S.F. has just 3 ‘public-safety liaisons’ for neighborhood safety. Why?

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In October 2023, a group of homeless people started squatting in a home in the Castro.

They were not exactly subtle: Most nights they made a racket, preventing next-door neighbors from sleeping. Soon enough, residents called the police.

Trespassing cases are not high-priority calls for the San Francisco Police Department. But they were a high priority for David Burke, District 8’s public-safety liaison.

Not every district has a public-safety liaison, but residents in the three that do — Districts 4, 8 and 11 — have a direct conduit between themselves, their supervisor and the SFPD: A city employee whose entire job is the kind of “quality-of-life” calls that police tend to pass over. 

Burke looked into the squatting case. From previous experience, he recognized one of the building’s new residents as someone with a history of setting fires.

Burke took this information to the police, who decided that the issue was now quite a bit more serious. They came in, cleared the house and cited the squatters for trespassing. 

Meanwhile, Burke worked with the city attorney’s office to contact the homeowner, who lived in New York, to come and board up the property.

“He’s an amazing resource for getting stuff done in the Castro,” said Terry Asten Bennett, an owner of Cliff’s Variety and the former president of the Castro Merchants Association.

The police and city attorney can be hard to get through to. But Burke? Once he gets involved, everything is “taken care of a lot faster.”

District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said Burke can “respond quickly” and is known to residents. “We would be buried, frankly, without his help.” 

So when City Hall is laser-focused on street conditions and Mayor Daniel Lurie has made “accountability” the key word of his administration, why do only three districts have a David Burke? 

Budget, mostly. In District 4, Supervisor Joel Engardio used extra community funds to add a liaison in 2024. In Districts 8 and 11, both positions are now incorporated into the $850 million annual police budget.

But the city has cut 470 positions and reduced its contracting $185 million over two years.

With police staffing numbers down, Supervisors Matt Dorsey and Myrna Melgar said the city should use funds to hire sworn officers, not civilian employees, while acknowledging that they are a good model of community engagement with the police.

“We usually have our finger on the pulse of neighborhoods in ways that the police department really doesn’t have,” Dorsey said.

Not every district wants one. District 10 Supervisor Shamann Walton said his constituents haven’t asked for it. “I respond to what my communities ask for,” he told Mission Local.

Dorsey also said a liaison is more useful in districts with multiple police stations, like District 8. In his District 6, he mainly has one police station to work with.

“Public safety liaisons” were created in 2018, when former District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy used some of his office’s budget to pay for a position housed in the San Francisco Police Department. 

The liaisons earn a little more than a starting officer. Burke, who is 59 with 18 years of city government experience, makes $113,00 a year, versus $131,000 for a young police officer with four years of experience or $146,000 for a supervisor’s aide. 

They are beloved by the supervisors who have them.

Engardio said his liaison, Vindy Chan, helped “residents feel heard” particularly “during the rise in anti-Asian hate” during the pandemic.

At the time, “many Sunset District elders, monolingual language speakers, and immigrants shared how they felt cut-off and unable to access the city’s criminal justice resources.”

She tells merchants how to stop break-ins, connects homeless people to shelter, and conducts workshops with residents about preventing scams, Engardio’s office reported.

District 11’s liaison, Sam Berenson, is “an incredible resource,” said Supervisor Chyanne Chen. Berenson has helped secure blighted properties so that people can’t break into them, and put up fencing to keep encampments from growing. 

“His work on neighborhood safety issues for our neighbors and small business owners is critical so that our public safety officers can focus on emergencies,” Chen said.

But often, they are just there to demystify the confounding bureaucracy that is San Francisco City Hall.

Burke previously worked as as an investigator in the city attorney’s office. It connected him to dozens of city departments, and gave him a good understanding of how government gets done — something that is impenetrable to most. 

“Someone will say, ‘I’m going to write an email to the mayor.’ And I said, ‘Look, I like the mayor. He is a dynamic guy. He really seems to give a damn and I’m very happy to be doing some work for him. But he’s a busy guy,’” said Burke. 

Burke will sidestep Lurie, and go directly to the departments. “There’s some hateful graffiti on a power box? I got a guy. I can have that gone in an hour.”