A disturbance at one of San Francisco’s most famous churches Sunday evening led police on a chaotic chase that allegedly involved a man setting off a pipe bomb and tossing a molotov cocktail before being taken into custody in the East Bay, a city official told The Standard.

Officers responded to a report of an assault at 5:52 p.m. at Saints Peter and Paul Church in the North Beach neighborhood, according to the San Francisco Police Department and Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who represents the neighborhood and was briefed on the situation.

Police arrived on the scene and the suspect fled in a vehicle, leading to a pursuit, according to the department.

“Officers initiated pursuit, and the suspect threw an unknown object out of the car window at pursuing officers,” officials said.

Peskin said police told him the suspect set off a pipe bomb on the 1500 block of Jones Street, a residential part of Nob Hill, and police continued to pursue the man south where he allegedly ignited a “molotov cocktail” on Eighth Street between Market and Mission.

Police advised members of the public to avoid the areas Sunday night.

San Francisco police block Eighth Street at Mission Street on Sunday, Oct. 29, 2023. | Source: Matthew Kupfer/The Standard

The suspect fled onto the freeway and California Highway Patrol took over the chase, police said. The pursuit ended in Martinez where the man was taken into custody.

A police pursuit of a subject believed to have explosives or an explosive device in his possession left San Francisco and blazed into Contra Costa County Sunday, ending on Imhoff Road near Martinez with a person in custody and explosives experts summoned to check his car. pic.twitter.com/PHW4IzWeTw

— News24/680 (@News24680) October 30, 2023

“Nobody got seriously hurt,” Peskin said, adding that he was initially told that a priest was assaulted but that does not appear to be the case.

People reported hearing loud explosions on social media Sunday evening and officers had taped off the block between Jones and Pacific Streets by the time a reporter for The Standard had arrived on scene around 7:15 p.m. An officer on the scene declined to comment. Police also taped off the area around Mission and Eighth streets.

PRELIMINARY REPORT: Assault at Saints Peter and Paul Church in North Beach. Responding officers encountered a suspect with an improvised device. A pursuit occurred. Suspect apprehended by SFPD in another county. If you are a witness or have video, contact SFPD at 415-575-4444. pic.twitter.com/POzUsftpwW

— San Francisco POA (@SanFranciscoPOA) October 30, 2023

Bobby Diaz, a guest at the BEI Hotel on Eighth Street south of Market, heard a blast as he was on the phone.

“I was looking out the window,” he said. “I heard what sounded like a boom. It kind of sounded like someone crashed into the hotel.”

Diaz said police responded almost immediately, with approximately 10 squad cars responding. “It was an impactful boom,” he said. “It was very loud.”

Peskin said the police department’s Night Investigations Unit would be updating him throughout the evening.

Police asked anyone with information to contact the department by calling (415) 575-4444 or texting a tip to TIP411 and beginning the message with “SFPD.”

Additionally, members of the public who come across any suspicious devices are advised to immediately call 911 and to avoid approaching or moving the object. 

Julie Makinen and Matthew Kupfer contributed to this report.

The post San Francisco Cops Chase Man Who Allegedly Set Off Bombs appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

• Representatives for the California force are currently on a recruitment drive, visiting four Texas colleges 
• It comes after the police department had funding cut, causing them to pay out high amounts of overtime 
• San Francisco is currently experiencing high numbers of homelessness and open drug use 

San Francisco is trying to recruit cops from Texas as it faces a shortage of officers, after businessman Marc Benioff slammed the city’s homeless and drug problems.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is visiting four Texas university campuses throughout the month as part of a new recruitment drive. 

Candidates from outside of the state of California will take a written test, a physical ability test and an interview to see if they make they cut.

A police spokesperson told the San Francisco Standard that the number of estimated applications this year is 2,104, nearly a 20 percent increase from 1,756 last year.  

The recruitment push comes as the department faces staffing issues, causing them to pay out high amounts of overtime. 

Representatives for the California force are currently on a recruitment drive, visiting four Universities in Texas As part of the move, the SFPD are visiting four Universities, with the poster for Sam Houston State seen here The four Texan universities are Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University Corpus Christi

The Standard reported that between 2017 and 2022, cops spent $88.9 million more on its employees, despite working fewer hours. 

The four Texan universities are Texas Southern University, Sam Houston State University, Prairie View A&M University and Texas A&M University Corpus Christi. 

Following widespread calls for reforms that swept the national following the murder of George Floyd, the department in the California city had their funding cut. 

Mayor London Breed was one of the first to openly speak out in support of defunding the police.

During a July 2020 press conference, Breed said: ‘We chose to change how this city and how this country treats our young Black men.’

Breed announced $120 million would be cut from the police and sheriff’s departments to reinvest in programs that help black and brown communities.

