San Francisco police credit newly deployed high-tech crime fighting tools, a bolstered homicide detail, and newfound community cooperation for the recent dramatic improvement in SFPD’s record of solving homicide cases.

The year began with a significant example of how all the newer tech has paid off, authorities say -- the rapid arrest of a suspect in the New Year’s slaying at a Mission District gas station. Gerardo De Avila Garcia, 36, was killed, police say, after objecting to the gunman’s verbal abuse of a woman at the station on South Van Ness Avenue.

Within an hour of the slaying, police say they traced the suspect’s route using the city’s network of 400 Flock traffic cameras and arrested 29-year-old Jose Gonzalo Rivera Flores.

“What the technology is helping us to do is really oper

See Full Page