See how they run: Mayor Breed defends public-safety record during law-and-order debate

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Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: London Breed. Read earlier dispatches here.

In the final stretch of Monday night’s Stop Crime SF mayoral debate, co-moderator Frank Noto read an audience member’s question.

“Crime has been terrible the last few years, but crime in San Francisco has declined dramatically,” said Noto, the founder of the law-and-order nonprofit hosting the mayoral forum, in front of an audience of more than 200.

Four candidates — London Breed, Mark Farrell, Daniel Lurie, and Ahsha Safaí — sat on stage next to Noto as he read the audience member’s citation of vast improvements in public safety: Overall crime is “down 29 percent … Property crimes have decreased 32 percent … Car break-ins have plummeted 53 percent. Homicides have dropped nearly a third.”

How, Noto asked, would the candidates continue that trend — or even improve upon it? 

It was the only query during the 90-minute affair that acknowledged that San Francisco is, statistically, getting safer. And yet, every contender for Room 200 is running on a platform of hiring more officers, augmenting the police budget and doubling down on law and order.

There was little effort to move past that in Monday’s debate, when the candidates sat before a crowd of Stop Crime SF members and others filling every seat in the County Fair Building auditorium in Golden Gate Park at Ninth Avenue near Lincoln Way for the 7 p.m. event.

“I don’t know any other mayor that is making not only arrests of those dealing drugs on the streets of San Francisco, but also people who are using drugs,” said Breed in her answer to that audience question. She said that her administration’s work with the Drug Enforcement Agency and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tenderloin operations “on the ground every single day” had “led to this significant decline.”

Breed — who was fresh off a stint at Oracle Park that afternoon, where she had sat 15 feet away from President Bill Clinton, basking in the hot sun at a Willie Mays memorial — also pointed to hundreds of millions of dollars in extra money for the police allocated under her watch, and the appointment two years ago (to the day) of Brooke Jenkins as district attorney. “It goes on and on and on,” she continued, “and I take full credit for all of this work.”

Farrell, in his response, blasted Breed for a $120 million investment in the Dreamkeeper Initiative, a set of city grants to nonprofits aimed at serving Black communities that he said “defunded the police department.” But in point of fact, San Francisco never defunded its police department: Just half of the initiative’s money came from law enforcement budgets, which were backfilled by other funds, and the other half was from the general fund. 

While the department’s budget dipped slightly after 2020, it has steadily risen since. For the 2024-2025 fiscal year, the police department’s annual budget will be $821.6 million, a six percent increase from the prior year — and 19 percent greater than in the 2019-2020 fiscal year. 

Still, to hear the candidates tell it, the force is a beleaguered husk.

“It is no wonder that public safety is the No. 1 issue across the city of San Francisco,” Farrell continued. “Multiple district stations, police stations I've spoken with, they're down 40 percent staffing. The other day, I was at another ride-along. There were supposed to be 14 people on duty that day. There were four. This is a problem in every single neighborhood.”

Added Daniel Lurie: “Fully staff our police department. Make sure we’ve got cops walking the beat, and patrolling out there.”

Peskin as a water bottle, and Safaí shows compassion

The entrance to the County Fair Building was flanked by campaign staff holding aloft signs stuck to plywood: Yellow for Breed, orange for Farrell, blue for Lurie, and a dark blue/light blue or blue-red combo for Ahsha Safaí. Attendees walked a gauntlet between the rows of aides and volunteers while Ellen Lee Zhou, a Republican Trump supporter also running for mayor, strutted around in her red MAGA hat and blasted the other candidates.

“They’re in charge, and they’ve destroyed San Francisco,” she said. “San Francisco has been destroyed by Democratic leadership.”

Inside, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins received a “Crime Fighter of the Year” award and spoke about how she measured success: “Data tells us one thing … but it will always be how people feel and what they tell me about how they feel.” A table lined the back of the room with snacks and four vats of agua fresca from Los Yaquis taqueria; a sign said the refreshments had been donated by Garry Tan, the Y Combinator CEO and political donor who in January tweeted to the majority of the Board of Supervisors that they should “die slow motherfuckers.”