The following year, Breed u-turned on the decision and increased the police budget as the city faced a rampant rise in property crime and looting. 

At the time, she said: ‘More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant with all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city.’

Mayor London Breed speaks during the celebration of the 9th Annual Chinatown Night Out in San Francisco, California, United States on September 6, 2023 Latest figures up until Sunday show that there have been more homicides so far this year, than the whole of last year

Last year the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a $50 million increase in SFPD’s budget.

Latest figures up until Sunday show that there have been more homicides so far this year than the whole of last year. 

So far, there have been 40 murders in the city in 2023, while there was just 36 last year. 

Likewise, the number of robberies in the city is also higher now than for the whole of last year, with 1,989 reported incidents this year, compared to just 1,704 last year.  

The number of total crimes this year is also closely catching up with last years full total, with 36,573 crimes committed this year, compared to 37,674 in 2022.

It comes after Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff said that he had pushed officials in the city to clean the place up before the company’s annual conference. 

AI convention Dreamforce, which draws 40,000 people from around the world according to the company, was held in the city last week. 

During a press event on Wednesday, Benioff said: ‘We put a lot of pressure on the city this year. It looks great. It’s very safe right now. We’re moving in the right direction.’

Benioff, 58, held the event at the Moscone Center, which is in an area that is currently facing issues including homelessness, crime and open air drug markets, according to Kron4.

Benioff also posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, saying: ‘San Francisco has been incredibly clean, beautiful, and safe for the last 3 days of Dreamforce.

‘It is great that the city is able to put its best foot forward for this major event that brings in 40K people from around the world, and $80M to the economy.

‘It is important to ask why the city cannot be this clean and safe every single day?’

Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff, pictured here, said he had pushed officials in the beleaguered California city to clean the place up The AI convention, which draws 40,000 people from around the world according to the company, was held in the city over the past few days

Benioff had previously warned that the company could pull the large scale convention from the city due to the ongoing problems it is facing.

He told The San Francisco Chronicle: ‘If this Dreamforce is impacted by the current situation with homelessness and drug use it may be the last Dreamforce.’

Mayor London Breed responded to Benioff’s claim that Dreamforce made the city’s transformation possible.

She told ABC7 News: ‘It’s not just because of Dreamforce. There are other conventions. This is what we do for every convention that comes to SF.

‘My pushback is San Francisco changing. Things are getting better.’

Despite this, Mayor Breed did concede that some areas of the city, particularly the Tenderloin and South of Market, did still present challenges. 

The city has struggled for years with rampant fentanyl use and fatal overdoses, and is on pace for its deadliest year yet.

More than 849 people are expected to die of drug overdoses in 2023, on pace to exceed the current record of 720 deaths in 2020

In the first five months of 2023, preliminary reports show there were 346 overdose deaths in the city – an increase of more than 40 percent from the same period in 2022.

Latest figures show that overdose deaths are continuing to rise, soaring in August with an additional 84 deaths, 66 involving fentanyl.  

Economists have warned the city is spiraling into an ‘urban doom loop’ – a vicious circle of interconnected trends and forces that send cities into economic and social ruin.

Over the past few months, dozens of retailers announced they would be vacating the downtown area of the city.

Drug addicts and the homeless congregate in the Tenderloin District of the California city Open drug use is now common in the city, something which the police are cracking down on San Francisco Police have attempted to shut down open-air drugs markets in the hard-hit Tenderloin and SoMa areas of the city. Pictured: 64-year-old Deliada Valdez who has been homeless for four years is seen in Tenderloin District of San Francisco, California, United States on August 28, 2023

Retail stalwart Old Navy announced they would be shuttering their flagship store in the area last month, becoming the latest chain to exit the city.

Nordstrom also announced they would be closing all of their locations in the city.

The company said that due to the ‘changing dynamics’ of San Francisco it would be shuttering all remaining stores in the next few months.

In April, Whole Foods announced it was closing all their locations, with Anthropologie and Office Depot having also made the same decisions.

High theft has proved a problem in the area recently, with a Walgreens in the city center resolving to chaining their freezers to stop shoplifters.

A map reveals the major businesses which have left, or plan to leave, San Francisco in recent months

A disturbing recent report showed 95 retailers in downtown San Francisco have closed since the start of the COVID pandemic, a decline of more than 50 percent.

Out of 203 retailers open in 2019 in the city’s Union Square area, just 107 are still operating, a drop of 47 percent in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.

One Target store in the city has been forced to lock up more of its products to stave off thieves.

An employee at the location previously said it was being robbed as often as ‘every ten minutes.’

Video footage of another Target has been shared on social media and shows large quantities of their stock now behind barriers.

