Shootings are down in San Francisco but shooting deaths are up, and a recent surge in gang-related violence has raised community concerns. The Oceanview, Lake Merced and Ingleside areas have seen five street violence homicides this year, plus a murder-suicide and the slaying of five people inside a home. That is up from last year’s total of just two. Read More

Under the proposed process for supervisors to decide whether to permanently remove Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi from office, the board would forgo the testimony of witnesses and rely primarily on opening statements and the deliberations of The City’s Ethics Commission. Read More

Mayor Ed Lee unveiled a compromise November business tax ballot measure that could end a decadelong debate about changing the way The City taxes businesses. The proposal would replace a 1.5 percent payroll tax long maligned by business leaders as a job-killer. The gross receipts tax that would replace the existing levy would encourage increased investment and innovation in San Francisco, Lee said. “We have to create our own stronger economy,” Lee said. Read More

San Francisco Police called the Department of Emergency Management at 1:02 p.m. on June 29 to report an apparent City Hall bomb threat made by a man who called the Mission Station’s landline, an audio recording released upon request shows. A San Francisco Police Officer and a Department of Emergency Management dispatcher discuss the threat during a call which ran just under two minutes, according to the audio recording provided by the department. The bomb threat call itself is not recorded by the department since the caller did not call 911. Read More

On the very day that ethics commissioners considered whether to investigate alleged perjury by Mayor Ed Lee, police released bizarre new details surrounding the apparent bomb threat that interrupted the testimony at the heart of the allegations. Read More

After months of debate over tweaking San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting system, the effort to put a measure on the November ballot was killed by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday. That means voters will continue to rank their top three candidates for citywide and district board elections. The ranked-choice system has come under attack by San Francisco’s more conservative base, while the more left-leaning political faction adamantly defends it.   Read More

San Francisco voters could have a chance in November to denounce a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said the First Amendment allows corporations to spend as much as they want backing or opposing political candidates. Although critics of the Board of Supervisors often deride such local policy statements about federal affairs as a waste of time, supervisors supporting the so-called Repealing Corporate Personhood declaration defend their proposal. Read More