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin skipped the event, saying Stop Crime SF had “deep connections to Neighbors for a Better San Francisco and its ultra-conservative Board President William Oberndorf.” Stop Crime SF and its sister political advocacy group have together taken at least $750,000 from Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, a collection of wealthy donors who heavily fund local races to rid the city of progressives and back tough-on-crime initiatives. Both Stop Crime SF and Neighbors are part of an interconnected network of big-money players that have spent millions to reshape the city.

Peskin said the debate was “moot” because it was “all but inevitable” that Stop Crime SF’s endorsement would mirror that of Neighbors, which has chosen Farrell and Lurie as its top picks. 

Peskin was instead represented by a sheet of binder paper scrawled with his name and taped to a plastic water bottle. At the most jovial point in the evening, when the audience, moderators and candidates laughed about a confusing question on evictions, Farrell picked up the water bottle and said: “You should ask Supervisor Peskin what he thinks.”

The debate was moderated by KTVU reporter Amber Lee and Noto, the Stop Crime SF founder. The candidates sat in alphabetical order by first name. This placed Breed next to Farrell, who has, alongside the incumbent, emphasized arrests and accountability to satisfy voters’ widespread complaints regarding public safety.

Though San Francisco’s violent crime rates are low and getting lower, experts warn that crime is complex, and any recent dips are unlikely to be due to local, short-term policies. Nationally, crime is down in cities large and small. What Breed’s policies have worsened, however, is a chaotic situation in San Francisco’s jails, which have steadily added more inmates following the mayor’s announcements of crackdowns on drug markets.

This was the third debate of the season, and the candidates mostly stuck to their go-to positioning: Breed touted the city’s rebound, Farrell said public safety is “the No. 1 issue,” Safaí again said he has the “experience” and “track record” to fight for working people, and Lurie continued to position himself as an outsider.

“My opponents bring experience in a broken system that has failed to make our community safe, address our drug and homelessness crisis, and make San Francisco more affordable,” Lurie said during his opening statement. “The same City Hall insiders that got us into this mess won't get us out.”

Safaí, for his part, dangled less red meat to the Stop Crime audience than the other three; correspondingly, he received less enthusiastic applause. But he was the only candidate to speak in human terms when Lee asked about Corazon Dandan, the 74-year-old who was killed after a man allegedly pushed her in front of an incoming BART train last week. 

Police said the suspect in custody is homeless, and he suffers from mental illness. Most of the candidates spoke about adding shelter beds or street crisis teams, but Safaí was knowledgeable about the victim’s life, and spoke to it.

“First and foremost, let’s recognize that the lady that was pushed into the train worked for 40 years at the St. Francis,” he said, as the audience murmured in recognition. “She was a hotel and restaurant worker from Local 2. She insisted, despite her family’s pleas, she insisted to take public transportation every day.” 

“Something has gone miserably wrong, miserably wrong in our city,” he continued.

Police reform absent from campaign

Amid all the talk of public safety, police reform has been largely forgotten — and is certainly not a winning stump issue. The reckoning after the police killing of George Floyd and, long before, with mass incarceration, anti-Black police brutality, and swelling law enforcement budgets now feels impossibly distant.

“It’s slowed down a lot,” said Barbara Attard, a former investigator at the Office of Citizen Complaints, the predecessor to the Department of Police Accountability. 

Attard said the recent passage of Prop. E, expanding police surveillance and car chases while curtailing use-of-force reporting and police commission review, was “quite shocking” and a “shortsighted, dangerous hampering” of civilian oversight. “There’s not as much of a watchful eye on the police,” she said. “I think that we need to really pay attention.”

Gone are the days when even Police Chief Bill Scott said he would be “open” to defunding the department and putting money into non-police responses to crime and public safety issues. The consensus among the frontrunners is for a hard hand.

“We need a mayor who's going to be a leader, be aggressive, get people off the streets by every legal means possible,” said Farrell. For those without homes, he said, “We need to offer them shelter and housing. But if they say no, we will take their tents away.”

“We need a leader to focus on this issue to get people the help that they need,” he said at another point, “but also clean up the streets of San Francisco for the rest of us.”