It’s been nearly 300 days since Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a plan to clean up the 16th Street BART Plaza.
To mark the occasion, Mission Local is adding a new tool for tracking his promises: A dashboard, updated daily, that notes the arrests and citations issued by San Francisco police officers in a 300-meter radius around 16th and Mission streets.
Our dashboard uses daily incident reports filed by officers to track the enforcement of common violations, including drug-related offenses or disorderly conduct.
The San Francisco Police Department releases incident reports with a 24-hour lag. Our dashboard updates daily at noon to include the most current data: Arrests and citations issued the day before.
While the number of incident reports may form the basis of official crime statistics, it would be wrong to think of them as the “official” count, according to the SFPD. There are groups doing outreach work in the plazas, like Ahsing Solutions, that do not regularly release public data quantifying their activities, for example.
What this police data does show, over time, is where the police department is focusing resources and attention.
For example, reports show that in March 2025, after Lurie stated his intention to crack down around 16th and Mission streets, there was a massive spike in arrests and citations. This does not necessarily mean drug-related crimes increased in the vicinity, but simply that, spurred by the mayor’s statement, police officers began enforcing more proactively.
Use our interactive graphics to explore the number and reasons for arrests and citations issued, and keep tabs on trends in SFPD’s enforcement around the 16th Street BART plaza.
You can read our ongoing coverage of the crackdown on 16th Street plaza here.
Arrests and citations issued in last 6 months around 16th and Mission
You can access our archive, with arrests and citations data from 2018, here.
The calendar below shows a snapshot of the arrests and citations issued around a 300-meter radius of the 16th Street BART Plaza for the last six months.
The darker the date, the more arrests and citations took place that day.
The department continuously updates the status of incident reports as they are investigated, and it is possible that the official statistics reported by SFPD to the California Department of Justice may differ from our numbers.
The data below should be considered the most accurate moment-in-time representation of arrests and citations on the day they were filed. Hover over each date to see the reasons for each arrest or citation.
Drug incidents around 16th and Mission
Arrests and citations issued for drug-related offenses skyrocketed earlier this year, after Mayor Lurie made the plaza one of his targets to show how the city can make a difference.
Explore the number of drug-related arrests and citations issued by SFPD around 16th and Mission each month since 2018.
Data for the most recent month will always be incomplete (and consequently lower) because it includes only arrests and citations through yesterday, while previous months reflect full monthly totals.
Drug incidents at 16th and Mission vs. citywide
In most years, the area around 16th and Mission accounts for a majority of the Mission’s drug-related police enforcement.
In the spring of 2025, this area, which accounts for a mere 0.2 percent of the city’s geographical landmass, was responsible for nearly 27 percent of San Francisco’s drug incident reports that resulted in an arrest or citation.
During the pandemic, drug-related arrests and citations dropped to an all-time-low around 16th and Mission but it has recently surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
Most common incidents around 16th and Mission
The table below shows the top 15 offense categories at 16th and Mission, ranked by total number of arrests and citations, over the past 12 months. The sparkline — the small line chart — shows how each category has changed month to month, and the percentage compares the current year to the year before.
We use a rolling 12-month window (365 days from yesterday’s date), rather than a calendar year, so the data stays current. Because the dashboard updates daily, the most recent month will always be incomplete, but using a full year of data minimizes the impact of any one partial month on the overall totals.
More criminalizing of drug possession. How well has that worked in the last 40 years?
What if we treated drug addiction as a public health crisis and focused on helping people recover from their addictions? Then we might actually interrupt the cycle and have fewer people buying drugs.
This is mostly enforcement against fentanyl sales and use in public, not drug possession.
The US has no public health system to speak of that is capable of responding to addiction and there are not resources on the horizon for that.
So long as fentanyl use on the sidewalk is a step up from the shit lives more and more people are being forced to stare down, this ain’t gonna stop.
The Mayor’s office pledged to clean up the area not just the BART plaza. The Marshall elementary school around the corner on Capp/Adair is not safe for students nor residents.
Ashing said it’s not their responsibility to. The cops at the BART plaza and DPW also told me and school faculty and parents at a meeting several months ago that it’s not their responsibility either. Also present at that meeting were managers from Mission Housing and MEDA, now responsible for the City owned lots at 1979 Mission and on Capp/16 to 15, next to the school. They also said it’s not their responsibility to ensure safety nor cleanliness and safe streets here .
