S.F. homicides already surpass 2019 total

As homicides rise throughout the Bay Area during the coronavirus outbreak, San Francisco police have reported 45 killings this year, compared with 41 for all of 2019. Black people, who make up less than 6% of the city’s population, accounted for nearly half the victims.

The 41 slayings reported in 2019 were San Francisco’s lowest total in 56 years. Police reported four homicides in January and February this year, but the numbers began to rise as the pandemic set in, even as most other crimes were declining. As residents grow more fearful, gun sales are also increasing and have reached record levels nationwide.

Homicides in the Bay Area’s 15 largest cities increased by 14% in the first six months of 2020 compared with 2019, The Chronicle has reported. In

Oakland, with a population of 435,000 compared with San Francisco’s 896,000, killings totaled 79 as of midOctober, a 36% increase over 2019.

Vallejo police reported that a 22yearold Oakland man was shot shortly after midnight Wednesday and died in a hospital 12 hours later. It was Vallejo’s 27th homicide of the year, its highest total in at least a decade. Police did not identify the victim or provide any details of the shooting.

The homicide totals do not include any fatal shootings by police.

In San Francisco, police said, the victims of the year’s first 43 homicides included 20 Blacks, seven Latinos or Latinas, seven Asian Americans and six nonHispanic whites, with the rest from other groups. The two most recent killings, a double homicide Nov. 18, are still under investigation, police said.

Eleven homicides occurred in the Bayview district, 10 in the Tenderloin and eight in the Ingleside district. Police said guns were used in 27 of the 43 killings.

Of the 37 homicides reported in San Francisco through Sept. 30, police said they had identified the killer in 70% of the cases.