A Shooting at Fulton & La Playa Exposed Something Bigger

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When a fight near Ocean Beach escalated into gunfire at Fulton & La Playa, five people were hospitalized—one Ocean Beach HOA resident critically, and several of the kids. Bullets were flying within yards of La Playa St., Cabrillo, Balboa, and the Great Highway.

But the most alarming part isn’t just the violence.

It’s what happened next:

No coordinated response.

No unified communication.

No leadership from any of the entities supposedly responsible for this area.

The Governance Vacuum Was Built Into the System

What makes all of this even more absurd is that none of this was unforeseeable.

When these Ocean Beach apartments were first approved, the City only allowed the development on the condition that the Ocean Beach HOA would maintain the surrounding area to city-level standards.

Why?

Because there was already concern that adding dense housing to a beach-adjacent corridor could create exactly the kinds of safety and coordination problems we’re living through now.

But instead of creating a durable governance system, the City essentially outsourced the responsibility—handing it off to an HOA that has no power over law enforcement, just sidewalk chalk; no mandate to handle public safety, and no authority to coordinate with SFPD or State Parks.

The result is what we see today:

Residents call the HOA → the HOA tells them to call the police

Residents call the police → the police say they’ll look into it

And then nothing happens.

Meanwhile, people who live here are lying awake at night, listening to explosions—wondering whether they’re fireworks or gunshots—and feeling their hearts race because no one can tell them who’s actually responsible for keeping this area safe.

This isn’t just a failure of action.

It’s a failure of design.

A neighborhood bordered by:

  • SFPD jurisdiction on the streets,

  • California State Parks police on the sand and dunes,

  • City agencies with infrastructure responsibilities, and

  • An HOA expected to “maintain standards,”

was always going to need coordinated governance.

What we have instead is a patchwork of partial responsibilities where every agency can claim “not it.”

And in that space between them—public safety collapses.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-nathan-recover-from-tragic-shooting