Statistics can be skewed to make an authority like the Mayor and district supervisor look good. Come here repeatedly late night and in the early morning as kids are navigating squalor and danger on their way to school.
Thank you for excellent data re: 16th & Mission SFPD activity. My cynical self told me the lack of data produced by SFPD and covered in the SF Chronicle about the benefits of the “command vehicle” meant it wasn’t that effective. Your data supports my cynicism!
What we need is huge potted plants next to the Walgreens wall, which has had vendors sitting against it while selling items on blankets for 20 years. A row of plants would finally put an end to it like it has done everywhere else.
Screw 16th and Mission, if you want to take a walk, on the wild side visit 24th and Mission.
What Lurie is doing used to be called “A dog and pony show.” Just because someone manages to look busy doesn’t meant what they are doing is useful in any way, shape, or form.
For reference, I work at 15th and Mission. The only thing that has changed is the logos on the “Nonprofit” vehicles that occasionally roll through the neighborhood.
New mayor, SAME GRIFT.
How are they figuring out that people have warrants? Random stops? Weird.
SFPD uses fake numbers to further Silo Mayor Lurie,
A chief once told me:
“h., we control the files and they say what we want them to say.”
When Chesa Boudin ran for DA the SFPOA said that if he was elected they’d go on a work slowdown and they did and it was reported all over and especially at Mission Local.
We need an elected Police Chief with the power to fire and suspend w/out pay as warranted, any officer that refuses to work.
Hell, that could work for DPW too.
Or, purt near any City department.
They know where to rack up the arrests.
In the ‘Containment Zones’ where they corral the drug traffic to keep it out of your neighborhood unless you live there like me and Marcos.
Ask the junkies and dealers and they’ll tell you that the cops tell them where they can go to buy and get high w/out getting busted.
Takes fewer guards to control 8,000 homeless 3,200 addicts if you concentrate them all into smaller encampments where 30% of the addicts will die annually.
It took 30 years of prodding for the cops to even admit they had designated Containment Zones to make their lives easier.
Hell, they don’t even have to get out of their cars and when they do like at 16th and Mission this year, they huddle like ducks in circles talking to the dpw guys and occasionally doing 4 man Foot Patrols blocking the sidewalks and accomplishing nothing.
But, they stop arresting everyone they could or often should and report to the Mayor that he’s a huge success cause he finally has the force doing their job.
On the ground where I live and pick up trash every day you can still go to 16th and Mission and buy sex or drugs or stolen goods or Jesus any day of the week and any hour of the day.
They sell Passports too and fake ID’s of about any type.
Counterfeit money ?
You know, the department used to put its best officers on the Mayor’s/dignitaries detail and now they send cops on the Brady List.
Look it up, Daniel and ask your officers driving you and glaring at the Public to explain what that means.
go Niners !!
h.
This proves we need way more money and resources for the SFPD. If at any point they can issue hundreds of citations within a few days at any area of the city, it shows those areas are cesspool and need extreme measures to make a difference. Issue citations at ten times the rate until the situation gets to a point that the area is safe for children to walk around and play. That should be the standard city wide. The bar is way too low in this city….
I don’t see how this data supports the conclusion in your first sentence. The fact that they are *doing more* than they have been doing shows just that. It’s my impression SFPD has been passive and not terribly interested in doing its job for five-plus years. What if the same officers, with the same resources, are currently only operating at 50% of capacity? That’s an improvement over 10%, but with room for improvement. There’s no reason to believe they couldn’t do more with what they have, unless we believe they’re already doing all they can. I don’t have reason to believe that’s true.
There is no money for a 10x ramp-up of SFPD. There is no money for 1.5x, and barely money for 1x. Ask yourself why SF pays so much more per unit, allows pension double-dipping while on salary, moonlighting, near-indemnity from prosecution except in the most egregious and documented cases, and still can’t attract the recruits it needs to even sustain current staffing which is supposedly down 500 officers ~ from previous recent staffing levels. You want 10x what is possible, well, that’s a nonsensical ask frankly without a golden goose to fund it.