Crime & Safety

Q&A: Police Chief Talks About San Bruno's Gang Problem

Was the recent gang-related confrontation and ensuing police chase near Third Avenue an isolated event, or indicative of a larger issue in the city? Police Chief Neil Telford weighs in.

A recent incident in May, in which near Third Avenue, raised concerns among many residents about gang issues in San Bruno. To dig deeper into the issue, San Bruno Patch Editor Martin Ricard caught up with the police chief for a Q&A.

San Bruno Patch: What I’ve always heard is, “Is there a gang problem in San Bruno?” It’s not really that evident, but I wanted to talk about it. People have questions about it. So can we just start off by talking about whether there is an issue with gangs in San Bruno? 

Chief Neil Telford: There’s an issue with gangs statewide. There’s an issue with gangs in San Mateo County. And there’s an issue with gangs in San Bruno. 

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Patch: How serious is it, though? 

Telford: It ranges from crimes like graffiti or blight issues all the way up to crimes of violence and, as we experienced, one of these gang members tried to shoot one of our police officers and fortunately missed. So it’s serious. The violence is typically gang member to gang member. The concern is that is the public going to get stuck in the middle of this. And the concern is even amped up more: here you have police officers that are sworn to protect the community and you have gang members shooting at them. Not acceptable. 

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Patch: With the incident in May, was this an isolated event? Or is this sort of indicative of something that’s been existing here for a while? 

Telford: I would say that this is an isolated event. We have had gang activity in San Bruno for a while, and at times it peaks and at times it’s quelled. In 2008, we saw a resurgence in gang activity so the department created a gang suppression team to go out there and specifically target criminal street gang activity. Very successful. At the conclusion of that, we saw a decrease in gang violence and gang activity.

We started to see a little bit of resurgence in it this year—and again we’re taking measures to make sure every officer knows who our gang members are. We’re fortunate in San Mateo County because we have the gang task force. So we have a local approach with all our officers. We have a collaborative approach with San Mateo County gang task force and gang intelligence unit. And then we also have partners from the state and feds that we can also bring in.

Patch: Because I think one of the questions that people were asking is: Is this something where it could be nipped in the bud right now or has it gotten to a point where it’s out-of-hand?

Telford: I wouldn’t characterize it as out-of-hand because we’ve experienced gang activity going back several years. And again, like I said, it peaks and valleys. I think what you have is some individuals that are locked up for crimes and then they come out and are committing crimes again. We’re starting to see a little increase there. I think the brazenness of a gang member to want to shoot at a police officer is outrageous. But fortunately those individuals are in custody and the DA’s office is handling that prosecution and working with our investigators, who continue to follow up on that case.

Patch: It seems like most of the activity is concentrated east of El Camino Real. You never want to segregate a part of town, but that’s where this incident happened. I don’t know if you could talk about that.

Telford: There’s not one location where I could tell you, oh yeah, there’s a tremendous amount of gang activity right here. Right now, it is sporadic on various parts east of El Camino. But three years ago, it was sporadic in several areas of the city. It’s never been one concentration of gang activity in one specific area.

Patch: The other thing is that when people usually talk about gang issues here, they talk about youth violence. People are always talking about South City, and I know there was a huge raid recently that had some connections to San Bruno in terms of some of the gangs. Can you talk about the relationship between South City and San Bruno and youth violence and gangs. 

Telford: I don’t think it’s a South City vs. San Bruno issue. I think it’s a Norteño/Sureño issue. San Bruno has some Norteño gang members and San Bruno has some Sureño gang members. And other cities have a similar situation. Even some of this violence has been gang member on same gang member. 

Patch: I think that’s important because, I don’t hear it too often, but some people are like, “We don’t have the problems that South City has,” or people kind of characterize it as a city vs. city thing. 

Telford: I don’t think it is. And I think one of the reasons why the San Mateo County gang task force got started is because it’s not one city’s problem. It’s an issue that faces every community. Even if you don’t have a gang member that lives in your town, you may have a gang member that’s going through your town that encounters some other gang member that’s going through your town. San Mateo County is a small county and crimes like this impact everyone. And I think that’s the advantage of San Mateo County—is the collaborative effort to say, “Gang violence is wrong, we need to take a stand against it and we need to do something to curtail it.” 

Patch: If people perceive an issue with gangs in their community, what would suggest that folks do? 

Telford: For San Bruno residents, I would encourage them to call us and get the factual information to find out exactly what is going on in their neighborhood and how can they help. So I would say to partner with us to try to put an end to gang violence because we could say, “We know that XYZ has gone on in your neighborhood, but we’re not seeing this in your neighborhood.” And it may put that resident at ease. Or it may be, “Hey, we’re looking for some community cooperation and call us when you see anything suspicious,” so that way we can go and try to do a preemptive contact with those individuals.


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