Could SF be America's safest city by 2032?
Image by Pixabay
Picture this: we're six years in the future. SF—once an exemplar for homelessness, crime, and drug abuse—is safe and vibrant again. Below, SF Briones Society imagines what 2032's resigning mayor attributes to the success: and, hint, it's all about strengthening (and empowering) local police.
The following is written in the voice of an outgoing San Francisco mayor in the year 2032. The ideas presented in this fictional look-back are based on conversations with SFPD officers, former drug addicts, leading criminologists, and others.
To: San Francisco Board of Supervisors
From: The Mayor of San Francisco
Date: October 15, 2032
Subject: How San Francisco Became America’s Safest City
… Since I was elected in 2024, property crime is down by two thirds and violent crime, including homicides, is down by one third. Both of these achievements were enabled by a shift in political culture that began 10 years ago with the recall of then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin. San Franciscans had had enough. They wanted to end lawlessness, but do so in ways that were consistent with our values of compassion and inclusion. …
At that point, my predecessor proposed to “defund” the police and sheriff’s departments by $120 million over two years … Fewer and fewer people wanted to join the SFPD. Hundreds of officers were lost to transfers and early retirement even as applications to the police academy dropped by more than two thirds. …
… SFPD officers were also dealing with the sense that they didn’t feel valued or sometimes even welcome in our city. As one officer said at the time, “People feel very entitled to just run up and physically assault us or intervene because they dislike the police so much. It’s common here.” …
Listening to the concerns of a broad constituency of voters, I built my campaign around two key ideas. First, improved public safety was a precondition for the recovery of San Francisco; everything else we wanted to do depended on it. Second, a fully staffed, well-supported police force would improve life in the city for everyone, including and especially Black and Latino San Franciscans.
The first argument was not hard to make. People all over the city were tired of dealing with crime. …
The second argument took more work, but we had the benefit of truth on our side. In 2023, our Black and Latino communities were the ones that were suffering most from crime. The tech community was up in arms after a white tech entrepreneur named Bob Lee was murdered near Rincon Center, but the reality was that nearly two thirds of those murdered in San Francisco were Black and Latino men.
Enough is enough
I went out to the communities most impacted by violence – the Bayview, Mission, and Tenderloin – and I said to people: Let’s cut the homicide number by a third. … I told them the truth: We’re going to need to hire more police officers to make this possible. …
I also talked about drugs. Nearly everyone was impacted by the drug crisis on our streets and no group was suffering more than the addicts themselves. More than 600 people were dying from drug overdoses each year and Black San Franciscans were dying at a rate five times higher than the city average. Whole blocks of the city looked like a third world country as dealers fed the addiction of the homeless in tent encampments. Addicts needed money to keep the drugs flowing, which contributed to our high rates of property crime. Small businesses were struggling with petty theft while larger businesses were slower to return to in-person work because employees didn’t want to deal with the public safety fiasco downtown. …
We had the legal basis for doing these things. Our elected officials simply lacked the political will. And, for many San Franciscans, these were the improvements that would have the biggest impact on their quality of life. …
Then there was the property crime. … We [realized we] can make the choice to fully staff our police department and give them the mandate, tools, and support they need to tackle this scourge.
Slowly but surely, we built consensus …
Of course, the real work began after the election. To follow through on our promises, we needed to expand SFPD rapidly, which we did through brand-building and recruitment programs. We also needed officers to be more effective, which we accomplished through process reform, training, and technology, And finally, we put in place supports and pathways that people needed to choose life directions other than crime and drug use. …
The focus of this memo is what we did with regards to law enforcement, but it’s important to recognize that everything we achieved depended on things we did in other realms. To tackle the drug problem, we needed way more rehab beds than we had in the city, so we raised private funds to send people to rehab in other cities and states. We also doubled the rate of housing production, which both enabled us to attract more cops to live in the city and helped mitigate our homelessness crisis.
Read the whole thing here.
Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopportunity
We prize letters from our thoughtful readers. Typed on a Smith Corona. Written in longhand on fine stationery. Scribbled on a napkin. Hey, even composed on email. Feel free to send your comments to us at opportunitynowsv@gmail.com or (snail mail) 1590 Calaveras Ave., SJ, CA 95126. Remember to be thoughtful and polite. We will post letters on an irregular basis on the main Opp Now site.