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Everyday the Examiner posts an SF police blotter with short descriptions of about four or five crimes committed in the past 24 hours. The offenses are usually banal, but this particular entry, about an angry customer at a restaurant, caught my eye.

"Officers responded to a restaurant on the 800 block of Post Street regarding an assaulting customer at 2:15 p.m. April 15. The officers arrived to find a 38-year-old man crouching behind a table."

Crouching? Go on.

"The caller said the customer disputed his bill and head-butted him."

You had me at head-butted!

"As the officers attempted arrest, the suspect kicked one of the officers in the face, causing a severe nosebleed. The suspect was apprehended and charged with several felonies including assault on a police officer."

Kicked in the face? Like, a roundhouse kick? Does anybody know where Chuck Norris was last night? -Andy Wright

1. Get mauled by a tiger that escaped from its zoo pen. On Christmas.

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2. Get arrested for stealing Nintendo Wiis at Target.

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3. Have size of ween impugned by the local newspaper.

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Worst. Year. Ever. --Andy Wright

Last week a Massachusetts-based public safety consulting firm reported their findings about the success of an SFPD foot-patrol program mandated by the Board of Supervisors. The findings were not positive. The word "lax" was used. Apparently, foot-patrol officers don't even have a job description. This set off a chain reaction of bullshit-calling. Police Chief Heather Fong posted a letter on the SFPD Web site calling the study into question. SF supes and police commissioners lambasted Fong, saying the letter was "premature" and that it unnecessarily politicized the matter. The plot thickened when Fong admitted that she wrote the letter "subsequent to discussions with the mayor's office." And the letter in question? It disappeared from the SFPD Web site on Monday. But everyone knows that things posted on the Web never actually vanish. The San Francisco Citizen blog nabbed the letter in its entirety. After the jump, in all its bullet-pointed glory, the now infamous Fong Letter.

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When a man was shot dead in broad daylight, in his car, in Potrero Hill, by perps wearing ski masks earlier this month, we were appropriately alarmed.

Following yesterday's fatal shooting of a man on the Interstate 280, I'll see you an "alarmed" and raise you an "Where do I buy a flak jacket?" The man not only got shot and killed while driving in his car, his two kids were in the back seat. They survived.

He's the second person to be shot and killed on a Bay Area highway this week and third this month. I don't know a lot about pointing a gun, but I have garnered from repeated viewings of the Lethal Weapon franchise that hitting a moving target can be difficult. And these moving targets were in cars. On highways.

In other gun related news, Prop H, which would have banned SF residents from owning handguns, was slapped down by the state Supreme Court yesterday. --Andy Wright

Whenever I'm starting to feel like everything is just going too damn well in the world (which, admittedly, isn't very often lately) I head over to the San Francisco Crime Blog and catch up on the grisly murder toll in our fair city. I just noticed the blog's got a nifty new map feature pinpointing the all the homicides in San Francisco for 2007 and 2008 -- scroll to the bottom of the page to check it out. It's even color-coded: murders are marked red, double-murders are black and justifiable homicides are blue. And the reds take it by a long shot. Sigh.

-- B.B.

Leonard Milo Hoskins was bludgeoned to death in December of 2007. His neighbor saw him being struck on his front lawn, his sister reported him missing, and cops impounded the van with his body inside. They also watched the suspects now accused of killing him drive away in their car. It took eight days to find Hoskin’s body despite the fact that a cadaver dog had drawn their attention to the vehicle in the first place.

By then, Hoskin’s purported attackers and housemates, Richard Carelli and Michele Pinkerton, had fled California. The case got even stranger this week when the couple were apprehended in Mexico, not with the help of the SFPD, but by a vigilante advertising man from San Diego. James Spring, who also works as a freelance radio reporter, had heard that the couple might be in Baja, but that they hadn’t been arrested yet.

