Farrell eyes crackdown on ‘troubled parks’
San Francisco mayoral candidate Mark Farrell is pushing new proposals to improve police staffing and respond to residents’ concerns about illegal activity in public spaces, underscoring how public safety concerns are at the center of this year’s mayoral election.
Farrell, a former supervisor and appointed mayor who is one of Mayor London Breed’s most formidable reelection opponents, said Tuesday that, if he’s elected in November, he would subsequently prepare a ballot measure designed to boost the ranks of the San Francisco Police Department by allowing officers eligible for retirement to continue working.
Farrell’s campaign said he would also impose strict daylight-only operating hours on certain “troubled parks” that have been the subject of resident complaints about late-night drug dealing and other illegal behavior. Civic Center and United Nations plazas and the Mission District’s Jose Coronado Playground would be among the first affected.
U.N. Plaza became a hot spot for drug scenes and illegal vending, though the Breed administration’s recent addition of a skate park and other changes to the plaza have improved conditions, at least during the daytime. Additionally, Farrell said he’d make permanent a temporary ban on street vending in the Mission and he’d extend the ban to other areas impacted by people selling apparently stolen goods on public sidewalks. He also wants to fund five police academies in the city budget.
“We will be aggressive to make sure San Francisco residents feel safe in every single neighborhood,” Farrell said in an interview.
Farrell’s proposals are his latest effort to explain to voters how he’d respond to their concerns about public safety in a year when residents are outraged about the city’s incessant open-air drug dealing and property crime. Farrell said when he announced his campaign that, if elected, he’d immediately seek new leadership at the Police Department by replacing Chief Bill Scott. Farrell is not only up against Breed, who’s leaned into public safety and law enforcement issues, but against nonprofit founder and Levi Strauss heir Daniel Lurie, another moderate who’s also centering crime in his campaign.
“Mayor Breed has failed” on public safety, Farrell said. “I believe the next mayor has to come in with a detailed set of policies that will grow our police force once again and, more than anything, provide San Francisco residents with the belief that City Hall is focused on the safety of our residents once again.”
Breed and her allies defend her record on public safety and argue that the city is beginning to see signs of progress in key areas. The mayor has been touting the city’s 7% drop in reported crimes last year, though experts have cautioned it was too soon to tell whether the decline was directly attributable to her policies.
Regardless of the reason, the decline appears to be continuing: Reports of violent and property crime were down in February compared to 2023 — and down from 2018, when Farrell was mayor.
Breed also just won passage of Proposition E, a measure she placed on the March ballot to expand police power by letting officers chase more suspects by car and have easier access to surveillance cameras and drones, among other things.
Breed campaign spokesperson Joe Arellano panned Farrell’s public safety proposals in a statement, calling the ideas a “thin minestrone of half-baked ideas and plagiarism.”
“Shutting down Civic Center Plaza won’t do anything except hurt residents and events at City Hall and Bill Graham Civic and feed the Fox News perception of San Francisco,” Arellano said.
Shutting down the public spaces after dark may be difficult. While Jose Coronado is fenced and closes at 10 p.m., the wide-open Civic Center and U.N. plazas are not, though Farrell said he’d send park rangers and police officers to enforce the new hours. People would still be allowed to pass through the plazas at night, and sanctioned events such as the holiday tree lighting would still be permitted — Farrell’s campaign said the goal would be to prevent people from loitering in the plazas after dark.
“Neighbors have been up in arms surrounding many different parks in San Francisco — about illegal activity, not being able to bring their families and children into the park. That is unacceptable,” Farrell said.Farrell’s police staffing plan would, in a future ballot measure, seek to revive the abandoned Deferred Option Retirement Program, or DROP, which sought to encourage retirement-age police officers to stay on the job longer than they otherwise might. Voters in 2008 approved a trial of the program, which allowed eligible officers to have their monthly pension payments put in a tax-deferred account while they continued to work — earning their regular salary — for up to three years.
A 2011 report from the City Controller found that 169 officers participated in the program during its first year and half, which was the most recent data available at the time. But the report concluded that the program would cost the city more money than it would save.
“With its current design, and with the demographics and behavior of the eligible members to date, it appears that the DROP program represents a net increase in the City’s liability and is not cost-neutral,” the controller’s report said. Ten members of the Board of Supervisors — including Farrell — voted not to extend the program.
Farrell said he wants to “learn from the lessons of the past” and bring back a modified version of DROP. He said he’d want to mandate that any officer who participates in the program be out on patrol, not working behind a desk. But any implementation of it would likely be years away since it would need to go to the voters.
“What this allows us to do is keep police officers that are nearing retirement age within the Police Department,” Farrell said. “The city will benefit not only from their experience but also from that additional head count in our district stations. That will be incredibly beneficial to the residents of our city. … We need to keep these officers in our Police Department in the wake of our staffing shortages.”
Arellano, the Breed campaign spokesperson, said in his statement that Farrell’s proposal couldn’t be voted on until 2026, and Breed plans to have the Police Department “almost fully staffed by then.”
“Instead of pretending he’s Rudy Giuliani and running to be Mayor of the Doom Loop, Farrell should leave the bubble of his Jordan Park home for a change,” Arellano said. “Leading San Francisco requires a lot more effort than just cosplaying as mayor from your kitchen.”
Farrell’s other leading opponents in the race were also quick to criticize his public safety proposal. Max Szabo, a spokesperson for the Lurie campaign, said in a Tuesday statement that Farrell was “proposing solutions to problems he walked away from when he was in office.”
The Lurie campaign pointed to a 2018 message from the San Francisco Police Officers Association that accused Farrell, who was mayor at the time, and other city officials of not supporting the police union enough as it sought raises during contract negotiations.
And Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who is also running for mayor, said he’d already worked to get more police officers on the streets through legislation requiring the Police Department to create a strategy for implementing foot and bike patrols.
To crack down on people selling stolen goods on sidewalks, Farrell said he wants to make the Mission Street temporary vending ban permanent after city officials reported improved street conditions during the ban’s first 60 days. The city recently extended the threemonth pilot for six months. Breed is currently trying to get the state Legislature to change a law her administration says has allowed stolen-goods sales to proliferate on San Francisco sidewalks.
Farrell said he’d push for an expanded vending ban despite the city’s tough fiscal situation — namely, an $800 million twoyear deficit.
“Public safety is my No. 1 priority, and I will be uncompromising in my budget to pursue that agenda,” Farrell said. “The No. 1 job of our city government is to keep our residents safe and to make them feel safe.”