The 16th Street BART plaza is the new home, at least temporarily, of SFPD Mobile Command Unit No. 2, a bus-sized vehicle that arrived Wednesday afternoon just before 2 p.m., motoring into an area that has recently become the center of attention for both City Hall and law enforcement.
Mission Station Captain Liza Johansen, who was at the plaza Wednesday, said the command unit would be there 24/7. She did not yet know how many officers would be deployed from the unit, but said she wants the vehicle to stay as long as possible.
At about 2:30 p.m., the department drove the unit onto the plaza itself. Officers gathered in the rain, gesturing and sizing up whether the plaza could fit the vehicle.
“Move!” the Mission Station captain yelled at a group of kids as the van backed into the plaza from the intersection of 16th and Mission streets.
“What the fuck?!” One kid yelled as they scattered.
An elderly woman carrying two buckets hurried out of the way as the back doors of the vehicle swung open and officers spilled out. As the rain progressed to a downpour, the officers sealed themselves inside the vehicle. They opened the door for the Mission Station captain, the last straggler, and pulled her in.
At least five business owners nearby said they are happy with the deployment, and feel safer.
It was news to Department of Public Works employees on the scene that the command center had arrived. Public Works staff have been working hand-in-hand with officers to police against stolen goods. Just because they all work for the city doesn’t mean they all receive the same information, one said.
The San Francisco Police Department has several such mobile command units. Additionally, the one parked in the vicinity of 16th and Mission is, literally, around the corner from Mission Police Station on 17th and Valencia.
When asked why a command center would be needed to supplement a police station less than two-tenths of a mile away, a police source simply replied, “for looks.” But, they added, this was not wholly immaterial: Discouraging lawlessness is difficult in areas not saturated with police presence, and a giant SFPD vehicle is hard to miss.
On March 5, the police and sheriff’s departments sent signals of what was to come to the area following a raid last week that resulted in four people being arrested, all on drug-related charges, and the seizure of almost exactly an ounce of drugs. Authorities have not yet specified what kind of drugs they confiscated.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, Police Chief Bill Scott and Sheriff Paul Miyamoto sent a clear message to drug dealers and users from a City Hall press conference a day later: “We’re coming after you,” said the chief.
“The long-term strategy is that they go to other neighborhoods, then we have to go there as well. That’s something that we are working on and we’re getting better at,” Scott added, saying the department would focus on “trouble spots” across San Francisco. “This game that the dealers have been playing, it’s coming to an end.”
“We are going to be relentless in our focus on cleaning these areas up,” said Lurie at the time.
San Francisco Police Department sources compared this strategy to a shell game: “You are moving the cups and trying to keep up. The goal is to make it as challenging or uncomfortable as possible so these people either quit or accept services, because the headache isn’t worth it anymore.”
Lurie’s administration opened a police mobile “triage center” last month at 469 Stevenson St. in SoMa. This was initially pitched to the city and community as a place to process drug-related arrestees while officers went back onto the streets to make more arrests. But few, if any, arrests have been processed on-site. Visitors are able to speak to nonprofit workers about treatment options or the possibility of accepting a bus ticket out of town.
The effectiveness of the approach was questioned from the beginning by local program managers who didn’t think community members were ready to turn to law enforcement to seek help.
“And then they say they want to put this divider up to hide themselves, but [they] are there for you,” said Cherie Davis, the lead program manager of Hospitality House’s Sixth Street location, in reference to the security fence around the triage center. “I don’t know how that works.”
District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman told Mission Local last month, however, that this approach had the potential to work because it concentrates resources in one place.
In 2018 and 2023, the mobile command unit was deployed to address crime and drug dealing at or near UN Plaza. In 2021, the center was also used to deter retail theft at Union Square.
Additional reporting by Abigail Vân Neely.
As someone who lives in the area, I applaud these moves. Anything to add more police and more stories of drug busts, etc… is very welcome from most locals that actually live in this neighborhood. Kick the scumbags out and make it as difficult as possible for them to survive on their criminal activities.