Spring summed things up pretty nicely when he said "They made it sound like Baja was the planet Jupiter. But I go there all the time. I’m pretty familiar with Baja. It’s not that difficult to find people." Spring plunked down $150 at Kinkos, made 2,500 wanted posters, drove to Baja and found the couple and their two kids in two days. Maybe Spring should team up with the cadaver dog and go on a cross country crime solving quest. I'd watch that reality TV show. --Andy Wright

Perhaps you recall a few months ago when meatpacking worker Daniel Navarro was arrested for animal cruelty in a case that resulted in the nation's largest beef recall. It came to my attention then that Navarro (small pic) looked like he was churned out of a shady criminal factory. In this picture from today's Chronicle, Cosco Busan pilot John Cota is looking equally suspicious. My advice to Navarro, Cota and all of you who may find yourselves embroiled in a high profile court case: loose the shades. It makes you look like you’re going out for a supporting role in a bank heist movie from 1974.(Navarro pic from Chino Police Department, Cota pic from Reuters)-Andy Wright

In terrifying local news: A man riding in a van in Potrero Hill was shot dead by two men wearing ski masks yesterday afternoon at about 1:30, after which the van crashed into a cul-de-sac railing. At least the murderers got their business out of the way before the school day ended, but really, isn't this the sort of thing that can wait until the middle of the night when murders are, you know, supposed to happen? The report hints at a possible drug connection, and I can't help but think: van + ski masks + drugs + murder = is this San Francisco or Colombia? No offense to Colombia. (via SFGate)

-- B.B.

Three men were shot dead between the time of 2 am and 2:30 am Saturday. From the Chronicle article:

San Francisco resident Derek Butch, 23, and Daly City resident Jason de la Cruz, 31, were fatally shot just before 2:30 a.m. at 19th and Irving streets in the Sunset District, according to San Francisco police.Police said that both men were pronounced dead at the scene…Police responded to reports of a shooting just before 2 a.m. at Excelsior Avenue and Athens Street. One man was pronounced dead at the scene and a second was taken to San Francisco General Hospital in critical condition, according to police.The names of those two victims have not yet been released by the police.

Craigslistblog posted this item about an Oregon man today:

Patrick Lee Ryan, 33, faces charges of buying or selling a child, disorderly conduct and committing a computer crime. He is being held on $35,000 bail.The Craigslist ad appeared on the Web site on Monday and someone contacted police to report it.The ad was an offer to sell a baby for $1,000 and the message said the person needed the money because they were out of ‘tweak.’

Bush handed out a round of presidential pardons on March 24 and, perhaps not surprisingly, a number of them were drug dealers. Five to be exact, according to the blog Legal Trade. One was distributing a mysteriously unnamed "controlled substance", one was selling pot, one was importing heroin, one was selling crack, and one over-achiever was in possession of both cocaine and marijuana. Do you think Bush offered to let these dudes crash on his couch for a couple days after he freed them? My favorite pardon went to a pair of criminals, Jerry and Thomas Moldenhauer of Colorado Springs, who were convicted of "knowingly selling migratory bird parts." Ew. –Andy Wright

San Jose Police are warning women to be careful of a group of purse snatchers they've dubbed with the catchy name "The Rippers", according to an ABC 7 report. (Perhaps this is in honor of famous fictional Bay Area resident, Jesse Katsopolis and his band, Jesse and the Rippers?) The robbers appear to target solitary Asian women. Why?

Police believe the suspects are targeting Asian women because they tend to carry cash.

An Oakland pot candy maker has plead guilty to conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana, according to an article in today's Chronicle. The article dwells on the high-larious names of the goods offered by confectionist Michael Martin that play off the monikers of poplar sweets:

Buddafinga
Mr.Greenbud
Stoners

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An article in today's Chronicle reports that 71-year-old Rodolfo Carson was beaten to death Thursday on Mission St., just east of Mary St., in the SoMa neighborhood.

"A security guard witnessed the beating, shouted at the attacker from across the street and then called police.The guard said the assailant had beaten Carreon and gone through his pockets before running west toward Sixth Street."

The LA Times ran a story on March 17 implicating Sean Combs, aka P Diddy, aka Puff Daddy, in a 1994 assualt on Tupac Shakur. The Times was like, "Our bad," after confirming that the documents used to support the article were not so much true as totally fake, according to an article in today's Guardian UK. And probably forged by the prison inmate with a "history of exaggerating his place in the rap music world" who supplied them. The documents in question were supposed to originate from the FBI, but muckraking Web site, the Smoking Gun, pointed out that they were typed on a type writer instead of a computer and had sections blacked out. Also, they were helpfully illustrated with crayon drawings.(pic from Associated Press)-Andy Wright