As if 12 angry men wasn't bad enough

San Francisco police are looking for not one, but 17 teens who reportedly robbed two kids on a Muni platform in the Dogpatch neighborhood early this morning.

Gordon Shyy tells us that the two 14-year-old victims were at the Muni stop at 20th and Third streets at about 12:40 a.m. when 17 16-year-old boys approached them (that's a lot of testosterone).

See Also: Watch These Teenage Girls Ron An Older Woman On Muni

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Innocent people in deep thought .. on text

Last week, we told you about the bi-coastal crime fighting duo, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who this week brought a much-needed initiative to protect people from those dumb smartphones thieves.

The plan, called S.O.S. (secure our smartphones), is the first of its kind to unite state level crime fighters -- including police chiefs and comptrollers across the country -- to pressure smartphone makers to install "kill switches" on new devices within a year.

A kill switch would allow the phone's owner to remotely render it useless if stolen, making it inoperable and thus, valueless.

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Have you seen him?

The San Francisco Police Department is searching for a homeless man who reportedly assaulted someone in the Castro District earlier this month.

On June 8, sometime after midnight, the suspect was getting ready to hit the hay right in front of a residence on the unit block of Hancock Street when the victim approached him and asked that he find a new place to crash, police said.

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Berkeley Marina turns into a crime scene

Police are on the hunt for a man who reportedly sexually assaulted a 10-year-old boy inside a public bathroom at the Berkeley Marina yesterday afternoon.

Berkeley Police Sgt. Mary Kusmiss says the incident happened at about 1:37 p.m. when the boy told his parents he needed to use the restroom; his parents allowed him to go alone, and that's where he encountered the assailant.

The boy ran out of the bathroom and told his parents who called police.

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Jim Herd

We'd have gotten away to our stop if it wasn't for you meddling kids!

Back in the primordial days -- 1996 or so -- young, daredevil Muni riders devised a way to satiate their thrill-seeking urges, and do so on the cheap.

On the electric buses of the era, a pair of non-conducting wires descended down the back of the vehicle. They were spooled around a pair of dish-sized objects resembling the bells you'd see on a schoolhouse wall, which were mounted about a shoulder's length apart. Buses had a large rear bumper.

You can see where this is going; it'd be hard to design a more natural hand-and foothold. "We used to call it 'Coasting,'" recalls LaRon Mayfield. He and his younger brother Karim lived on Central but hung out in the Fillmore. So they'd snag a free ride on the back of the 5-Fulton.

The so-called "fad" of young people forcing open the back doors of Muni buses in motion -- "riding the surf" in the parlance of our times -- didn't resonate with Mayfield. Sure, dangling off the back of a bus is dangerous -- but it's also utilitarian. "We just wanted a free ride up that hill."

"Riding the surf" splashed across the pages of both dailies and was described as a "fad" and "trend" -- despite no one having yet located a single video of said moronic activity on YouTube.

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Audrey Fukuman

While studying for his Religious Studies doctorate in Taiwan in 2004, Jonathan H.X. Lee read through a worn, '80s era textbook. For one lesson Lee turned the page to a section about faith.

The chapter included a sidebar which provided an anecdote illustrating the power of religious faith. It told the story of women in Taiwan who lost their life savings after a person claiming to be a shaman convinced them to put their money into a bag for a blessing to prevent a loved one's death.

So, more than a decade later, when the SFPD began warning San Franciscans of a series of ghost scams targeting the Chinese community, Lee, now a religious studies professor at San Francisco State University, was already familiar.

For more on the ghost scams, see this week's cover story: Ghost Stories: Scams Targeting S.F.'s Cantonese Community Reveal the Terrible Power of Belief

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iCrooks

Apple, always thinking of the average geek, has announced it's going to make it a little bit harder for "Apple-pickers" to enjoy your stolen iPhone. Among the many cool-as-shit things Apple highlighted yesterday at the Worldwide Developers Conference, was the "kill-switch" for iPhones that'll be released later this year.

From what we understand, these security switches will reportedly allow users to deactivate their phones after they are lost or stolen, rendering it as useful as a tin can. It gives would-be thieves less incentive, and thus, they might think twice about snatching your iPhone from you hands while you're texting on Muni.

See Also: S.F. Joins NYC to Tackle "Apple-Picking" Crime

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UPDATE: The Marin County coroner's office has said today the cause of serial killer Richard Ramirez' death was a form of cancer.

In a press release, Lt. Keith Boyd, the assistant chief deputy coroner, said the Night Stalker died of complications from B-cell Lymphoma, otherwise known as Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the most common cancer of the lymphatic system.

The coroner's report also included two other "significant conditions," that Ramirez was dealing with: chronic substance abuse and chronic hepatitis "C" Viral Infection.

Richard Ramirez

Richard Ramirez, one of the most infamous convicted murderers in California history whose serial crimes were described as both abominable and cruel, died this morning while on death row. He was 53.

Ramirez, better known as the "Night Stalker," stirred up an air of fear across Southern California during the 1980's in a break-in crime spree that resulted in gruesome murders -- including one in San Francisco -- and sexual assaults against a slew of victims young and old, male and female.

He died in Marin General Hospital of "natural causes," according to state officials. Ramirez had been on death row for decades, awaiting execution -- and pending appeals.

"If you looked up evil in the dictionary, I think there might be a picture of Richard Ramirez there," San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr said today at a press conference.

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Audrey Fukuman

This week's feature story, Ghost Stories, explores the series of scams that hit San Francisco's Chinese community over the past year. According to the District Attorney's Office, more than 50 people have been conned out of a combined $1.5 million.

Those numbers, of course, are based on victims' reports. And though DA George Gascon uses the stats to illustrate the scope of the crimes, he doesn't necessarily take them as Gospel.

When it comes to handling the ghost scam cases, Gascon's office has practiced what it preaches: It is wary of getting conned. It is keenly aware of the possibility that malevolent opportunists will falsely claim to have been scammed in hopes of scoring a chunk of compensation cash.

See Also: Ghost Stories: Scams Targeting S.F.'s Cantonese Community Reveal the Terrible Power of Belief

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Killing crime

A new crime-fighting duo has emerged. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have announced they're joining forces to fight the nationwide rapid rise of mobile phone thefts, better known as "Apple-picking."

The duo is hosting a smartphone summit next week in the Big Apple, where they hope to convince executives from the smartest smartphone slingers --Apple, Google/Motorola, Microsoft and Samsung -- that it is time to create a "kill switch" for these phones.

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