The post San Francisco tries to recruit cops from TEXAS because it faces scarcity of a whole lot of officers and enterprise leaders like Salesforce’s Marc Benioff slam town’s widespread homelessness and drug use appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco police officers shot dead a man armed with a knife in the early hours of Thursday morning before discovering the body of a woman and a dead dog inside a home. The suspect was later pronounced dead at hospital, police said.

Officers went to a home on 31st Avenue off Balboa Street in the Richmond District of San Francisco where they found an 84-year-old man standing in the doorway. A 37-year-old man armed with a knife then approached officers, who opened fire, police said in a press release Thursday morning.

When officers entered the home, they found the body of a 76-year-old woman and a dead dog. Paramedics took the 84-year-old man, who had unspecified non-life-threatening injuries, to a hospital, police said.

Police say the suspect is the victim’s son, who suffered from a mental illness and lived at home with his mother, father and family dog.

Police tape surrounds the site of a police shooting Thursday in the Richmond borough. | Ida Mojadad/The Standard

The filming location is near the Balboa Street trade corridor, a few blocks north of Golden Gate Park and near George Washington High School.

Police tape surrounds the site of a police shooting Thursday in the Richmond borough. | Ida Mojadad/The Standard

Warden Connie Chan, who represents the area on the oversight panel, issued a statement saying she was in close contact with police about the shooting and said the incident was tragic.

“When one household is injured, our entire community is affected,” Chan said. “My heart and thoughts are with the family.”

Thursday’s shooting marks the second time this year that police have shot and killed someone in the city. On May 19, SFPD officer Gregory Buhagiar shot and killed 40-year-old Sergio Barrios as Barrios was reaching for a pistol in Bernal Heights.

This is an evolving story.

The post Cops Shoot Knifeman at San Francisco Dwelling, Discover Useless Girl appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

metro

From Joshua Rhett Miller

October 1, 2020 | 2:19 p.m

Romeo Sanchez
Paramus Police Department

A creepy handyman admitted to hiding cameras in bathrooms in homes in Paramus and Wayne, NJ, police said.

Romeo Sanchez, 47, of West New York, was arrested by Paramus police on September 17 for invasion of privacy after a homeowner who hired him to install a window discovered a suspicious device in her bathroom in late August. reports WABC.

The device, which police said was set in a bathroom wall, was later determined to be a micro camera fitted with a memory card, the station reports.

The homeowner saw the device plugged into an outlet in the bathroom and knew it “didn’t belong to her,” Paramus Police Detective Mark Pinajian told CBS New York.

The victim then saw clips on the device showing herself and her bathroom and another location, Pinajian said.

Investigators set out to track down Sanchez, a married father who admitted to installing the camera at Paramus’s home – and claimed he intended to retrieve it when he got back to finish the job, police said with.

The other location caught on camera was a bathroom at a home in Wayne where Sanchez was also hired for a job, police said.

No children were present at either house and there is no evidence that Sanchez distributed the video, CBS New York reported.

“As far as we can see, he’s not a licensed contractor,” Pinajian said. “He’s like a handyman, doing small, occasional jobs, and he’s been referred to other people. That’s how he got into business.”

The investigation into the Wayne home is being conducted by investigators there, Paramus Police said. Wayne Police have not returned a message seeking comment on the case, NorthJersey.com reported.

Sanchez, who faced up to a year in prison, was released pending trial, NJ.com reports.

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• The air conditioning technician shot the clip in Golden Valley, Minnesota
• The TikTok video went viral with over 5.5 million views and nearly 600,000 likes

This is the moment an HVAC technician filmed one of his customers as she “called 911” to claim he was threatening her and that she was “trembling” with fear.

Alonzo Harmon’s short clip of the Golden Valley, Minnesota incident went viral on TikTok with the caption, “Here’s an example of what life as a black man is like in America.”

The air conditioning worker filmed himself with the woman as she yelled “I’m so scared” in what appeared to be a call to police.

When the sobbing woman tries to claim that she is scared and intimidated by Harmon and in dire need of help, he asks calmly, “What threat did I make to you, ma’am?”

The video was filmed in November last year but was uploaded by Harmon this week, where it subsequently went viral with 5.5 million views and nearly 600,000 likes.

Harmon filmed the woman who appeared to be calling 911. “What threat did I make to you?” he asks

“She’s on the phone to 911 right now,” Harmon says calmly to the camera.

The woman is heard saying during the call, “He said I was being rude and he’s scaring me right now.”

But the stunned technician seems confused about her reaction: “She said I just threatened her. what threat?

“What threat did I make to you?” he asks.

The panicked woman does not answer the question.

In the next clip, the woman looks even more desperate when she asks the police to come faster.

