Residents question SFPD ‘Dear John’ program to deter sex work

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The San Francisco Police Department’s latest effort to “crack down on prostitution” in the Mission invites the public to send in photos of the license plates of people suspected of soliciting sex. 

Some community members, however, say the initiative has prompted more questions than answers. 

In August, the city installed cameras along Shotwell Street in response to a lawsuit from a group of neighbors over what they called San Francisco’s inability to address sex work and vagrancy on their street. 

Now, through the “Dear John” program launched last week, police will also collect images submitted by the public via an online portal. The license plates identified in these photos and videos will then be traced back to an address. 

“SFPD has begun sending letters, and pictures, to the addresses of registered vehicles seen and captured on camera soliciting prostitution along Shotwell and surrounding streets,” the department announced last Wednesday. 

More than 30 letters have been sent in the last two weeks, said Evan Sernoffsky, the police department’s director of strategic communications. 

The letters, designed to embarrass people and erase anonymity, inform the recipient that their vehicle “was observed in an area” with “high rates of prostitution” and remind them that engaging in or soliciting prostitution is “not a victimless crime.” 

Deterring sex work does not appear to be an exact science: “If this notice was sent in error,” a sample letter concludes, “please disregard it.” 

This ambiguity has raised some concerns for community members. 

Ayman Farahat, a data scientist and the lead plaintiff of the Shotwell neighbors’ lawsuit, said he can’t cast judgment until he sees data that would allow him to quantitatively evaluate the “Dear John” program.  

Sernoffsky noted that problem. “Crime is fickle,” he said. “It’s challenging to measure.” 

As such, crime metrics are sometimes measured anecdotally, Sernoffsky continued: “If fewer people are soliciting prostitution, we will consider that the right direction.” 

A specific indication of success, Sernoffsky said, is if a car police used to regularly see soliciting sex disappears after a letter is sent. 

“But, in general, we don’t have somebody out there with a clipboard or one of those counter things — like when you go into the ballpark — measuring the number of prostitutes.” 

There are currently “no expectations” of how many photographs will be sent in, he said.

Neighborhood critics — like those who were against similar “Dear John” programs in Oakland, San Jose, and Los Angeles — have also raised privacy concerns about the letters and street surveillance. 

Sernoffsky, however, said SFPD had no plans to release the photographs it collected, and didn’t anticipate its letters becoming public record. Recipients, after all, would not be charged with a crime. 

Mission resident John Bove said he was “happy with any effort to curb the activity” that involved “going after Johns, not the sex workers.” Still, he worried that the “Dear John” program would put “all the onus on citizens.” 

People are cautioned against putting themselves at risk to capture photographs, Sernoffsky said. SFPD’s portal, the spokesperson added, is meant to be just “one more tool in our tool belt” to combat sex trafficking. 

Though SFPD lacks the resources to monitor prostitution at all hours, Sernoffsky said they will also continue to leverage new mobile-security units, traditional neighborhood patrols, and barricades like the ones on Capp Street to deter those soliciting sex. 

Nonetheless, Shotwell community member and San Francisco State University public policy lecturer Bob Allen remains pessimistic about the city’s efforts.  

Allen said he felt the sex work problem would continue to be “shuffled around” the neighborhood by initiatives that create an illusion that something is being done, but in reality present no measurable solution. 

But “data, information, and evidence matter less than the perception of the public,” he sighed.