breed announced She would be change the policies of San Francisco to counter the recent increase in crime the city has seen.

“It is time to end the rule of the criminals who are destroying our city,” said the mayor. “And it ends when we take steps to make law enforcement more aggressive with changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the cop – who destroyed our town.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Mayor London Breed declared a local state of emergency in the criminal Tenderloin District of San Francisco on Friday, allowing city officials to forego certain laws in order to quickly counter a rising tide of deadly fentanyl overdoses.

The proclamation was an extension of the emergency intervention Breed introduced earlier this week, which aims to dispatch additional police officers to the 50-square-block neighborhood to combat increasing gun violence and open-air drug trafficking.

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The state of emergency now brings additional health services. Breed announced the state of emergency during a press conference on Friday.

Raw video: San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed announces a state of emergency in the Tenderloin District

“The situation at the tenderloin is an emergency and requires an emergency response,” said Breed. “We showed during COVID that we can get things done and make real, tangible progress when we are able to use a declaration of emergency to overcome bureaucracy and barriers that stand in the way of decisive action.”

“We will use this focus and coordination to stop the illegal activities in the neighborhood, to give people the treatment and support they need, and to make the Tenderloin a safer and more livable place for families and children who call the neighborhood their home. “

The state of emergency must be ratified by the board of directors within the next seven days and will not last longer than 90 days.

Fentanyl overdoses and deaths have hit alarming levels in the city. Much of the drug trafficking can be traced back to the tenderloin and a pipeline that supplies brazen street vendors in the district from outside the city.

“We lose more than two people a day to drug overdoses, mostly from fentanyl and mostly from Tenderloin and SoMa,” said supervisor Matt Haney. “This is a public health emergency that requires a crisis level response with massive urgency, coordination and determination to address this epidemic.”

“We have proven during the pandemic that our city can move forward with solutions that are commensurate with the scale and threat of a
deadly epidemic, ”Haney continued. “We need an emergency response to drug overdoses with immediate rapid crisis intervention, contact and coordination on our streets, with advanced treatment and detoxification.”

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Breed’s anger and frustration over a surge in crime in the city, particularly the Tenderloin, was fully shown at another press conference earlier this week.

“It is time to end the rule of the criminals who are destroying our city,” she said. “And it ends when we take steps to make law enforcement more aggressive. More aggressive with the changes in our policy and less tolerant of all the crap that has destroyed our city. “

RAW VIDEO: Mayor Breed announces aggressive crackdown on crime

On Tuesday afternoon, the SFPD’s Tenderloin Station Twitter account released information about police activities in the neighborhood over the past week, including the seizure of nearly a kilo of drugs – of which more than half (over 600 grams) was fentanyl – and the arrests of 17 suspected drug dealers.

Of these suspected dealers, 14 had previously been arrested in San Francisco.

Last week drug control in the TL:
– more than 950 grams of drugs seized (more than 600 grams of fentanyl)
– Seized over $ 3,400 in drug money
– 3 knives and 1 taser confiscated
– 17 dealers arrested (14 had previous SF arrests, 5 violated no-show orders, 6 pending arrest warrants)

– SFPD Tenderloin (@SFPDTenderloin) December 14, 2021

The Tenderloin raid was just one of four crime-fighting initiatives that Breed announced at a press conference that afternoon.

The other three were:

• Securing the funding of the emergency police for the required resources
• Changing our surveillance regulation to allow law enforcement agencies to interrupt crime in real time
• Stopping illegal street sales of stolen property.

“In the past few months we have seen not only a number of high-profile incidents of brazen robberies and car break-ins, but also street behavior and criminal activity, especially in the tenderloin, that has become far too normal and can no longer be tolerated,” Rasse said.

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“All of our residents, our workers and everyone who visits our city should feel safe, no matter what part of the city they are in. I know San Francisco is a compassionate city, ”continued Breed. “We are a city that prides itself on second chances and rehabilitation. But we are not a city where anything is possible. Our compassion should not be confused with weakness or indifference. “

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