She can be heard making crying noises over the phone as Harmon, standing several feet away in front of the garage, looks on helplessly.

“I’m scared right now. I’m shaking,” she says 911. “Please. Please. I’m so scared right now.’

Harmon suggests that the woman’s tears aren’t real.

“What on earth is that, boy? I won’t lie – I’ve never had to deal with such a bulls**t in my life. Never in my life.’

A concerned commenter responded to the viral video: “Are you alright? update please!!’

Another wrote: “It’s a shame you were treated like that man no reason for it. I hope You are fine.’

A third wrote: “Man this is not a joke this is scary how people can just do this and get the law involved. Please update us.’

Harmon hints that the woman’s tears aren’t realThe panicked woman doesn’t respond to Harmon’s questionHarmon filmed the interaction for TikTokThe TikTok video subsequently went viral

A police report detailed that two officers from the Golden Valley Police Department responded to the woman’s call but took no further action.

“Officials spoke to the gentleman who recorded the video and he left without any further investigation into the called incident. That’s all the information we have,” a spokesman for the police department said.

Harmon told Storyful that the woman in the clip started asking him “off-topic questions” about his job after he finished working on the air conditioner.

He said the woman tried to grab his phone as he left the property before then calling police.

“I told her if she calls the police I’ll wait for her at my van, then I started recording her when she called her,” Harmon told Storyful.

“The police finally came for a few minutes. They spoke to both of us and simply asked me to leave to de-escalate the situation.

The post HVAC technician movies second shopper calls the cops on him in viral TikTok appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

This report, by Aaron Gordon for Motherboard, looks like a hypothetical dreamed up by a particularly cruel constitutional law professor:

For the last five years, driverless car companies have been testing their vehicles on public roads. These vehicles constantly roam neighborhoods while loading with a variety of sensors including video cameras capturing everything going on around them in order to operate safely and analyze instances where they don’t.

While the companies themselves, such as Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise, tout the potential transportation benefits their services may offer one day, they don’t publicize another use case, one that is far less hypothetical: Mobile surveillance cameras for police departments.

It’s not quite as cut and dried as that last sentence. As far as we know, police departments do not have unfettered, real-time access to the recordings created constantly by autonomous vehicles. But they do have access to the recordings. That much is clear from the public records obtained by Motherboard.

The San Francisco PD has been using this footage to aid in investigations, apparently frequently. The training document says two things, neither of which address the particularly thorny constitutional questions they raise:

Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads.

There’s nothing untrue about this assertion and yet it says nothing about the processes used to obtain these recordings. That might have been a hypothetical if not for the following bullet point:

Information will be sent in how to access this potential evidence (Investigations has already done this several times)

yikes

That is problematic, as an EFF rep points out:

“This is very concerning,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz told Motherboard. He said cars in general are troves of personal consumer data, but autonomous vehicles will have even more of that data from capturing the details of the world around them. “So when we see any police department identify AVs as a new source of evidence, that’s very concerning.”

So many questions.

An AV will not have a human driver, which lowers the expectation of privacy. That expectation reverts to the company deploying it, which makes it somewhat comparable to a third-party record: data obtained by an automatic process that belongs to the company deploying the data-gathering device (in this case, a car).

Since there’s no driver to challenge searches, the responsibility lies with the company deploying the vehicle. And, since the recordings presumably cover public areas where the privacy expectation is further lowered, it might be possible to obtain recordings with nothing more than a subpoena (or a friendly sounding email!)

That’s where things get even thornier, in terms of the Fourth Amendment. The document does not describe the process the SFPD investigations team uses to obtain recordings.

First of all, how does the SFPD even know if AV recordings might be useful in ongoing investigations? Presumably, AV operators are required to inform local government agencies of their plans so that they can be overseen and undertaken safely. If cops know the routes traveled, it makes sense they would pursue footage recorded at or around areas where suspected crimes were committed.

But who governs this access? Has the city enacted any limits? Or is it just assumed that anything traffic regulators have access to should be accessible to law enforcement?

Moving on from there, how does the PD approach these companies? Private searches (which may be how these recordings are viewed by courts) are legally provided law enforcement does nothing to encourage searches companies (or their employees) may not otherwise engage in. Can cops request AV companies run routes through “high crime” areas in hopes of collecting footage of crimes in progress? All judicial signs point to “no,” but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

AV testing is AV testing. It really doesn’t matter much where it’s happening, so some companies may engage in test runs in neighborhoods investigators think might provide more evidence or intel. If this is happening, that’s a real problem.

Unfortunately, we only know what the SFPD has released so far: a training document that says AV cars capture footage and that investigators have utilized that footage in the past. Future public records requests may shed more light on the matter, but for now, this is all we have. At some point, evidence gathered by autonomous vehicles may be challenged in court. If and when that happens, we may get even more answers. But it seems like this isn’t a problem capable of being quantified with this minimum amount of information. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored. It just means more data is needed to draw any solid conclusions.

