California’s governor Gavin Newsom has boasted about work to ‘clean up’ San Francisco ahead of the APEC Summit – hours before a Czech television crew covering the summit were robbed of their cameras at gunpoint.
The 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group will hold its annual meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in the city. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, China’s president, are among the 20,000 attendees.
Newsom said that work had been done on improving safety in the crime-ridden city, where robbery is up 13.7 percent, year on year, and businesses are fleeing the empty downtown.
‘I know folks are saying, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town,’ said Newsom late last week.
President Joe Biden is set to meet with Xi Jinping for the first time in over a year at the Moscone Center, set in the South of Market neighborhood
The area outside the building was considered the biggest of all the open-air drug markets across the city, after suddenly sprouting up earlier this year. Usually, somewhere between 50 to 100 dealers operate on the street daily, usually doing so undeterred and in broad daylight
‘That’s true, because it’s true – but it’s also true for months and months and months prior to APEC, we’ve been having conversations.’
He added: ‘By definition, you have people over to your house, you’re going to clean up the house.
‘We have 21 world leaders; tens of thousands of people coming from all around the globe.
‘What an opportunity to showcase the world’s most extraordinary place: San Francisco.’
Yet on Sunday evening, a Czech television crew covering the summit were held up at gunpoint and robbed of their equipment.
Bohumil Vostal and his colleagues were filming at 5pm on Sunday outside the well-known City Lights bookstore when three masked men attacked them.
‘They were heading at my camera man, aiming a gun at his stomach, and one at my head,’ said Vostal, speaking to The San Francisco Chronicle.
Vostal said the equipment was worth $18,000 – and they also lost an entire day’s footage.
Milan Nosek, a journalist from the Czech Republic, carries a camera on a 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 on Sunday at 5pm in San Franscisco
The cleanup left multiple crime hotspots virtually unrecognizable, and left many asking why similar efforts had not been made sooner
San Francisco officials are seen dealing with an encampment resident on Saturday during their clean up efforts
‘I’m one of those many people who used to read Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road,’ and I was so much looking forward to visit your city,’ he said, saying they had had a fabulous day until that point.
Vostal and his crew had captured shots 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 paper.
Vostal’s cameraman went to Best Buy to purchase replacement equipment, and on Monday morning the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, met Vostal to offer her apologies.
‘All the people of San Francisco are almost blaming themselves, like they are so sorry for something they didn’t do,’ he said.
The city is braced for protests, and on Sunday activists angry at corporate profits, environmental abuses, poor working conditions and the Israel-Hamas war marched in downtown San Francisco.
More protests are expected throughout the summit.
Chief Bill Scott of the San Francisco Police Department said he expects several protests a day, although it’s uncertain how many will materialize. 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, or property destruction or any other crime,’ Scott said. ‘We will make arrests when necessary.’
Pro-Palestine and anti-capitalist protesters were in full voice against APEC Sunday
Some protesters blasted Xi as a dictator and demanded he free Tibet, adding ‘your time is up!’
Demonstrators hold placards during the ‘No on APEC’ protest on the sidelines of the conference
San Francisco has a long tradition of loud and vigorous protests, as do trade talks. In 1999, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Seattle during a World Trade Organization conference.
Protesters succeeded in delaying the start of that conference and captured 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.
Last year, when Thailand hosted the summit in Bangkok, pro-democracy protesters challenged the legitimacy of the Thai prime minister. Police fired at the crowd with rubber bullets that injured several protesters and a Reuters journalist.