292: San Francisco drug bust 2001 in Visitacion Valley

292.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer for Bay City News, June 9, 2001, "Police Responding to Gunshot Reports Find Marijuana". San Francisco Police found weapons and pot plants in the Visitacion Valley house. Neighbors called police the previous night reporting a sound of gunshots.

This story is brief, but being able to report residents of Visitacion Valley were reporting gunshots was the story in itself. In years past, neighbors would have been too terrified to assert themselves against neighborhood thugs. The police would not have been called, or might not have arrived promptly.

By the summer of 2001, though, you were seeing a new reality. In 1998, the Geneva Towers, which was a crime-infested housing project, was ripped down as it should have been a long time ago. Housing slowly took a more varied look. Instead of having a feared, inner-city, all-black, poverty-stricken, academically failing and isolated high-crime population, you had more of a Chinese, Vietnamese, Pacific Islander, Latino and African-American mix. Perhaps it was a more successful example of California redevelopment.

This area of San Francisco is still not the best. Public housing still rules, and the crime remains frightening, but it's safer in January of 2009 than it was in 1997.