For nearly 200 days, a large white police bus sat on one of the busiest transit plazas in San Francisco.
And during that time, it cost the Mission District police station 44 percent of its monthly overtime budget, according to Captain Sean Perdomo.
The bus — a San Francisco Police Department “mobile command unit” — was meant to deter criminal activity like drug use and illegal vending at 16th and Mission streets. It was moved off the plaza last Friday, one day shy of the 200-day anniversary marking when it first arrived at the southwest BART plaza.
The presence came after Mayor Daniel Lurie this spring made 16th and Mission a priority for City Hall’s tackling of “trouble” areas across the city.
On Monday, Perdomo wrote in an email to neighbors that the van had been moved due to “budget constraints.” In a statement, SFPD simply said it could be “more efficient” by deploying officers.
At a community meeting Tuesday evening, Perdomo apologized for his “short” email and explained that he is allotted a “certain amount of overtime hours” by the department each month. The command unit, he said, was taking up 44 percent of that time.
After the meeting, Perdomo said he could not share how much overtime he was allotted, or the actual cost of the bus.
But, according to documents obtained from a public records request by Mission Local, overtime staffing for the command unit cost at least $240,000 and, at most, $500,000 between March 12, when the bus first arrived, and June 1.
It is unclear from the numbers provided by SFPD how the staffing costs were broken down.
Perdomo said these numbers were different from what he had been given, but did not specify.
In place of the police vehicle, SFPD plans to spend its money on employing enforcement teams in the neighborhood.
“The statistics really show that having teams go out there and actually engage people works a lot better than having a static command van that takes up 44 percent of your budget,” Perdomo told a standing-room-only crowd of two dozen community members at Mission Station.
Although some neighbors who attended the meeting were disappointed that the mobile unit had left, many agreed that on-the-ground forces have been more effective.
The mobile unit prevented vending on the southwest plaza, where it was parked, but for months the vending and drug use raged just across the street or on the northeast plaza.
The latter continues to be a site for vending and open drug use from late afternoon on, but teams from the SFPD, the Department of Public Works and ambassadors have successfully controlled much of the activity elsewhere.
The ramped-up police activity is resulting in more arrests. This year, the station’s officers have made nine times the number of arrests made last year, and have been instructed to take a “zero tolerance” approach to drug enforcement, Perdomo said.
Since April alone, Mission Station officers have made 181 arrests, he added.
In March, one-fourth of the city’s arrests and citations issued for drugs came from the intersection where the command unit was parked.
Four officers, the captain said, have been assigned to support Department of Public Works employees tasked with shutting down illegal vending operations.
Why, then, were there still crowds of people offering passersby drugs at the northeast 16th street BART plazas? Several attendees repeated this sentiment.
Perdomo said he had no easy answers. The command unit, he added, could always be brought back “if something deteriorates.”
“It’s flexible,” he said. “I just think that it’s a better use of our time and resources if we spend that funding that I’m allotted every month on something that’s more of a targeted, direct approach.”
> “The statistics really show that having teams go out there and actually engage people works a lot better than having a static command van that takes up 44 percent of your budget,” Perdomo told a standing-room-only crowd of two dozen community members at Mission Station.
No shit. Is Perdomo the last one to figure this out or are they under pressure from outspoken community members who don’t know this?
So you’re telling me the city spent a shit ton on policing and the problem didn’t go away? Oh wow what a surprise. What if instead of a dumb bus and OT we hired professionals to deal with SOCIAL issues. Cops should be left to take care of crime not a drug epidemic
Why is SFPD organized such that:
1) Mission Station gets 4 captains in 5 years, and
2) SFPD Tenderloin Station is proactively rousting addicts who end up at 16th and Mission and
3) Mission Station needs a cop on overtime to defend an elementary school from Tenderloin Station’s emissions?
Are SFPD at TL station who are rousting addicts also on overtime?
Supervisors have the power to investigate why SFPD is being run like this and how to get SFPD to organize itself such that we’re not seeing this waste and inefficiency.
My read is that Mission Station would not be allowed to let parts of District 8 go without protection. If the choice is divert mainline cops from otherwise peaceful neighborhoods or use overtime to pay for a cop in the Mission, we get the most expensive option.
Maybe we need an SFDO, the San Francisco Department of Overtime.