Finally! EXCELLENT NEWS.
Thank you Mayor Lurie & the SFPD from all the local law abiding residents.
Clean up these city blocks: btwn Mission & Valencia, and 14-16/17th, especially Weise Alley, which looks like Skid Row.
Get all the vendors off the street & plaza, and prosecute all the drug dealers parked on the alley next to Pancho Villa. Get DPW out there to issue tickets all day long and take their licence plate #’s.
Thrilled to hear this news.
I’m sure all the Bart users will also be relieved.
What part of the Mission do you live in and how has it personally affected you?
I live on 20th near Mr. Pickles.
It has personally affected me as I have to smell shit and urine every time I walk outside. When I walk to the BART, I have to look out for human feces, get offered drugs, get yelled at by crazy people saying, “I’m gonna fucking kill you”. I have to look at absolute filth on the streets and extra trash everywhere. I have to view empty storefronts as business folks don’t want to open shop with wild animal vagrants roaming the streets outside. Human beings should not have to put up with this filthy situation. I don’t care how it’s been in the past, it should not be this way for any neighborhood. If you don’t feel this way, you have given up on life.
I think one of the main reasons the Mission district is so lawless is that the families that have children are not represented proportionally as undocumented folks stay quiet for fear of deportation or other legal issues. Mom’s and Dad’s are who call the police the most to clean up streets and get rid of bad actors from their neighborhood. When Mom’s and Dad’s can’t complain for fear of deportation, less people are complaining about the horrendous living conditions. Neighborhoods with less families, or with families of parents who cannot complain, are the most vulnerable to criminal activities….
Thanks. Genuinely.
It is so wild that people think you need to justify not liking the situation at 16th and Mission. It is a terrible scene and everyone knows it.
Residents of affordable housing at 1950 Mission have been asking to be moved to other affordable housing buildings away from the fentanyl dealerships.
If we’d wanted to move to the Tenderloin, we’d have moved to the Tenderloin. We chose The Mission because it was an established residential neighborhood with good transit and an tolerable baseline of social issues. That balance has been upset over recent years.
I hope this helps but I’m also concerned about what’s going to happen down the road at 24th and Mission as a result. Concentrated enforcement has the consequence of moving the same people and illegal activities elsewhere. It’s ultimately an inconvenience to criminal activity, not a consequence.
I applaud the new mayor and SFPD /Sheriff’s for this!! Thank you for your efforts. You are very appreciated!
Reminder that the word “cop” means “constable on patrol.” While having a mobile command center may look serious, I often wonder why cops can’t just, you know, patrol on foot. I mean, you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to find vendors selling what appear to be stolen goods in the Mission. Wander around, ask for a vendor license and, if they can’t produce one, confiscate the goods.
Good start
Need to start this in the tenderloin/lower polk area .
Lawlessness is lawlessness.
Drug dealers and using drug s is illegal.
Dealers and addicts are sick and selfish .
Tired of them ruining everyones life.
Arrest , mandatory treatment or jail
Uncontrolled drug usage and sales in SF is getting really old .
Clean it up.
Allowing the drug activity to go on is cruel to the addicts and impacts everyone.
We are done with this crap.
Zero tolerance.
Zero excuses .
Tired of smelling the rotting flesh
A rat will keep eating poison until it dies .
How about stopping the supply and usage?
Actions have consequences .
If the penalty was severe enough and enforced , the drug activity would go away .
Look around to other countries that dont babysit and allow others to destroy themselves .
Law enforcement needs to get serious .
Other countries? How about other cities like Daly City and San Mateo that don’t let this kind of stuff go down in major plazas and thoroughfares.
For real. When people complain about the police in San Francisco I tell them to keep going up Mission until the street signs turn from green to blue… then go try and do dirt there. Anyone from the City knows EXACTLY what I’m talking about lol.