San Francisco Cops Are Accessing Autonomous Vehicle Recordings To Collect Evidence

More Law-Related Stories From Techdirt:

Survey Shows Majority Of GOP Voters Supporting Restoring Net Neutrality
Supreme Court Makes The Right Call: Puts Texas Social Media Law Back On Hold
Utah Cops Used ‘Reverse Warrants’ To Track Down A Bunch Of Petty Criminals

The post San Francisco Cops Are Accessing Autonomous Automobile Recordings To Gather Proof appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

from the another-source-of-always-on-surveillance dept

This report, by Aaron Gordon for Motherboard, looks like a hypothetical dreamed up by a particularly cruel constitutional law professor:

For the last five years, driverless car companies have been testing their vehicles on public roads. These vehicles constantly roam neighborhoods while loading with a variety of sensors including video cameras capturing everything going on around them in order to operate safely and analyze instances where they don’t.

While the companies themselves, such as Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise, tout the potential transportation benefits their services may offer one day, they don’t publicize another use case, one that is far less hypothetical: Mobile surveillance cameras for police departments.

It’s not quite as cut and dried as that last sentence. As far as we know, police departments do not have unfettered, real-time access to the recordings created constantly by autonomous vehicles. But they do have access to the recordings. That much is clear from the public records obtained by Motherboard.

The San Francisco PD has been using this footage to aid in investigations, apparently frequently. The training document says two things, neither of which address the particularly thorny constitutional questions they raise:

Autonomous vehicles are recording their surroundings continuously and have the potential to help with investigative leads.

There’s nothing untrue about this assertion and yet it says nothing about the processes used to obtain these recordings. That might have been a hypothetical if not for the following bullet point:

Information will be sent in how to access this potential evidence (Investigations has already done this several times)

yikes

That is problematic, as an EFF rep points out:

“This is very concerning,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior staff attorney Adam Schwartz told Motherboard. He said cars in general are troves of personal consumer data, but autonomous vehicles will have even more of that data from capturing the details of the world around them. “So when we see any police department identify AVs as a new source of evidence, that’s very concerning.”

So many questions.

An AV will not have a human driver, which lowers the expectation of privacy. That expectation reverts to the company deploying it, which makes it somewhat comparable to a third-party record: data obtained by an automatic process that belongs to the company deploying the data-gathering device (in this case, a car).

Since there’s no driver to challenge searches, the responsibility lies with the company deploying the vehicle. And, since the recordings presumably cover public areas where the privacy expectation is further lowered, it might be possible to obtain recordings with nothing more than a subpoena (or a friendly sounding email!)

That’s where things get even thornier, in terms of the Fourth Amendment. The document does not describe the process the SFPD investigations team uses to obtain recordings.

First of all, how does the SFPD even know if AV recordings might be useful in ongoing investigations? Presumably, AV operators are required to inform local government agencies of their plans so that they can be overseen and undertaken safely. If cops know the routes traveled, it makes sense they would pursue footage recorded at or around areas where suspected crimes were committed.

But who governs this access? Has the city enacted any limits? Or is it just assumed that anything traffic regulators have access to should be accessible to law enforcement?

Moving on from there, how does the PD approach these companies? Private searches (which may be how these recordings are viewed by courts) are legally provided law enforcement does nothing to encourage searches companies (or their employees) may not otherwise engage in. Can cops request AV companies run routes through “high crime” areas in hopes of collecting footage of crimes in progress? All judicial signs point to “no,” but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

AV testing is AV testing. It really doesn’t matter much where it’s happening, so some companies may engage in test runs in neighborhoods investigators think might provide more evidence or intel. If this is happening, that’s a real problem.

Unfortunately, we only know what the SFPD has released so far: a training document that says AV cars capture footage and that investigators have utilized that footage in the past. Future public records requests may shed more light on the matter, but for now, this is all we have. At some point, evidence gathered by autonomous vehicles may be challenged in court. If and when that happens, we may get even more answers. But it seems like this isn’t a problem capable of being quantified with this minimum amount of information. That doesn’t mean it should be ignored. It just means more data is needed to draw any solid conclusions.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, autonomous vehicles, monitoring, recordings, san francisco, sfpd, surveillance

The post San Francisco Cops Are Accessing Autonomous Car Recordings To Acquire Proof appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Cops want to question a former handyman lover of slain Queens mom Orsolya Gaal who had intimate knowledge of her home — including where the family kept a spare key, The Post has learned.

The man, who has not yet been formally identified as a person of interest or suspect in the gruesome slaying, is believed to have had a romantic relationship with the 51-year-old married mother of two before the affair went south, law enforcement sources said.

