Representatives of the San Francisco Police Department were questioned by city supervisors and residents Thursday over slow police response times in District 6, which includes SoMa.
The hearing comes as District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who chairs the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, has faced calls from constituents to address his district’s slow police response times. Southern Station’s response times for lower priority calls were as much as 55 percent slower than the rest of the city over a recent six-month period, according to Mission Local’s analysis, despite having the highest crime rates in the city.
SFPD officials said that since December 2025, Southern Station has received 20 additional patrol officers for its area, which covers SoMa, the Embarcadero, China Basin, Mission Bay, Treasure Island, and Yerba Buena Island, bringing staffing from 91 to 111 officers.
Jason Cunningham, a program manager in SFPD’s Strategic Management Bureau, said the station’s current staffing is now above the 105 patrol officers recommended under the city’s existing staffing analysis.
But he also acknowledged that new district boundaries, set to take effect Oct. 1, will expand Southern Station’s jurisdiction north to Market Street, increasing its calls for service by an estimated 23 percent.
Those figures were a new source of alarm to some residents. While Southern Station now has more officers, it is also about to get more work.
Cunningham and Deputy Chief Scott Biggs pointed to new technology, including a pilot program that will use drones instead of on-the-ground police officers, to improve response times to calls in District 6. Biggs said the department would use the drones to respond to lower-priority calls for service.
He said many such calls end with officers unable to locate the person or activity reported, and that drones could arrive more quickly than officers, and help direct officers without requiring them to “waste time driving around.”
That did not satisfy some hearing attendees, who said drones and recent staffing increases do not address the scale of the neighborhood’s challenges, including high poverty rates and open-air drug markets near the Sixth Street corridor.
Shaun Aukland, a board member of the SoMa West Neighborhood Association, said police response delays have continued, even after the increase in officers. “Minor staffing adjustments have not resolved the disparity,” he said.
He pointed to data from May 2026 showing that response times are still slow even if they have somewhat improved this spring. Lower priority calls for situations involving potential harm, a suspect who may still be nearby or a recently committed crime are now 43 percent slower than the citywide median, by his calculation, compared to a 62 percent slower wait time for those calls in April.
Bettina Cohen, president of the Mission Bay Neighborhood Association, said lower-priority calls in Mission Bay can go unanswered for days, particularly when major events are happening at Chase Center, Oracle Park or Moscone Center. She said one call after a break-in at her building went unanswered for two days.
“Please take us seriously when we request adequate staffing for the soon-to-be expanded Southern District,” Cohen said.
Scott Rowitz, executive director of the Yerba Buena Partnership Community Benefit District, said the staffing increase should only be the beginning of addressing the response time issues in the area.
“We need more staffing in Southern because it’s only going to get worse,” he said, adding that the city should “triple down” on Southern Station, calling District 6 central to San Francisco’s economic recovery.
But Jennifer Friedenbach of the Coalition on Homelessness urged officials to look beyond police staffing alone, saying response times are affected when officers are sent to calls better handled by social workers.
“The police aren’t able to address some of the socioeconomic issues that they’re tasked with,” Friedenbach said. “When they’re spread too thin, this is the result.”
Dorsey acknowledged that slow police response times remain an unresolved concern for many of his constituents.
“I think what we heard today underscores that police staffing is a top priority for me, as well as my constituents in District 6,” Dorsey said. “There’s more work to do.”