Tough talk on crime from one San Francisco supervisor running for judge in the November election is drawing criticism from both his opponent and the city attorney.

Gerardo Sandoval, whose second term on the Board of Supervisors ends this year, held a news conference

Tuesday to express outrage at eight murders in the Excelsior district — including a triple homicide that took the life of a father and his two sons — in a little more than four months.

Sandoval expressed dismay that so many of The City’s crime-fighting resources, including gang injunctions and police task forces, were concentrated in only a few high-crime areas, causing the violence to spill over into neighborhoods such as the Excelsior.

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But in a letter to Sandoval on Tuesday, City Attorney Dennis Herrera claimed that there is no evidence that alleged gang members bound by the Mission district gang injunction are taking their violence elsewhere.

“In fact, among the five arrests of enjoined Norteño members outside the court-ordered safety zone since the preliminary order issued on Oct. 12, 2007, not one occurred in the Excelsior district,” Herrera said in the letter.

Sandoval clarified his message Wednesday, saying that concentrating The City’s crime-fighting resources leads to a situation where gang members are getting the message that they can merely cross a boundary and commit crimes with impunity.

Herrera’s letter comes amid attacks from a consultant representing incumbent Judge Thomas Mellon, Sandoval’s opponent in a runoff election for a San Francisco Superior Court judgeship.

Sandoval’s interest in the gang injunction and specific homicide cases are “skirting awfully close to violating the judicial code of ethics,” Mellon’s political consultant Jim Ross said.

Ross has yet to file a complaint. Sandoval called the accusation a political attack.

bbegin@sfexaminer.com