by Marvin Ramírez
Top: Edgardo Campos shows to the El Reportero photos of the coins he said the robbers took, and an injury to his eye, which he thinks was a bullet wound. Below, Jorge Linares after he installed iron bars inside his jewelry store. (photo by Marvin Ramírez)
Not only is the economy making local merchants trembler for the uncertain future showing in the horizon, but, add to this the taxes the city is preparing to levy on the small business community and the parking increase to $100 for a meter violation that will send away customers, in order to save its social services. Many of them do not even know if they are going to make to next year in business.
This however, seems not to matter to a young African American gang who has been robbing small Latino business owners in the Mission District lately.
Armed with guns in groups of four, usually, dressed in dark with hoods and gloves, and sometimes with earphones, they would wait for the right time to hit the next victim: between 5 and 6 pm. They come in when there are no customers and the shop is about to close for the day.
One goes in fi rst quietly as if he was a customer, points his gun out at the first employee he sees, gives the signal of ‘clear’ to his buddies who were waiting outside – in front of people walking by on the sidewalk – they come in, and get to work.
The turn this month was for a small jewelry store in the 2600 hundred Mission Street on Friday, July 3.
“The first guy came in quietly while my assistant was taking down the items from the window at closing time… the gunman, who had an earphone, said ‘clear!’ while he pointed with gun at the employees, and led him to behind the glass counter.
“I just stayed with my hands up, when two others came in and jumped over the counter and started fi lling up their small bags,” told Jorge Linares, owner of Guadalupana Jewelry on Mission Street, to El Reportero.
“It took them only 32 seconds, according to the camera,” said Linares. “It was so fast.”
When the police came, according to Linares, they said they could not do that much and they (the merchants) would need to increase their own security on their on.
Edgardo Campos
“This situation is horrible… but now we are at war, we are at war, and we have to be prepared for the worst,” Linares said, referring to arming his business for the war.
Following the robbery in which the thieves took a large amount of cash and jewelry, Linares immediately reinforced the security of the his store with bars around the counters, which he hopes will prevent anyone from coming inside to rob again.
“They can shoot me from the outside, but, for what? They are not going to gain anything,” he said, because they want money, while accepting that it could’ve been worse.
However, his colleague Edgardo Campos at J.J. Jewelry who was also hit by possibly by the same four-man group on Saturday, July 25, almost didn’t live to tell the story.
The thieves used the same tactic as in La Guadalupana.
“It was 20 to 6 p.m. they all look between 18 and 24 years of age,” said Campos. “I think they are the same ones (who hit the other jewelry store).
One first man came into his store at 24th Street at South Van Ness pretending to be a customer, when suddenly two other men held Campos and his two other employees at gunpoint and starting filling in their bags. They all wore dark clothes, hoods, and gloves, did the job and left quick. They took $13,000, a silvered gun, and seven collectors gold coins, he said.
But this time, before exiting, one of the gunmen pointed and shot his gun and barely hit Campos in the left eye. But even when bleeding, he followed them, but lost them when they jumped into a silver-color car and drove away on the Cypress alley.
And just like Linares, who two years ago was also hit by robbers at gunpoint just a block away from Campos’s business, he plans to reinforce the security of his store, since the cameras, they both merchants agreed, do not help much to deter robberies.
Campos also has a good reason to thank for the miracle that allowed him to tell the story.