How long till its catalytic converter is stolen?
https://missionlocal.org/2022/09/sfpd-catalytic-converter-theft-san-francisco-police-department/
Visibility is good, but self-initiated stops, citations and closed cases actually address crime. SFPD used to do a lot more with about the same number of officers. Now they just sit in the RV watching TV.
This is nothing but a big show. While the cop van sits on the plaza, one block away Julian Avenue is the same as it ever was, a mess with groups of dealers on both ends and in the middle. Maybe the cops could get out of their cars and walk around? Maybe we could have meaningful treatment options? Other neighborhoods don’t have to deal with this and we shouldn’t have to either.
20 yr ago, we passed legislation over Newsom’s veto to mandate SFPD foot patrols. SFPD, law enforcement, chose to not follow the law.
We then went to the voters with a ballot measure to mandate foot patrols, which passed. SFPD, law enforcement, continues to not follow the law either.
SFPD sees residents as problems that need to be solved.
Good! Glad to see a mayor take cleaning up the city seriously.
Omg! Thank you! That area has just got worse and worse. I don’t understand why all the shoplifted goods for sale are tolerated. They should build apartments on those plazas.
Makes the area feel safer, I work around the area and it’s crazy out there
Keep playing whack a mole without addresing underlying issues and all you will do is bankrupt the city. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, duuuuuummmmbbb.
I live in the Tenderloin district, I am a desk clerk or the low income housing. WI live and work is within walking distance of 16th and Mission. Don’t get me wrong. I believe the SFPD is doing a commendable job of securing the city. However, I think having a mobile unit in the area is unnecessary and a waste of taxpayers’ money. I believe that having one officer present occasionally should be sufficient. When drug dealers see one cop, they simply move to a different location.
A mobile unit costs the city thousands of dollars each day, and that money could be better spent on other areas that need it more. Although the city generates significant revenue from high-tech firms, which allows them to spend freely, it’s frustrating that city officials would rather allocate funds to a mobile unit than risk losing the money from the next year’s budget.
In that sense, people like President Trump and Elon Musk are advocating for cutting unnecessary spending. You wouldn’t use a ten-foot saw to cut a small piece of steak. It’s simply excessive. Nevertheless, I want to emphasize that I really appreciate the peace officers and the work they do to keep our community safe.
For the officers, this assignment is often seen as easy money.
Hell yeah, we’re basically Union Square now! When does 16th & Mish get our Apple Store and Cartier?!
Is it me or have news articles become increasingly poorly written. So many facts have been left out. I’ve seen better writing from the students at my local middle school where I used to work!
How can SFPD expect for people to trust and respect them if their first resort towards youth inadvertently blocking the path of their vehicle on the sidewalk is “MOVE?”
Captain Johansen does not tolerate anything but deferential adulation of the SFPD in community meetings.
Quick to disrespect youth, quick to chafe if not honored herself.
Same old, same old with same old results,
Here come the cops blindfolded swinging a sledge hammer at a thumb tack.
3 cops taking turns one at a time sitting in a phone booth size Koban and walking single officer Foot Patrols is the best answer to assuage Public Fear here cause they can actually physically see a single cops there at all times and know there are two others within a block on foot and a thousand behind that.
The actual remedy is to decriminalize drugs as they have in Europe.
That takes the cops and the dealers out of the equation.
Still need the cops there permanently to answer questions and look over vendors and speakers and other entertainment acts.
It works around the entire civilized World but SFPOA blocks it here and always will.
So, the answer is to fill 300 or so of the vacant cop slots with Patrol Specials whose jobs by definition is to walk Foot Patrols.
Go Niners !!
h.
Have you looked into what happened when they decriminalized drugs in Oregon? It did not go well and they are reversing course.
Also, there is no WAY a major European center would let that amount of lawlessness stand in the heart of their cities. Shoplifted goods piled high on blankets. Forget about it! European cities have tons of police in their city centers.