It’s unclear when the relationship began and ended, but according to sources familiar with the case, the man knew where the family kept a spare key at their well-kept Forest Hills Tudor and would have been able to access the home without breaking in.

Gaal was stabbed nearly 60 times sometime in the week hours Saturday inside the front of the home, with her corpse then taken to the basement, sources and authorities have said. She was stashed in a black Bauer hockey bag similar to one belonging to her kids, and the pouch containing her body was dragged outside and dumped about a half-mile away, leaving behind a trail of blood, cops said.

Police believe the killer knew Gaal because there were no signs of a break-in, and considering the violent nature of the crime, they suspect the attack was personal and fueled by anger specifically toward her, sources said.

Police are looking to question a man who believe they had a past relationship with slain Queens mom Orsolya Gaal, according to sources.orsolya.gaal.9/Facebook

The man has not yet been named a suspect or person of interest in the fatal stabbing.Howard Klein/Facebook

But the grisly slaying did not appear to be pre-meditated, sources said.

“[Detectives] don’t think it was a planned murder,” a law enforcement source said.

“He left a blood trail for five blocks from the house,” the source said.

“It was like a trail of bread crumbs.

“If you want to kill somebody, you try to make it a little cleaner, be a little more prepared. He didn’t go with something to move her body. He took something from the house,” the source said.

Gaal’s husband, Howard Klein, and older son were away touring colleges during the attack.orsolya.gaal.9/Facebook

“I’m sure with that kind of blood, there’s lots of DNA there,” the source added. “The killer’s DNA has gotta be in that blood. It’s not a clean scene.”

Cops are also looking to speak with several men Gaal had been texting with before her death, sources said, as detectives plastered posters around the neighborhood offering a $3,500 reward in exchange for tips.

“UP TO $3,500 REWARD FOR INFORMATION REGARDING A HOMICIDE,” the poster states in bold red letters beside a photo of Gaal’s home and the number for Crime Stoppers.

Gaal went out with friends the night of her death and also spent 40 minutes alone in a local bar.orsolya.gaal.9/Facebook

Gaal’s body being removed from her house in a duffel bag.

“On Saturday, April 16th, 2022, at approximately 12:40am… An unknown perpetrator stabbed a 51-year-old Orsolya Gaal multiple times causing her death. The victim was found inside a duffel bag along Metropolitan Avenue in Queens,” the poster reads.

NYPD sources told The Post on Tuesday that detectives had asked the Queens District Attorney’s Office for a search warrant shortly after tracing the blood back to Gaal’s house Saturday morning.

But investigators weren’t given the warrant until early evening, costing them valuable time in gathering evidence, sources said.

The DA’s office did not immediately respond to a post request for comment.

On Tuesday afternoon, the family’s electrician, Arrjuna Jack, stopped by Gaal’s home, which is still wrapped in crime-scene tape, after he heard that she’d been killed on the news.

“I’m very started,” said Jack, 30, adding that he was frequently at the family’s home to do electrical work, as well as some power-washing and painting.

Police believe the person would have knowledge of Gaal’s home since it was not broken into.Kevin C. Downs for The New York Post

“I know her very well. Her husband’s very nice. Her two sons … are very nice as well. …It’s very sad.”

Jack called Gaal “very beautiful” and said that as far as he could tell, the family didn’t have any issues.

“She’s a very happy, jolly person all the time. … I see her jogging all the time,” Jack said.

“They’re a very beautiful, quiet family. Very happy all the time.”

On Friday evening, Gaal headed out with friends to see a show at Lincoln Center before returning to Queens around midnight and hitting a bar in her neighborhood, where she hung out alone for about 40 minutes, apparently waiting for someone, police sources said.

NYPD officers stand outside Gaal’s Forest Hills home where she was killed.Kevin C. Downs for The New York Post

Samson Cornejo, whose father owns 5 Burro Cafe on Austin Street, said Gaal was a regular at the watering hole but added he’s not sure if she was there late Friday.

“Her house is a 10-minute walk. … She comes here, y’know, she’s been here before. She used to come with some Russian ladies,” Cornejo told The Post on Tuesday.

“I saw the bag, where they found it, after I left that night. I drove by it after leaving here. I couldn’t believe when I heard. It smacked me when I saw her picture!”

Gaal’s 13-year-old son was home when cops went to the house Saturday morning after his mother’s body was discovered. The boy was upstairs at the time, and there is no indication he left the house at all overnight, sources said.

Gaal’s husband and 17-year-old son were out of state on a college tour at the time.