We’ll commission a 5 year multi-discipline study on the feasibility of that, appoint a 12 person committee to study that study and come up with locally-curated recommendations, farm that out to some random non-profits for a couple years to invent their catchy program names and slogan-graphic AI shlock, and voila : We’ve wasted another 5 years and crime either went up or went down, (or we stopped taking reports and people stopped reporting it,) but just LOOK at all these Wonderful World-Class-City jobs we’ve created from thin air! Who WOULDN’T want their taxes to go up for that? I have subzero faith that Paul Yep will bring anything but more cronyism and professional incompetence to an already saturated POA-controlled joke that is London Breed’s bespoke SFPD. The system is designed to require more money regardless of what actually happens or what they actually do about it. People need to stop believing that parking a mobile command station parked there makes it somehow safer, and now that it’s gone – along with 44% of their OT budget – what then? Park it somewhere else and waste half the budget there instead?
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Video-showing-SFPD-apparently-watching-as-16650311.php – Not so long ago…
Wowsa !!
Marcos, actually we had 3 Captains (2 and a Lieutenant actually) in 3 months by my count plus guest appearances by the likes of Captain Thomas Harvey who came back on the 4th of July to remind that our department has a violent and racist and cold heart toward us.
They’re bragging about 181 arrests in 5 months ??!!??
Hell, Harvey made over a hundred arrests of teenagers alone in one day !!!
At this point it would seem that the Mayor agrees with SFPOA that what the Mission needs is a good ass kicking.
I liked the Mission born, Captain Liza Johnsen who was on duty when Lurie was elected and was working to integrate the officers from Mission Station back into the Mission Community by:
1. Moving Community meetings back out into the Community.
2 Requesting a 24/7/365 cop presence at 16th and Mission and I’m betting she envisioned a do over of Feinstein’s Police Kobans and not the motor home up on jacks so’s the tires don’t rot.
Not too late, Daniel.
The cops are now talking about having officers walking around and talking to people in the community but no one says what that means.
Foot Patrols !!!
It won’t last cause even when voters passed a measure requiring them the cops just said they didn’t have enough people cause they were busy keeping several hundred empty Officer Slots so’s they can get all the overtime they want and did you know that the new President of the San Francisco Police Officers’ Union said that his number one goal was to get more money for the officers.
This from a guy who isn’t even a sergeant who made $586,000 last year and it wasn’t enough.
Shows you where their head is and Lurie has overfed them to the point that they could founder at any time.
Elect our Police Chief, that’s the ticket.
Michael Hennessey’s idea originally … actually the City founders elected our Police Chief and the first one of a line that lasted 85 years got the gig by leading a Vigilante group that hanged people, so it could be worse I guess but that was before Trump and you never know.
Go Niners !!
We didn’t deserve those first 3 and I’m a believer that NFL dynasties are built by coaches and Walsh not only made our dynasty but molded and mentored coaches who made dynasties all over the place.
h.
Thanks for reporting
Think how much taxpayer money the city has spent and wasted on countless nonprofits that have misspent funds?
6k/month to house addicts at the Monarch and other hotels and allows them to still take drugs
5 million a year spent on booze
Mayor Breeds and dph illegal linkage site center that cost 21 million.
The list goes on an on
Laws need to be enforced , transparency and accoutability are necessary
This ot pay is a drop in the bucket and think the city needs to spend more to restore law and order
The place is a mess run by criminals on the street
These persons are ruining the city and SF needs to clean the streets at all cost of crime
Tired of the crap and drug dens all day all night
This. This right here is exactly why we need robust citizen oversight from essential commissions like the Police Commission. Newbie Mayor Lurie hopes to amass even more executive power by diminishing, eliminating and gutting funding for public/citizen oversight and accountability of his and other elected officer holders and city departments.
The problem is that by “rousting” someone, it doesn’t make them disappear. It doesn’t suddenly give them a home and a job. Arresting them will take them off the street for a day or two, but then what? And how much does THAT cost? 10k? (those “arrest them all” people have to be the stupidest humans in the entire city)
We can either find people safe places to go to sleep, eat, get healthcare, and even entertainment – or we can continue giving more and more money to SFPD with the exact same results.
Add this to the cost of “social services” and other “support” offered to the drug addicts that are sucking the life – and money – out of San Francisco.
Why is this getting downvoted? The unhinged and out of control drug addicts are sucking the life out of the Mission and everyone knows it. Accountability for working class taxpayers but coddling and funding for the out of town junkies.
…..but not a peep about the millions mismanaged by Wreck Park and the Parks Alliance? Public resource$$ (when Ginsberg & Engardio promised private funds) wasted on hammocks and plastic crap.
Actually, ALL the data shows that harm-reduction saves money, and lives.