Two Photographers Attacked at SF's Palace of Fine Arts — on Same Day

[raydm6]

Just curious on motive - and at gunpoint no less in broad daylight!... ...were they going to pawn the equipment? And why that target? They had to walk a distance to get to him.

The video is chilling. Not sure what I would have done in that situation.

If they were going after me, then I would have fought back (I have a martial arts background - 2nd Dan, Okinawan Karate, closed-in fighting, still actively training), but since they were holding guns (real guns? loaded/unloaded?) and going after the equipment, I think I would have relinquished and come back to fight another day - although that one, that pointed the gun to the photographers head would have really pissed me off and if it was me, I would have figured I might as well fight assuming they were going to shoot me. Don't know...

Again, a lot of complex things happen physically, psychologically, emotionally during a violent altercation. Who knows how any one of us would react: from Rory Miller - Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence



Be careful out there...

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Violent armed robberies of photographers have been rampant in the last couple years in San Francisco.


Dangerous Places in San Francisco for Photographers and Cameras

Bay Area Photographer Warns Others After Being Followed and Robbed of Equipment

Photographer Is Attacked in Attempted Robbery During Shoot With Newlywed Couple

San Francisco Chronicle Photographer Robbed at Gunpoint While on Assignment

Caught on video: Photographers robbed of $7,000 in gear while stuck in traffic in San Francisco

Camera theft epidemic in San Francisco

Camera Crew Robbed of $35,000 in Gear at Gunpoint in San Francisco

I Was Robbed in San Francisco While the Cameras Rolled

Northern California photographer followed 40 miles before being robbed at gunpoint

Photography Equipment May Be Hazardous to Your Life

 

[Richard G]

So brazen. Maybe more weddings in SF will be shot with the new M6s, silver. Who’d want to steel some old kit like that.

 

[raydm6]

Violent armed robberies of photographers have been rampant in the last couple years in San Francisco.


Dangerous Places in San Francisco for Photographers and Cameras

Bay Area Photographer Warns Others After Being Followed and Robbed of Equipment

Photographer Is Attacked in Attempted Robbery During Shoot With Newlywed Couple

San Francisco Chronicle Photographer Robbed at Gunpoint While on Assignment

Caught on video: Photographers robbed of $7,000 in gear while stuck in traffic in San Francisco

Camera theft epidemic in San Francisco

Camera Crew Robbed of $35,000 in Gear at Gunpoint in San Francisco

I Was Robbed in San Francisco While the Cameras Rolled

Northern California photographer followed 40 miles before being robbed at gunpoint

Photography Equipment May Be Hazardous to Your Life

Wow! Thanks for those Chris. I wasn't aware it was this bad. That 40 mile story. I mean, that is crazy! I can't stress having situational awareness enough (old maxim: "expect nothing, be ready for anything"). I'm sure I would have noticed someone following me all that distance.

Wild stuff!

 

[james.liam]

Spent time in the Bay Area a month ago for work, particularly in SF and Oakland. They've become scary places as the exodus of the tax base accelerates and laissez fare attitude of politicos worsen. No bail for criminals, no solid mental healthcare for the severely afflicted left to languish on the streets; the good weather and atmosphere there seems to draw more of both from across the country. I drove into SF from the airport and passed by a gauntlet of hundreds, perhaps thousands camped out in the open air--by foot, the avenues are impassable. The vibrant nightlife I remember, seems gone. Oakland is even worse and reminds me most of Detroit, but with better climate.

 

[ptpdprinter]

If they were going after me, then I would have fought back (I have a martial arts background - 2nd Dan, Okinawan Karate, closed-in fighting, still actively training), but since they were holding guns (real guns? loaded/unloaded?) and going after the equipment, I think I would have relinquished and come back to fight another day - although that one, that pointed the gun to the photographers head would have really pissed me off and if it was me, I would have figured I might as well fight assuming they were going to shoot me. Don't know...

I guess if you want to put your martial art skills to the test, it might be worth giving it a go and seeing what happens. Personally, my cameras are not worth dying over.

 

[raydm6]

I guess if you want to put your martial art skills to the test, it might be worth giving it a go and seeing what happens. Personally, my cameras are not worth dying over.

I should have been more clear: the point I was trying to make was that even if I relinquished my equipment, they still may have shot me. No one knows until it’s too late. And not to test my MA skills per se, but rather, preempt their option. They are brandishing and pointing guns. It would be too late for me if they did exercise that option. It’s a complex situation and stuff happens in microseconds. But I totally agree with you. At this point it’s not about the cameras, but self-preservation.

 

[ptpdprinter]

I should have been more clear: the point I was trying to make was that even if I relinquished my equipment, they still may have shot me. No one knows until it’s too late. And not to test my MA skills per se, but rather, preempt their option. They are brandishing and pointing guns. It would be too late for me if they did exercise that option. It’s a complex situation and stuff happens in microseconds. But I totally agree with you.