A tribute to Gaal outside her home in Forest Hills.Elder Ordonez / SplashNews.com

In May 2020, Gaal was briefly reported missing to police after her husband called 911 and said she’d gone for a walk around midnight and wasn’t home by the time he woke up the next morning.

About two months later, she posted an ominous message to a community Facebook page asking for information on how to buy pepper spray.

“Given the recent attack on a woman in Forest Park and the general uptick of crime and seedy characters in the neighborhood, I sought info here to get mace / pepper spray for my runs in the park,” the post states.

“Be safe out there!” she wrote.

Additional reporting by Tina Moore, Larry Celona, ​​Kevin Sheehan and Steven Vago

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On Apr. 10, a video went viral after it was posted online because it showed a driverless GM Cruise car getting pulled over in San Francisco, California, by police who found the car did not have any driver behind the wheel.

Driverless Cruise Car Got Pulled Over by Cops

The video was originally posted on Apr. 1, but it did not go viral until nine days after. It showed a GM Cruise car getting pulled over to the side of the road and stopped as a cop approached the driver’s side before accelerating to cross an intersection and pull off further down the road.

A bystander can be heard yelling their disbelief when no driver was seen inside the car even though it was moving.

GM Cruise posted on its corporate Twitter account and said that the Cruise behaved as expected. GM Cruise said that their AV yielded to the police vehicle, then pulled over to the nearest safe location, as intended.

An officer contacted a GM Cruise personnel, and there was no citation issued.

Also Read: Cruise lets you convert your jalopy into Google-type self-driving car for just $10,000

GM Cruise told CNBC that the San Francisco Police Department has a dedicated phone number available at all times for officers and authorities to call when the automaker’s driverless vehicles get pulled over.

The San Francisco Police Department did not immediately return requests for more information about the situation.

The episode showed some of the situations that can happen as driverless cars become more common on the streets of San Francisco.

GM Cruise is a GM subsidiary, and it began to offer nighttime rides to the public in early 2022 in San Francisco in driverless cars, even though it is not yet charging and riders need to apply for a waitlist first.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is planning to offer free driverless rides in its cars in San Francisco to members of a testing program and has completed thousands of rides without a driver in Arizona.

Nuro has a deployment permit to operate driverless cars in San Francisco as well, but the startup is mainly focused on delivery and not taxi service.

GM Gets Approval for Driverless Vehicles

According to Arstechnica, on Feb. 22, GM Cruise was able to successfully get permission from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA to put the driverless vehicles into commercial service.

Cruise stated that the vehicle is a zero-emission, shared, electric vehicle that has been designed from the ground up to operate without a human driver. This means that it does not rely on certain human-centered features, like a steering wheel, to operate.

Cruise said that its petition in Feb. demonstrates how the Origin objectives of existing standards safely and helps enable future autonomous vehicle regulations.

The AV cars will be manufactured at GM’s Factory Zero in Michigan. According to Reuters, the production is expected to increase in 2022 and will go nationwide in 2023.

The GM Cruise driverless vehicles can be used as robotaxis that can pick up deliveries and people. The vehicle can work on busy streets, highways, and intersections.

Related Article: General Motors, Cruise Unveil Modified Chevrolet Bolt EVs As First Self-Driving Car For Mass Production

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Written by Sophie Webster

ⓒ 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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Serina Calhoun has worked as an architect in San Francisco for 21 years and has faced plenty of headache-inducing projects, but the renovation of a Bernal Heights fixer-upper that she took on in 2020 stands out as truly atrocious.

Many of the city’s worst story lines converged at the seemingly cursed house, leaving Calhoun and the home’s owners slack-jawed by all the plot twists.

It involves insanely high real estate prices. Byzantine planning codes that even the city’s planners find confusing. Neighbors who demand a say in any change near them. Squatters, drugs and vandalism. Police officers who blame the district attorney as they let criminals go. A pricey private security guard. And heaps of frustration.

Sounds like San Francisco, alright.

“This is a whole other level of crazy,” Calhoun said.

It all began in October 2020 when Jennifer Sun and her husband, Ben, purchased a house in Bernal Heights for $1.75 million. In most parts of the country, that would buy a stunning mansion. In San Francisco, it buys a rather dated fixer-upper.

The couple are wealthy, and nobody but them will shed any tears over their home remodel gone awry. Still, what happened next points to what’s broken in San Francisco — and so much is broken.

A sticker, writing on the refrigerator and a sign are some of the damage left over from squatters who trespassed and lived in the home of a Bernal Heights couple.

Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle

The couple hired Calhoun to design a remodel, submitted their plans in March 2021 and hoped to secure permits within six months. They kept paying rent on their South of Market apartment so they could live there during the remodel, while also paying their new mortgage.

But six months turned into 12 months — and still, no permits.

