It’s called Stonestown Galleria and in lies just north of San Francisco State University, not far from Lowell high school. In the past week there have been at least two major brawls at Stonestown involving dozens of young people.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, whose district includes the mall along 20th Avenue on San Francisco’s west side, said that there were two large incidents in the mall over the past week — one involving around 50 people early in the week and another involving about 100 on Friday. She said that Friday’s events resulted in two victims, both minors, with physical injuries.

The mall has gotten increasingly chaotic in recent weeks, she said, with many youths being “disrespectful, rude and running around breaking stuff,”  in the lead up to the large brawls last week…

…she said fights are often streamed on social media, which she fears is part of the driving force behind them — with the attention and clicks that the violent videos attract encouraging students both to post the fights and get involved in them.

“It’s fueling this kind of activity,” she said. She added that students also may be not navigating conflict well after going through the upheaval and social disruption of the pandemic. She warned parents on Twitter to keep a close eye on what their kids are doing.

I’m skeptical that this is about the pandemic. No one is locked at home at this point or forced to take classes over zoom. But this appears to be one of the fights being filmed by a large group outside the mall. This is clearly entertainment for most of these kids.

Stonestown Galleria is going crazy rn 💀#stonestown #SanFrancisco #SanFranciscomall #mall #Fightingatschool pic.twitter.com/eCsI4KjZUv

— mikyku (@mikykum) March 20, 2023

The other thing that’s noteworthy is that there appears to be a racial component to many of these fights. In these clips we see some kind of showdown followed by a large group of black kids beating up and kicking one or two white or Asian kids. Someone jumps on the kid’s head with both feet, which probably ought to be charged as a felony assault given that it could have resulted in a serious injury.

ACR Exclusive: Mob of juveniles stomp and kick on an 18 yr old man at Stonestown Mall. pic.twitter.com/PzOh3d5UOx

— Asian Crime Report (@activeasian) March 19, 2023

The second fight happened Friday inside a Target store at the mall. In this case the target of the attack was an Asian kid.

ACR Exclusive: Target at Stonestown mall gets destroyed as a mob of juveniles attack a victim and pummel him. What will DA @BrookeJenkinsSF and @SFPD do? Absolutely nothing. San Francisco is a big mess. These kids are the future of America. @LondonBreed and @SFPDChief are useless pic.twitter.com/Lfn5hWjNRK

— Asian Crime Report (@activeasian) March 19, 2023

Asian Crime Report, which posted this video, also reported it took police two hours to arrive.

It took two hours for them to show up

— Asian Crime Report (@activeasian) March 20, 2023

CBS News says people working at the mall were afraid to get involved.

Witnesses told KPIX they don’t know why the kids jumped the two victims nor do they know if the attackers knew their victims.

The second attack on Friday happened right in front of food court vendor Guang Wei whose merchandise was damaged.

“I’m very scared,” Wei said. “I cannot continue to do business here in this kind of environment.”

Speaking in Mandarin, Wei told KPIX he’s leaving when his lease is up in June…

“I hope school principals are taking this seriously and I hope there are consequences.  And those consequences don’t have to be expelling the kids, but they have to be consequences that are meaningful,” said district parent Suzanne, who declined to provide her last name.  She was at the mall with her two daughters.

Two more videos. The first one involves girls. The second is a fight between just two kids with the rest watching.

Here’s a fight inside the mall. It’s getting out of hand in San Francisco. Shouldn’t these kids be studying algebra? pic.twitter.com/Jd9yQW9fgm

— Asian Crime Report (@activeasian) March 20, 2023

This mall has somehow become a place for teenagers to start fights. After a number of these fights, police are finally going to show up to do try to discourage this starting today. As always, the unspoken truth of this story is that San Francisco has not recovered from the defund the police enthusiasm that swept the country in 2020.

Update: Here’s the report from KPIX.