San Francisco Gangs

For decades, San Francisco enjoyed a reputation for welcoming outsiders: hippies, gay people, assorted weirdos who went West in search of freedom and ended up at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Now, thanks to a tech-fueled cash bonanza, it's increasingly a city of clean lines and affluence, home to ultra-rich Silicon Valley barons and vagrants of the digital era David Talbot calls "Stanford assholes." But despite the new tech bubble, rising property values, and hipster enclaves, the city's underworld—and the gangs that fuel it—are still rollicking along, often right next door to the new money. Judging by the number of security guards Mark Zuckerberg has hired to protect his $10 million mansion, Facebook's boss probably had some idea that the rapidly gentrifying Mission District can (still) be a dangerous place. By sheer volume of reported incidents, the neighborhood remains the second most risky place in town, closely following South of Market (SoMa), where many tech startups rub elbows with homeless shelters and mental illness treatment centers. SoMa has its gang problems, but the Mission has a reputation. There's a gang that claims real estate right around the corner from Zuck's mansion called MS-13, which has allied itself with the Sureños, or the Southern California faction of the Mexican Mafia. And gang members say that both the hipster haven at Dolores Park and territory stretching north from the corner at the end of Zuckerberg's block are places where it owns the monopoly in the pre-Silk Road drug trade. The Sureños, and so by proxy MS-13, is constantly warring with their historic rivals the Norteños, or the Northern California coalition of gangs loosely organized under the Neustra Familia's banner. "One of the rules common to both Sureño and Norteño gangs is that gang members of each side must attack members of the other side," federal prosecutors wrote in a racketeering and murder indictment made public in November. "The more brazen the attack, the greater the respect that is given to the attacker by fellow gang members." Mostly, both gangs just want to make money by selling drugs such as coke, molly, meth, and weed. And between the two gangs, their territory covers most of the Mission, where newcomers can expect to pay upwards of $3,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Junior members generally serve as the narcotics foot soldiers, according to the Feds, but gangs have also branched out to burglary and robbery—which often means snatcing smartphones. When they get violent, senior gang members known as Shot Callers or La Palabra ("the word" in Spanish) generally do the killing. The feds also say that big homies—captains—shoot people once in a while as well as order hits from inside federal and state prison. At the moment, the government is trying to pin three bodies on 17 Sureños, plus a bunch of attempted murders and racketeering charges. The most recent murder that's making its way through the justice system took place six months ago, before last call at Valencia and Sixteenth Streets—a popular spot to get drunk on the weekend. A then-unknown assailant shot the victim several times, remarkably not hitting any bystanders (collateral damage is a frequent and deadly consequence of gang violence). A CEO of a venture-funded tech company told me that he's renting a place, with a roommate, for somewhere above $5,000 a month at that same corner.