They decriminalized everything in that spot of Portland 6×6 but that’s hardly the “decriminalization” “effort” overall, right? Why so deliberately reductionist? We’re all on the same side, trying to solve a problem, so why not just be straight up about what works and what doesn’t instead of trying to exaggerate?
SF leftists would be shocked and offended by how aggressive policing is in the European cities they hold up as exemplars.
Have you ever had any interactions with European police? Interactions with European police are nothing like interactions with SFPD. European police would never shout “MOVE” at youth that were in their way. European policing culture is not rooted in slave catching.
Decriminalizing fentanyl is a horrible idea. As someone who lives in the TL who has struggled with addiction and who has a girlfriend who’s a fentanyl addict, fentanyl is the most insidious, most potent and most lethal drug to EVER hit the streets of America. Heroin addicts didn’t ever jump from smoking weed or snorting a little coke to slamming black tar. It was a process. And you had a stigma attached to using a needle. But with fentanyl, it’s completely different. You have a very innocuous looking white powdery substance that you can just hold a lighter under a piece of foil and inhale the vapor and literally die from one hit. It doesn’t taste like anything, you don’t look like a “junkie” digging in his arm with a needle looking for a vein, and it’s literally instantaneously addictive. You don’t have the nausea associated with your first use of heroin, and the potency is 100 fold. I have seen way too many of my friends die this way, and it’s like the perfect weapon to get rid of us. Because if you have even a hint of any kind of substance use previously and you die of a fentanyl overdose, the police are not going to investigate it. It is going to be marked as an accidental overdose. While most of them probably are accidental, it begs the question of how many outright murders have there been?
Prescription fentanyl comes in sublingual tabs that dissolve slowly and which affords “off ramps” to avoid overdose. Since treatment for opiates that SF can afford is rarely available or effective, safe supply is probably the best, most effective and realistic approach. Do what we did during needle exchange when syringes required a prescription and have retired MDs write the scripts for pharmaceutical fentanyl for the treatment resistant.
“Shell game”, they say. “Played by the dealers,” they say. As if the dealers choose what neighborhoods cops do not patrol. As if they aren’t ignoring the guy RUNNING THE GAME (suppliers) like every piece of Copaganda ever made tells us is the real target.
Absolutely Pathetic. Can’t even get a ‘Training Day’ sacrificial bust of the actual money movers.
They actually had one of these police RVs in the Mish years ago, 20th St between Valencia and Mish. I can’t remember what chief and why. I remember it being there at night with the lights on, no big crime scene, just parked.
Gosh those police persons were mean to those nice kids and that frightened old women with the two bucks, all oppressed people of color, mind you. The horror! The horror!
Perhaps SFPD should abandon hiring and promotion policies that are basically DEI for assholes?
Anything to make it harder for people taking Muni or BART! Has the new mayor ever used public transportation? Does he even know what it is or where people wait or walk for it? Over 40 people killed on SF streets last year, not by tents or vendors but by traffic. Not a word of concern about that!
You realize that the primary impediment to accessing transit at 16th/Mission BART is the unregulated, often illegal and at times violent commercial activity and fentanyl induced conduct that blocks sidewalks, bus shelters and intimidates riders, right?
As a daily BART rider I strongly disagree – the biggest impediment to using BART is the 20 minute train frequencies run on all but the Yellow line.
Quadrupling the number of trains per hour in exchange for quadrupling the number of people selling stuff on the 24th St Mission BART plaza would be an action worth celebrating, since real solutions to the poverty behind much of the criminal behavior in our city are far too “socialist” to ever gain traction politically.
This is disgraceful. Lurie lacks compassion, empathy, and clearly lacks knowledge about the struggles of our most vulnerable populations in SF. He needs a training on how to be trauma-informed and he needs to stop creating barriers that we already know don’t work.
Hope people tag the sh** out of it. Defund the police.
If that thing is good enough for UN plaza and Union square, then it’s good enough for 16th and Mission! I heard 2 shootings nearby in January and I was cursing the mayor up and down for pushing downtown’s problems into this area. This is a good start.
found the problem.