I don't have any personal experience with a situation such as this, but I would think you are more likely to get shot if you started giving them the business with your kung fu moves than if you just gave them your cameras and sort of backed up with your hands in the air. But I guess it is unpredictable, so you just have to choose one or the other and hope for the best.

 

[raydm6]

I don't have any personal experience with a situation such as this, but I would think you are more likely to get shot if you started giving them the business with your kung fu moves than if you just gave them your cameras and sort of backed up with your hands in the air. But I guess it is unpredictable, so you just have to choose one or the other and hope for the best.

Yes, I pray none of us ever get in that situation.

 

[splitimageview]

San Francisco along with many other US cities has degenerated into a cesspool, literally (i.e., the streets have become bathrooms.) It's depressing, and unforgivable what the elites managing these cities have done. It's not too late to be corrected, NYC is a great example under Giuliani. But it will require entirely new leadership.

 

[oftheherd]

I should have been more clear: the point I was trying to make was that even if I relinquished my equipment, they still may have shot me. No one knows until it’s too late. And not to test my MA skills per se, but rather, preempt their option. They are brandishing and pointing guns. It would be too late for me if they did exercise that option. It’s a complex situation and stuff happens in microseconds. But I totally agree with you. At this point it’s not about the cameras, but self-preservation.

I agree everyone has to make has to make their own decisions for themselves and probably only have seconds to make it, and hope in the end it was the best choice. I do think your style, like mine, Hapkido, would have the best chance of a good outcome for us. But no guarantees, especially with two men, each apparently with guns. I say apparently, because they really seem either inexperienced or anyway reluctant to use their weapons (or can't as they might be fakes) to shoot or bludgeon their victim. That doesn't mean they might not have eventually done so and killed or severely injured the photographer and others in the area.

ptdprinter - maybe you were trying to be facetious, but there aren't a lot of situations where one should want to test their martial art. They either know what is likely to work or not, and that doesn't mean there is any guarantee, since you probably won't know how to disarm two armed men without getting hurt yourself, and having someone else hurt or killed. And you have to live with your decision. I once ran into a bar in Vietnam, having heard a fight and saw women employees running out yelling GI die, GI die. When I ran in, by myself at first, I encountered a GI standing against the bar with his M16 at port arms. It was a different army back then, and I walked up to him telling him to give me his rifle. All I got was a blank stare, what we called the 1000 yard stare. Wherever he and I were, I wasn't his friend. I considered grabbing his rifle and stepping in front side of him relieving him of his rifle as I threw him over my hip. Something I had learned somewhere, but not in the small amount I had learned in the TaeKwonDo I had studied. First I looked to see if the safety was on. Not only it wasn't on, the selector was on automatic. I had already looked and seen about 15 or 20 other people in there, and decided that wasn't worth the chance. Lucky for me and them, because he turned out to be quite the scrapper. Pretty soon he related he was going to leave and I stepped back and told him I wasn't going to stop him. He was walking away just strolling along so I and a couple of others got behind him and I grabbed his rifle from behind, and we all subdued him. It did take all three of us to do so. But if I had tried to grab his rifle inside the bar, there is no telling what may have happened. I could have had a lot of souls on my conscious for the rest of my life.

As a rather unrelated aside except it involved a robbery attempt against a man with a camera: The assailant was bigger, and in a dark area at night, demanded the victims camera. The victim reached up and got hold of the strap from his shoulder, swung it with all his might and hit the assailant with his OM1. Always known for its small size, it nonetheless was somewhat heavy. The assailant ran away making hurt and scared noises. He was caught the next day when he had to go for medical treatment. It isn't always a nice world out there, but sometimes there is a bit of justice.

But two men with guns, not so likely, which really means no. One man, possibly, but depending on a lot of circumstance, and you know you will still have to live with the outcome. Better to eat a little pride than get yourself or others hurt or killed.

 

[Pál_K]

Criminals in certain areas are emboldened and for good reason: they know neither the state nor the citizen can or will oppose them. For many types of crimes in these cities today, criminals suffer little to no consequences even if they are caught - often they are back on the street the next day or even the same day. No imprisonment. Some crimes are simply ignored; some thefts below a certain monetary value are ignored.

In these cities the police have no support or even deliberate opposition from the mayor or city council. The agenda-driven District Attorney deliberately refuses to prosecute. So police are leaving their jobs in that city when they realize their work is being undermined (Seattle has lost over 20% of its police force and is unable to attract new recruits). Consequently, only the most serious crimes get attention. Loss of maybe $10,000 of insured camera equipment? Here they won’t care. Politicians trot out the usual demonizations as the cause of the problem. Businesses leave. People leave. The remainder get the policies they keep voting for.

