On Monday night, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder called for patience and community cooperation to address the drug use, drug dealing, selling of stolen goods, and general squalor around the 16th Street BART Plaza and nearby alleyways.
In her intro interview with Mission Local, the newly elected Fielder called the situation at the BART plazas a “tremendous concern.” On Wednesday, Fielder told an audience of some 150 people that the corner has remained one her “biggest priorities” since she took office.
“I take Muni every day to work. I am on the 14 and 49, and I make it a point to hop off at 16th and Mission to see the conditions,” said Fielder, speaking to a packed room of neighbors and business owners at the affordable housing complex at 1950 Mission St., known as La Fénix.
That complex and the adjacent school were at the center of a Mission Local report on Wednesday in which residents and parents complained of terrible street conditions: Frequent drug use, trashed sidewalks, and strangers wandering into the school from outside.
“I see everything that you see,” Fielder said. Addressing these problems is “an interdepartmental responsibility,” she added.
Indeed, Fielder was not alone on Wednesday. To her right: Mission Station Captain Liza Johansen and Public Works’ Jonathan Vaing. To her left: District 9 BART board member Edward Wright, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development’s Rafael Moreno, and the Department of Emergency Management’s Santiago Lerma.
Each detailed their efforts but, despite a concerted push to improve conditions at the plaza, nearby residents and shopkeepers say progress is intermittent at best. The activity on the northeast plaza, alleyways and side streets can often appear as if little is being done.
Nevertheless, city departments offered a menu of what they are trying to improve around the plaza. However, Mission Local’s story on what has been tried in other hot spots illustrates how difficult it can be to change the culture of an intersection.
- Public Works cleaning crews visit the area every day in 24/7 operations that include sweeping, steam cleaning and addressing 311 requests. The department also recently hired 12 more street-vending inspectors who will be able to issue citations for selling dubious goods (such as packaged food, laundry detergent, and other items that are frequently shoplifted).
- The Department of Emergency Management has put together a rotating staff of eight to 10 people as part of the “Mission Street Team” that offers access to shelter and treatment to anyone in the area who is willing to accept it.
- The Department of Public Health and the Homeless Outreach Team are also in the area daily, sitting down with those who frequent the plaza and offering to connect them with the Mission Street Team.
- The Office of Economic and Workforce Development is working closely with the mayor and Sen. Scott Wiener to pass SB 276, which would allow San Francisco police to enforce street-vending rules; Moreno told attendees that the city needs to have a program for street vending.
- BART is proposing perhaps the biggest change: Wright, who made improving conditions at the plaza part of his BART board campaign, said the transit agency is trying to secure funding to renovate the plaza, which could involve “activating” the area with markets or permitted street vendors. BART has also fixed the lighting in the plaza, and Wright said that BART users could see attendants at the station’s elevators.
“We have focused virtually all of the staffing resources for all of our San Francisco stations to 16th Street,” said Wright, listing sworn officers, community ambassadors, and crisis intervention specialists. Plus, new fare gates were installed in December.
But it is the San Francisco Police Department that is the most heavily involved.
Captain Johansen told attendees she had been advocating for a command center for months, and then received it “all of a sudden” after speaking with Chief Bill Scott and Mayor Daniel Lurie. “The moment I had a meeting with the chief and the mayor, I had it the next day.”
SFPD, Johansen said, has been trying out other strategies as well:
- She’s pulled resources from the CHP, BART police and the sheriff’s department to monitor the area. Staffing the plazas solely with Mission Station officers would be difficult; SFPD is short-staffed. Johansen has also created what she described as a “makeshift calendar” to ensure “every day” staffing.
- In the alleyways, which residents say have turned into a “zombie graveyard” of drug users, undercover and plain clothes operations are taking place with officers trying to buy narcotics, though Johansen acknowledged poor conditions persist.
The biggest change is on the southwest plaza, where the mobile SFPD unit is stationed 24-hours a day. For the most part, it remains clear.
On the northeast plaza, the police presence is more sporadic. When police are not directly on the plaza, people selling possibly stolen goods often reappear. Sellers also congregate further north on Mission Street, toward 15th Street.
