The San Francisco Police Department’s Mission Station has a new captain, as of this week. Captain Gavin McEachern announced his retirement at a community meeting on Wednesday night, saying he will be succeeded by Captain Thomas Harvey, an 18-year veteran of the department.
Harvey technically already joined as captain on Monday, and will overlap with McEachern until April 29, giving Harvey time to acclimate to the role, McEachern said. McEachern said that his retirement has been on the horizon for months, and that he was able to give input on who he wanted to succeed him; Harvey was his number-one choice.
“Tom was at the top of my list,” McEachern said, to a room of about 30 Mission residents gathered to discuss a homeless encampment on Harrison Street. Harvey has legacy ties to the district and lives in the city, McEachern noted later.
Since joining the police in 2005, Harvey, 42, has served at Mission Station twice — at least once as an officer. The station encompasses the Mission District, as well as the Castro and Noe Valley.
“I just ask for a little patience as I get up to speed,” Harvey said during his introduction, before attendees launched into a barrage of complaints.
The ensuing two-hour meeting — at which participants showed minimal patience with the process of outreach to encampments, and solving crimes such as package and bike theft— was the Mission equivalent of a trial by fire.
“The Mission District has many challenges; societal challenges, not just police challenges,” Harvey said in an interview after the meeting. His two goals in leading the station of nearly 100 officers, he said, are to “improve public safety, [and] improve relations with the San Francisco Police Department.”
For the last 15 months, Harvey has been the captain of the San Francisco Police Academy, in charge of recruits hoping to become full-fledged officers. He previously worked at Northern Station, Taraval Station, Ingleside Station, Tenderloin Station, and Bayview Station. He also worked on three specialized teams, one focused on car break-ins, another on reducing gun violence, and another on searching for fugitives.
Harvey grew up in the Parkside District and attended Saint Ignatius High School and San Francisco State University before joining the police department in 2005, according to SFPD’s website.
The Mission’s current captain, McEachern, had led the station since he took over as interim captain in November, 2021. He supported neighborhood initiatives with mixed success, including blocking off Capp Street to target sex work there, and providing officers for Supervisor Hillary Ronen’s efforts to end unlicensed vending at the BART plazas.
“I knew that it was going to be a challenging assignment, but it was really really rewarding,” McEachern said in an interview on Thursday. He mentioned his pride in collaborating with city agencies to address homelessness in the Castro in recent months, and that a few women on Capp Street had been “rescued” from human trafficking, and had been moved into housing and provided resources.
His retirement at the end of April comes after more than 30 years with the department.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Harvey noted some personal connections to the Mission: His father ran the yellow-tiled Harvey real estate business on Valencia and Hill streets, he attended pre-kindergarten and kindergarten at Holy Family Day Home on Dolores Street, and he grew up going to the now-closed Bruno’s nightclub.
By the end of the meeting, he seemed to have a sense of the task before him.
“How do you eat an elephant?” he asked the remaining attendees.
“One bite at a time.”
Congrats Captain Harvey! This is Sherri – I sold you the vintage MCM chair you bought several years ago for a re finishing project. Happy to see you are in the neighborhood now. I can personally vouch that Captain Harvey is an environmentally conscience person who up-cycles; he drove over from Ingleside on his lunchtime to buy a pre owned chair. Very cool! Recycle-reuse-sustain. Go Niners!
Captain Thomas Harvey is a class act. I wish him well.
Please make an effort to enforce the vehicle code. Speeding, red light/stop sign running, bike lane violations, and modified exhaust (noise pollution + regular pollution) all negatively impact the health and safety of the neighborhood much more than the sex workers on Capp street do.
I wish Captain Thomas Harvey all the best. I want him to know that the tax-paying, law-abiding people living here in the Mission have the highest respect for the San Francisco Police Department. We appreciate all their hard work.
First bite ?
Put Public Toilets OUTSIDE the front door of the station.
Go Niners !
h.
Why?
Mitch,
Cause I spent a year cleaning up crap in Clarion Alley across street and in that time the City not only ignored my requests via 311 # to put pit stop in front of Mission District Station, they took away the toilet and trash bins at the other end of the alley in front of the Pentecostal Church.
Breed has 24 of the 36 multi-unit toilet and sink assembelies the City bought in storage kinda like the half billion we voted on for low income housing and she refuses to spend.
Go Niners !
h.
Got it. Just seems like a weird spot when there’s already public restrooms inside the lobby. Wouldn’t additional restrooms be more useful somewhere else?