S.F. residents want cops on the street. SFPD only staffs 1/3 of its foot beats.

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Boots on the ground are in demand. 

In community meetings and public surveys, San Franciscans repeatedly say they want to see more officers walking their neighborhoods. 

Over the years, the San Francisco Police Department has imagined a map of 52 foot beats, each covering a discrete part of the city. They may be a few blocks of a busy business corridor, like Clement Street in the Richmond. Or they may be geographic areas, like Civic Center Plaza. 

But you likely won’t see officers in most of these designated locations. As of September, SFPD was staffing less than a third of its foot beats — just 16 of 52, according to data obtained through a public records request by Mission Local.   

Foot beats remain popular

At neighborhood meetings held throughout September to discuss the selection of SFPD’s next police chief, many attendees said they wanted to see more officers on their blocks. 

It’s no surprise as to why. Officers on the beat form relationships with community members and address quality-of-life issues, from broken streetlights to homelessness, policing experts said. Research shows that reports of theft and assault decline when more officers are assigned to foot beats.

It’s an age-old sentiment: In 2008, 90 percent of community members who responded to a survey from the San Francisco controller’s office said foot beats were necessary. 

Every few years, the city pursues policies that require more robust foot beats.

In 2006, the Board of Supervisors voted to require walking beats despite police concerns that doing so would hamper their 911 response time. 

In 2017, SFPD announced that it was doubling the number of foot-beat officers. In 2023, local legislation was approved to require SFPD to implement a strategy to add more beat cops. 

Last month, Tenderloin Captain Matt Sullivan said at a community meeting that four officers would begin patrolling the Tenderloin by foot, and was applauded by two dozen residents in attendance. 

Despite all this public support, the vast majority of foot beats remain unstaffed. There simply aren’t enough officers, police experts said, and SFPD has other priorities. 

Despite “working aggressively to hire more officers,” the department remains some 500 officers short, SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said. “If we don’t have that staffing filled, then putting an officer in a foot beat who can’t respond in a timely matter to a violent crime in progress is not as efficient.”

‘No staffing to support’

Although there is no official criteria, a foot beat is typically considered fully staffed if there’s one officer assigned to it, or maybe two, current and veteran officers said. 

SFPD would not provide the number of officers that staff each foot beat, citing “secret investigative techniques or procedures” that could not be disclosed. 

As of September, nine foot beats across San Francisco were filled by on-duty officers.

Six were filled by officers working overtime. One was filled by officers working overtime to staff a police bus — a “mobile command unit” — parked at Union Square. The rest, SFPD noted on several occasions in its records, had “no PD staffing to support.” 

Beats that were filled did not necessarily correlate to high-crime areas. Three adjacent beats in SoMa that include the Sixth Street corridor, an area notorious for illicit drug use, were not staffed. 

Nor were any of the eight foot beats filled in the Tenderloin, which are all also designated as “special operations” beats, police sources said. 

SFPD staffing shortages are nothing new. Which foot beats get staffed depends on factors like the amount of crime in an area and how quickly an officer can move through its boundaries, Sernoffsky said.   

There also has to be interest from each district, said an officer who asked to remain anonymous. Working a beat, he said, is seen as a “luxury gig” for more senior officers: You suppress crime “just by being seen,” having a “chill day,” and going home.

“Most significant crime isn’t being done by people on foot,” he explained. So, he continued, foot beat cops are addressing “low priority quality-of-life issues,” rather than “chasing down bad guys.” 

Which neighborhoods get foot beats may also be a matter of the squeaky wheel getting the grease: “Community outrage and money can dictate staffing,” said Carl Tennenbaum, who was a San Francisco police officer for over 30 years before he retired in 2013.

A thing of the past

Veteran officers and academics consider foot beats “old school policing.”

In John Gallagher’s day, if a resident wanted to reach someone from Northern Station, where he was an officer for 41 years before he retired in 2011, they’d call their beat cop’s direct phone number.

Al Casciato, a former Mission Station captain in the ‘80s, remembered escorting a woman and her mother to a mahjong parlor to settle a business dispute. The now-retired Tennenbaum recalled walking from one end of his Tenderloin foot beat to the other — or at least taking Muni, if he was in a rush.

Today’s foot beats look different. In the ‘90s, Tennenbaum said, faster police response times to radio calls began to take priority. Now, he said, most officers stick to their cars.

Shown Mission Local’s map of staffing levels, Tennenbaum said he was surprised to learn that the city had “let it get to this point.”  

Even if an officer is assigned to a foot beat, there is no guarantee they are physically on site. If there’s a more pressing assignment, foot beat officers are the first to go, Tennenbaum added. 

This year, a current officer said, foot patrols have been regularly pulled to participate in drug operations as part of the city’s effort to crack down on narcotics. SFPD said it had no responsive records showing if, or how often, this had occurred. 

James Taylor, a University of San Francisco professor who has served on SFPD committees, said that the department could fill the gaps with community ambassadors, who conduct wellness checks, refer people to social services, and report emergencies.

These non-sworn officers are already being used to staff the Clement Street business corridor.

Casciato said he hopes that new technologies like surveillance drones free up more officers to walk the beat again. 

Of course, “community groups want a visible face they can identify with their neighborhood,” Casciato said.

At the same time, given the department’s shortages, he wants the public to remember that an officer can be “mentally on the beat” without physically walking it.  

So long as neighbors know there is someone at their local police station they can always reach, he said, it matters less whether the officer is on foot.