The first hiccup was that the Planning Department said the home had been illegally converted into three units by a previous owner, and the couple wanted to restore it to its original single-family home set-up.

After some back and forth, the Planning Department said the plan was allowable because there was no record of any tenants ever living there.

Dan Sider, chief of staff for the Planning Department, said planners were ready to approve the plans including major interior work in July 2021, but then the couple submitted a proposal with a new wrinkle: extending the back of their home by just under 3 feet . That would make the back of the house even since the third story juts out beyond the lower two.

But this being San Francisco, and especially Bernal Heights, that seemingly small change is a very big deal. That’s because of a “special use district” approved by the Board of Supervisors in 1991 that governs every little change to homes in the neighborhood. The idea was to preserve the area’s character, but the details will make your eyes glaze over and, according to Calhoun, have prompted many architects in the city to refuse to work there.

In sections and subsections to subsections, it governs changes to homes in minute detail — down to the allowable width of curb cuts and garage doors.

“I can assure you that it is not a page-turner,” Sider said good-naturedly.

Jennifer Sun stands below two holes in the ceiling of her home, part of the damage from squatters. She and her husband have had to hire private security while they wait for permits to remodel their new home.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

A group of neighbors called the Bernal Heights East Slope Design Review Board — with no apparent website or easy way to find them — gets to weigh in on projects in the area. An email sent to an address associated with the group was not returned.

The rules include the length of a home can extend into the backyard from the front of its property line. But because the couple’s house sits on a curved lot, Calhoun’s been trying to get an answer on where on the front lot to start measuring from. She said she waited until November just to get a planner assigned and has spoken to four different planners about the 3-foot extension, and that none knows the answer.

“They shared that the code is confusing even for them,” she said.

Then, the planner told Calhoun the home was historic and the facade — though nondescript — could not be altered. Sorting that out would have extended the project by another six to nine months, Calhoun said, so the couple dropped proposed changes to the front.

Then things got really weird.

In February, Calhoun received an email from a member of the Bernal Heights East Slope Design Review Board who reported a neighbor across the street from the couple’s home had grown “increasingly agitated” by the couple’s lifestyle and the cars coming and going from the home at every hour.

Sun said she was shocked. They weren’t living there. What cars? What lifestyle?

So they visited the property, which had weird spray paint across the garage door and signs of people inside. They called police, who accompanied them inside the house where they found squatters had taken it over.

Photos the couple took show piles of furniture, clothes and a fridge full of food. Graffiti covers the refrigerator and walls. One message can’t be relayed in full because of antigay language, but it reads in part, “No soliciting. No shopping. No snitches.” They bashed holes in the walls and ceilings, wrecked a sink and other fixtures, left dog poop on the carpets and discarded needles and syringe caps around the house. Flies were everywhere. The house still smells bad.

According to the couple, police officers gave the squatters — all of whom appeared high — 10 minutes to collect their belongings and leave. They arrested only one. No one else faced any consequences. The couple said police explained there was nothing they could do because District Attorney Chesa Boudin “has different priorities right now” and wouldn’t prosecute.

Salar Naderi, a spokesperson with the Police Department, confirmed police found seven people occupying the house and arrested Richard Ostergard, 47, who had warrants for stealing a vehicle, possession of stolen property and theft. Naderi said the homeowners “did not want to have any of the (other) subjects cited or arrested,” disputing the couple’s version.

In any case, Sun, 36, said that just a few hours later, neighbors texted and called to tell her the squatters were back. And it doesn’t sound like they’re merely people down on their luck. Photos show nice belongings, and neighbors reported them driving a Mercedes, BMW and Dodge Durango.

Neighbors continued to report to the couple that people were entering the home over the next couple of days, and that someone tried to access the property with a crowbar.

The couple quickly hired a private security guard whom they’re paying $8,000 a month to watch over the house every night.

“If we had known the city would take so long, we would have moved in and this wouldn’t be an issue,” Sun said.

Even though they’re doing well professionally, the couple said the costs have created “an immense financial impact” — and work hasn’t even started yet. Mortgage payments and property taxes on the house have topped $180,000 so far. They paid $3,000 to haul away the squatters’ belongings and don’t know yet how much it will cost to repair their damage.

Meanwhile, construction costs keep growing because of inflation and supply chain shortages, and there’s no telling how much the remodel will end up costing or when they can finally start.

“How does anyone afford this?” Sun asked.

Sun said she’s no longer excited about moving in after the remodel — which she thinks won’t be done for another year at best.

“It totally creeps me out,” she said. “Just unlocking the door, I get goose bumps. It’s uncomfortable being in here. It’s so unnerving. This is supposed to be home.”

This being San Francisco, there is one bit of good news for the couple. Redfin says their dream home turned nightmare is now worth more than $2 million.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf

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