Criminals like this aren’t doing this to get money to eat or to pay rent. They’re doing it because they can. They like it. They are wolves among sheep and the sheep have allowed themselves to become sheep.

I left Southern California long ago for good reason. I left Oregon 20 years ago for good reason. My little community is an enclave - for now.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

USA guns for all is causing problems to Canada.

Testing marts against gun might be not smart.

 

[x-ray]

The best solution is to stay out of states that aren’t on the side of the victim and stay away from cities and areas of cities known for violence. I just will not travel to or through certain states. These states make it difficult if not impossible for the victim to defend themselves and if they do and the assailant dies then the victim is prosecuted.

Criminals are criminals because they ignore the laws and they know they’re unlikely to face lethal resistance if they do commit a crime. And if they are caught they are most often career criminals that have a long history of violent crimes and will be released back on the street in short order.

I no longer go to California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Illinois and Minnesota and go out of my way to avoid Memphis, Atlanta, St Louis and New Orleans just to mention a few states and cities. They’re violent cities and most aren’t friendly to the victim.

 

[Mos6502]

I no longer go to California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Illinois and Minnesota and go out of my way to avoid Memphis, Atlanta, St Louis and New Orleans just to mention a few states and cities. They’re violent cities and most aren’t friendly to the victim.

Interesting. Most of those places aren't even near the top of the list for most dangerous states/cities. But then again, most people go by feelings, not by facts. Albuquerque is one of the most dangerous cities in the country, but I don't think its one that enters most people's minds when they think of the dangerous cities. And you're much more likely to be murdered in Fort Lauderdale than in any of the cities you mention, but again stereotypes die hard. Not that I'd want to visit St. Louis regardless of whether it was safe or not.

 

[raydm6]

I'm sure this was already happening before this story ran.

 

[rulnacco]

Confronting guns with bare hands would be dumb, really. And even if you have a gun, it's not gonna do you a lot of good if the "bad guy" gets the drop on you--and I'd hope we agree, a camera isn't worth anyone's life, even a thief's, no matter how angry it makes you. (Which is all part of why I don't understand the whole stupid gun thing--and why I will never, ever in my entire life own a gun and either directly or indirectly support the gun industry.)

I mean, if you *are* gonna attempt some kind of resistance, use your brain. And fortunately criminals are, by and large, stupid. Really stupid.

I got my own camera stolen one time. Not at gunpoint, that's a whole different thing. But by being cleverer than the thief, I got my camera back with no problem at all.

Just in case it's ever useful to anyone, here's what happened: I was renting a room from some old fellow, cos it was cheap and I'd just started a new job, so I didn't have a lot of cash. He was letting some young guy, probably about 22, crash on his couch while the kid was "trying to get his life together" so he could eventually "join the Army." The dude struck me as being totally dodgy, but there wasn't much I could say.

Anyway, I came home from work one day and opened my camera bag, and my Nikon D810 was gone. And I *knew* it was in the bag when I left for work. Because there was only one logical suspect, I didn't have to be Sherlock to know what had happened to the camera. (And because of some weird behavior he showed just a couple of days before, I wasn't surprised, either.)

So what I did was, I went to the old guy I was renting from, and told him what happened. I suggested to him that what he needed to do was tell the kid that the camera had a GPS tracking system--but only the manufacturer could activate it, upon request, and track the camera just like you would a stolen phone. I said he should tell the kid that I was going to have that done, and it would probably take 2 or 3 days before they would turn it on (because I figured he might need some time to sweat), but once they did I could send the cops straight to the camera. And the camera was worth enough that it would be felony theft.

It took basically no time at all for him to break down and blab to the old fella that he had taken the camera, ridden his bike to a pawn shop about a quarter mile away, and hocked it--for 25 bucks.

What an idiot. I told you criminals were f***ing stupid. Oh yeah, and lazy, too. Because of the laws, and because my landlord begged me to let him get the camera back without getting the cops involved so the young d***head wouldn't get a criminal record that would quash any theoretical attempt to join the military, the pawn shop hung on to my camera for 30 days. But the old gent rented a D5500 (which I wanted to try out) for me in the interim, then he went over and got my camera back. And of course, he immediately kicked the young moron out of the house, thank god.

So yeah, if you're out shooting somewhere that you might get mugged, don't take a bunch of gear, or your best gear. And if someone tries to mug you, tell 'em your camera is kind of old and not worth much (maybe even use the tracking lie on 'em), and that really, for what they'd get for it, it's probably not worth the risk of having to have sex only with really big, mean guys for the next couple of decades. That'll probably discourage 'em, because as stupid as they are, they're generally not quite *that* dumb when you break it down to them that way. There's easier and more profitable prey out there.