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Surveillance video of a vicious attack on a homeless man has led to San Francisco Police launching an investigation into the assault, police officials said Tuesday.
On Tuesday, San Francisco Police representatives said if they hadn't seen the video, they wouldn't have known a crime had been committed.
The attack was captured by a surveillance camera on Wednesday, Nov. 6 around 4:45 a.m. It shows one man appearing to stomp viciously on the head of a person sleeping.
"I first learned of it when I saw the video" said Police Chief Greg Suhr.
Suhr said Tuesday that when he learned that there was no official police report of the incident, he took action.
"We started in earnest (again) as soon as we saw [KTVU’s] video. The southern division detectives started working it backwards, filing what is called a ‘John Doe’ report because we don't have a victim and we don't have a suspect,” said Suhr.
Seeing the video also prompted the city's District Attorney to act.
"It's very disturbing, right?" George Gascon told KTVU. "You see this vicious attack on an individual not doing anything wrong."
Gascon called on witnesses Tuesday to help police find the people in this video. Police say the victim, initially identified as a homeless man, could actually be a woman. The attacker appears to be a Caucasian male.
Chief Suhr and D.A. Gascon want to find the suspect and prevent him from hurting anyone else. They say in most circumstances, they need a victim, suspect or witnesses to jumpstart an investigation. In this case, they told KTVU the video was powerful enough to start the ball rolling.
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