‘If you have people over, you’re gonna clean the house’: Gavin Newsom doubles down on tidying up crime-ridden San Francisco ahead of Xi Jinping’s visit – while Czech journalists in city to cover APEC are robbed at gunpoint
California Governor Gavin Newsom has bragged about his work to “clean up” San Francisco ahead of the APEC summit – hours before a Czech television crew covering the summit was robbed of their cameras at gunpoint.
The 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group will hold its annual meeting in the city on Tuesday and Wednesday. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, are among the 20,000 attendees.
Newsom said work has been done to improve safety in the crime-ridden city, where robberies have risen 13.7 percent year over year and businesses are fleeing the empty downtown.
“I know people are saying, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning this place up because all these fancy leaders are coming to town,’” Newsom said late last week.
President Joe Biden will meet with Xi Jinping for the first time in more than a year at the Moscone Center, located in the South of Market district.
The area outside the building was considered the largest of all the city’s open-air drug markets after it suddenly sprung up earlier this year. Normally between 50 and 100 dealers are active on the streets every day, usually fearlessly and in broad daylight
“That’s true, because it’s true – but it’s also true that we had conversations for months and months and months leading up to APEC.”
He added: “By definition you have people in your home, you’re going to clean the house.
“We have 21 world leaders; tens of thousands of people come from all over the world.
‘What an opportunity to highlight the most special place in the world: San Francisco.’
Yet on Sunday evening, a Czech television crew covering the summit was held at gunpoint and stripped of their equipment.
Bohumil Vostal and his colleagues were filming outside the well-known City Lights bookstore at 5pm on Sunday when three masked men attacked them.
“They came at my cameraman with a gun pointed at his stomach and one at my head,” Vostal told The San Francisco Chronicle.
Vostal said the equipment was worth $18,000, and they also lost an entire day’s worth of footage.
Milan Nosek, a journalist from the Czech Republic, carries a camera on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. Nosek and the team of television journalists he was with were robbed of their camera and other equipment nearby while covering the APEC summit
Bohumil Vostal and his colleagues were robbed in San Francisco on Sunday at 5 p.m
The cleanup has left several crime hotspots virtually unrecognizable, leaving many wondering why similar efforts weren’t undertaken sooner
San Francisco officials are seen interacting with a camp resident during their cleanup efforts on Saturday
“I’m one of the many people who read ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac, and I was so looking forward to visiting your city,” he said, adding that they had been having a fantastic day up until that point.
Vostal and his crew had taken photos of the Painted Ladies in Alamo Square; interviewed gallery owner Jonathan Carver Moore; and met with community figures in the Transgender District near South of Market and the Tenderloin, he told the newspaper.
Vostal’s cameraman went to Best Buy to purchase replacement equipment, and on Monday morning, San Francisco Mayor London Breed met with Vostal to apologize.
“All the people in San Francisco almost blame themselves, like they have so much regret for something they didn’t do,” he said.
The city is bracing for protests, and on Sunday activists angry about corporate profits, environmental abuses, poor working conditions and the war between Israel and Hamas marched in downtown San Francisco.
More protests are expected during the summit.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said he expects several protests a day, although it is uncertain how many will take place. He warned against criminal behavior.
“People are welcome to exercise their constitutional rights in San Francisco, but we will not tolerate people committing acts of violence, destroying property or any other crime,” Scott said. “We will make arrests if necessary.”
Pro-Palestinian and anti-capitalist protesters were vocally against APEC on Sunday
Some protesters branded Xi a dictator and demanded he liberate Tibet, adding: “Your time is up!”
Protesters hold posters during the ‘No to APEC’ protest on the sidelines of the conference
San Francisco has a long tradition of loud and forceful protests, as well as trade negotiations. In 1999, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Seattle during a World Trade Organization conference.
Protesters managed to delay the start of that conference and attracted global attention as overwhelmed police fired tear gas and plastic bullets and arrested hundreds of people.
Chile withdrew as APEC host in 2019 due to mass protests.
When Thailand hosted the summit in Bangkok last year, pro-democracy protesters challenged the legitimacy of the Thai prime minister. Police fired rubber bullets into the crowd, wounding several protesters and a Reuters journalist.