On Friday, SFist had the details first (thanks to the quick fingered twittering of TimOfLegend.) about an incident early Friday morning in which an unnamed assailant robbed a woman at gunpoint on the J-Church. In his own tweets:
“Holy crap! A guy just pulled a gun on a lady and took her iPhone on the J Church!!! WTF?”
Later
“Someone chased the mugger down the block until the dude stopped, turned around, and waved his gun at him.”
Following the initial tweets, coverage of the incident went silent. To find out more we put in a call to the San Francisco Police Department, and received a reply from Officer Chan. He confirmed that the incident occurred on Friday at 9 AM on the inbound J-line near 27th and Church.
Witnesses identified the suspect as an adult black male, wearing a black hoodie and black pants. The suspect used a revolver and was last seen fleeing east down 27th street. Police took statements from several witnesses. As of 3 PM Friday they had no suspects in custody.
Police say that the camera on board the LRV was fully operational at the time of the robbery, and police plan to use the footage to aid in the ongoing investigation. Muni’s reputation recently suffered damage after a series of violent incidents were not captured on film due to inoperative cameras. Shortly following the attacks, Muni spokesperson Judson True assured the public that Muni would waste no time in bringing the cameras back up to speed.
As noted last week, it seems like one way the police investigation could be assisted would be to release the video from the incident to the public to view and assist in identifying a suspect. We hope that the possibility that this and other Muni video becomes more accessible to the public is raised in today’s meeting on Muni crime.
