Tenderloin patrol, 8/22/09

The San Francisco Guardian Angels will be patrolling the Tenderloin Dist. today, there are 12 angels that has arrived for this patrol, there will be two teams. I J.D. will be the lead team and Scorpion will be the shadow team, there will be six angels on each team. We will be using all the radios today for communication and for training, this gives the I-Supports a chance to learn our radio codes. The I-Support is a new member, a volunteer that has to go through training for at lease three to four months or if it does not work out it does not work out. We start out the day with prebrief, everyone is in their uniform, and everyone is ready to go out for patrol.

We march on to Turk St. post up on some corners, but it is all clear, we get to one of our contacts the 201 Turk St. building, it too is all clear. Next we march down a few more blocks, post up on a few more corners, they to are all clear. Now we get to Ellis and Jones corner, this corner never ceases to amaze me how this corner can still do the things that it does and nobody does anything about it.

The drugs, the drug dealing is all over the place, so we post up at this corner and hold our ground, people are yelling, and people are pissed off that they cannot buy their drugs in front of us, the Guardian Angels. I guess they know that we can make a citizen's arrest. As we secure the area there is this store that the drug dealers keep going in and out of to do there deals, we know this but we do not work like DEA, so our hands are tied on this one. We did manage to do other things like take some needles off a guy that was asleep on the side walk, but to find out that this guy's home is on the side walk, was a sad thing to hear.

So we move on, we march to O'Farrell St. to our next contact, 631 O'Farrell St. building, it is all clear. We marched on to a few more blocks, post up on a few more corners, did not find any bad guys doing bad things today, so we decided to call it a day and march back to our HQ. We get back to the HQ, change back to our street clothes and began our prebrief of the day. Everyone always seems to learn something doing this and everyone feels they have the heart for this, but I think in some way or another the Guardian Angels are HEROES.