The side alleys are another problem: In Mission Local’s daily visits to the plazas, Caledonia Street, Julian Avenue, Wiese Street and Capp Street are often covered in trash, with groups of people hanging out, and at times, nodding out or passing out on the sidewalk. Drug paraphernalia and human waste can often be found on the ground.
What can neighbors do, other than calling 311 and 911 to document the conditions? asked an attendee.
“It just feels like we’re hopeless,” he said. “We feel hopeless.”
Fielder encouraged him to lobby City Hall. If residents continue to email her colleagues on the Board of Supervisors and at the mayor’s office, it’s more likely that the district will get funding to address the situation. “The city needs to put its money where its mouth is,” she said. “I can’t do that alone.”
A Julian Avenue resident asked: Why law enforcement can’t arrest people after California voters approved Prop. 36 in November, which promised to make it easier to arrest and prosecute people for organized retail theft?
“My daughter is sick,” the resident continued. “I can’t open the window, because I don’t want fentanyl smoke to come in. Why can’t the cops arrest these people and get them out of here?”
It takes time and collaboration, Johansen said. Arresting people is labor-intensive. Sometimes, when officers arrest someone, they fake an injury, and the process takes two officers off the street for hours.
“Part of what’s going to improve is working with other agencies,” said Johansen. The threat of arrest can be an incentive to get people off the street and into shelter or treatment, she said, but police can’t fix the problem alone.
The meeting ended after 70 minutes.
Fielder, closing out, emphasized the importance of providing treatment and resources as an integral part of long-term solutions.
“If we do not match the adequate social safety supports like treatment beds, like respite centers, like shelters and interim housing for people to exist and go be in, they will continue to languish on the street,” she said.
We are tired of people smoking fentanyl and meth publicly, we are tired of urination and defecation on our sidewalks near our schools and in front of our homes. We are tired of prostitutes and johns having sex on our porches- leaving used condoms lying about. Tired of stolen items being sold openly on the sidewalk, tired of people sprawled out high on drugs. We are tired of the trash these people leave in the streets. Don’t let anyone make you believe its always been like this– it hasn’t- and frankly needn’t be like this now.
Jackie Fielder, Captain Liza Johansen, Jonathan Vang, Edward Wright, Rafael Moreno, Santiago Lerma. Enough excuses. DO SOMETHING!
Agreed. Fielder has been on the job 5 months and only shows up now? ‘Lobby City Hall’? Is she deaf – she is City Hall. Get it done girl, that’s your job.
We don’t want more shelters and funds going to to resources that just attracts more bums. We are all sick of living in this dystopian mess. The Mission has NEVER looked this bad.
As for vending – Weidner to the rescue please. Pass the god damn vending laws, and arrest anyone doing it. We don’t want trash or vending period. Just look at the mess RONAN attracted, people are now just emboldened on the street.
GLAD SO MANY RESIDENTS ARE SPEAKING UP.
Thank you ML for staying on top of it.
Let’s clean our city up, and hold these people accountable. Tax paying residents first, freeloading trash producing zombies last.
BIG THANKS TO DPW, I called 3 times this wk, and they cleared out 3 zombies and the trash of our alley near 16th.
Let’s save money and get rid of those agencies; just keep the cops, bring more uniforms and organize some neighborhood patrols like the Guardian Angels but with a different attitude, a more forceful attitude..Let’s make their lives miserable and send them packing back to the middle west..In any other big cities in Europe, some here as well, this problem would have been solved a long time ago. Zero leniency for those low life..Treatment first; refusal of treatment? jail time. Empathy? gone.No sellers on the street, no unlicensed vendors, no dope dealers, none of the bulls…t we experienced here for so many years.
We don’t need more money to fix the problems, we need more boots on the ground, more buses waiting at the corner to fill up some jails in northern California.
or Southern California jails, wink wink.
> Arresting people is labor-intensive. Sometimes, when officers arrest someone, they fake an injury and the process takes two officers off the street for hours.
