S.F. adds patrols for tourist areas
City hopes to deter crime, but not feed perception of fear
“We have work to do to make sure that when people come ... they feel safe. And that they’re not concerned about ... getting attacked and robbed.” San Francisco Mayor London Breed, announcing increased police patrols in tourist areas
As Mayor London Breed battles the perception that San Francisco is beset with increased crime and lawlessness, she announced Monday that additional police patrols would flood the city’s tourist hubs to target thieves and vandals.
Nearly 30 uniformed police officers, on bicycle and foot, have been deployed to popular tourist destinations — like Union Square, Chinatown and North Beach. The idea is that the increased patrols will deter crimes such as car breakins and assaults from happening in the first place, and can also catch the perpetrators faster when they do.
But Breed’s announcement comes as the city’s own statistics show that crime in San Francisco is not rising across the board when compared to prepandemic levels. While instances of gun violence and burglaries have increased this year, other crimes like car breakins, assaults, larceny and theft are no higher than they were before the pandemic.
Still, city leaders are struggling to square the reality of the data with a number of highly publicized and brazen attacks on Asian Americans, as well as several viral shoplifting videos that have circulated over the past few months. The mayor said she’s concerned about how the perception of increased crime is making residents feel unsafe and uneasy, and also deterring tourists from visiting San Francisco.
“We have work to do to make
sure that when people come to San Francisco ... that they feel safe,” she said at Monday’s news conference, flanked by more than a dozen uniformed police officers. “And that they’re not concerned about their car getting broken into, they’re not concerned about getting attacked and robbed, and they’re not concerned about witnessing one of these crimes.”
Crime in San Francisco has become an extremely divisive topic that has put city leaders in a tricky position. While officials are trying not to brush off the concerns of victims, their families and residents, they’re also trying not to feed into the misconceptions that overall crime is more rampant in the city than ever before.
To be sure, though, San Francisco’s property crime rates are still unusually high: statewide data shows that San Francisco had the highest rate of property crime of any California city in 2019.
Breed and San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott tried to explain the nuance of the city’s current crime statistics at a news conference last week, where they presented the city’s midyear crime report. While many crimes decreased in 2020 — an anomaly due to the lockdowns — 2021’s midyear statistics are generally in line with years prior.
According to the city’s midyear crime report, there was a small uptick in homicides in 2020 and 2021, though that came after a 58year low point in 2019. Instances of gun violence — not all of them fatal — increased, with 119 victims so far in 2021. That compared with an average of 77 by midyear from 2016 to 2020.
Meanwhile, crimes like robberies, aggravated assaults and car breakins are trending back up toward prepandemic levels. But the rates are still lower than 2019.
Burglaries — particularly in residential neighborhoods — showed a troubling increase in 2020 and 2021, compared to before the pandemic. According to the report, initial postlockdown data shows a small decline.
But no matter the data, Scott said there is “no statistic for brazenness.” He said police officers and increased foot patrols are important “because they balance that fear of crime.”
“We want to prevent these crimes from occurring, and we want to let the people that are doing these crimes know that we’re there and know that we’re not going to tolerate this nonsense, and we’ll catch you,” Scott said.
The new police patrols will be funded through the city’s budget, which will be finalized next month. This effort, called the Tourism Deployment Plan, is in addition to the city’s Downtown Recovery Plan, which expanded the number of community ambassadors in the downtown and Union Square areas.
Public safety was a contentious issue during the city’s budget negotiations, where the mayor and Board of Supervisors were divided over whether to boost law enforcement spending. After months of debate, the mayor and board agreed to increase the police budget over the next two years.
The increase was lower than what Breed has initially proposed, but it will still account for salary increases, new hires to maintain staffing levels and overtime, which will help fund the additional patrols.
On Monday, as a gaggle of press, police officers and business leaders waited for the mayor to begin the news conference, Tony Fox, a 24yearold tourist from New Jersey stopped by to see what all of the commotion was about.
Fox has visited San Francisco several times over the past few years, and said he has enjoyed himself every time. He said he would even move here “if it wasn’t so expensive.”
As a tourist, he said, he doesn’t mind the increased patrols — but he’d rather them not be in uniform. That could be intimidating for some, he said, and also increase the perception that the city is unsafe.
Instead, he said he liked the idea of the city’s community ambassador program, where nonpolice officers patrol the area.
“It shows that they’re not there to tell you what to do, but instead they’re here to help,” he said.
John Hamasaki, a member of the San Francisco Police Commission, said statistics are one thing and public perception is another. He said that tension is currently amplified, as the city crawls out of the pandemic and tries to attract more tourists to the area.
By increasing police patrols in tourist areas, Hamasaki said city leaders are trying to “reassure visitors that San Francisco is a safe city.”
“There’s a public safety reality, and then there’s a political reality,” Hamasaki said. “How do you address the way people are feeling, even though it’s not based on what we know to be the facts and the statistics. And that’s what politicians have to balance.”