Excessive deference to people who are openly hostile to society and its laws is how we end up using police inefficiently. And then there’s an entire media industry that loves to observe that American cops are inefficient and then conclude the only other option is anarchy.
Have we considered not giving people a free ambulance ride when they pretend a cop broke their arm while putting handcuffs on? Might be a start.
Here’s why things are bad: the city continues to pour police at a problem which has no carceral solution. People are unhoused because the city is crazy expensive. Anyone who thinks that drugs cause homelessness should try paying their landlord with a clean drug test. Spoiler alert: landlords only take cash. And people do drugs because their lives are painful and they need an escape. Is it really so hard to figure out?? Until cost of living in the city goes down, and care services are offered to people struggling with addiction, things will continue to look as they do currently. You can burn as much money you want on cops — that money will just go to their candy crush addiction. The fact that people are incapable of grasping this blows my mind.
This is an extremely complex topic. I have watched San Francisco be degraded safety-wise and quality of life-wise for decades. I want you to think about this scenario: You buy the average priced million dollar home in San Francisco. You of them pay about $10, 000 a year in property taxes. For that $10,000 The only governmental service that is actually going to be a value is the fire department. San Francisco has the potential to be a beautiful city but you really need to clean up the trash first, take a big giant push brown and just push out all the vermin. It makes me so sad to see San Francisco natives leave the city because it’s no longer a safe place. It is time to reward all of the terrible politicians that have helped create the problems that San Francisco is in now. Reward them by kicking it out of office and never supporting them any future career. Reward them and not eating in any restaurants they own, or doing business with any of their privately held business. It is time that you reward them by stripping their financial stability like they have stripped our safety stability.
How will police ever be a part of the solution to this problem? We need affordable housing, and care services for people struggling with addiction. Nothing else will help.
3rd arrest for possession of fent results in mandatory lockup and cold turkey, 6 months. How about it?
Agree with Ali
Believe it or not , Lower Polk/Larkin area is even worse .
This paper will not even report on the neighborhood .
Seven years of drug deales running the neighborhood , poisoning and kicking addicts to wake them up to buy more drugs .
Come visit , you will not stay or come back.
Neighborhood remains destroyed and lawless .
Billions spent each year , 35k city employees and countless nonprofits and still no effective help or change
Clean the mess up
There should not be even one addict still openly taking drugs , harming themselves and ruining everyone elses safety and well being
Close the drug scene down now
If people refuse shelter and/or treatment , remove them and jail . .
NyC is doing that
these people are obviously not from the community if they re asking that question. transplants dont understand the history of the community, city that they move to. gentrifiers move in and just call for police actions. if they were from the area, they would know that arresting people is not the answer. its never worked. ask the experts. and the city knows this. they just dont care about changing the economic dynamics that lead to neighborhood poverty in one of the worlds riches cities. in fact, they make money off of it.
The 16th and 24th St BART plazas have been renovated 15- 20 years ago. Just make it a concrete slab so it’s easier to hose off and clean, no places to sit. Keep the corner moving. Keep making excuses about arrests, then ask the mayor for that one stop arrest treatment help center like in SOMA, have a temporary one at the Hoff garage, think outside the box, will ya?
Sad truth is these people on the streets don’t get better.
Officials in denial. Why don’t they state the obvious? It’ll take a sustained campaign 24/7/365 to move the tide here: Paddy wagons, dumpsters, pressure washers. Bring it.
What happened to no loitering laws? Sorry but not sorry to say this is outrageous. Just get anyone hanging out moving. And I agree send them back to where they came from. Tough love. The city needs to let them know your not welcomed here to cause havoc of any kind. Having police stationed in the area doesn’t appear to matter. Maybe, you need to go back to old school ways and have foot police patrolling 24/7.
That’s a lot of people getting paid a lot of money to be completely incompetent and useless.
Jackie fielder is part of the problem. The drug dealers and addicts aren’t dumb, they know nothing gets done with a communist like Jackie as supervisor.
Another progressive asking for more money and create more agencies, it is not working. She is not going to fix it, it’s all smoke screen. Let’s close all these agencies and put money in law enforcement, jails and locked treatment.