City supervisors and residents questioned representatives of the San Francisco Police Department 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, 2026, 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.”
Why does the only Supervisor that worked for the SFPD have the slowest response times in the city? Seems like too cozy for proper oversight of the good ‘ol boys club. Selling South Beach residents out again, thanks Matt Dorsey!
I think that response times in the Mission are slower than in SOMA because Mission Station has to attend to the Castro and Noe Valley. Perish the thought that those neighborhoods might suffer what is being visited on the Mission by Chris Larsen’s edict that the TL must be cleaned up.
Nice to see Jenny Friedenbach quoted as the sole voice of reason in here. When the problem is high poverty rates and people resorting to drugs to cope with the cruelties of being poor in SF, it should be obvious that more police is not a solution. Affordable housing is, and voluntary drug treatment on demand the moment someone requests it – which SF is supposed to, but is still failing to, offer.
Affordable housing and homelessness advocates have had decades to come up with a plan for housing homeless people. Most fentanyl users contacted by DEM are neither homeless nor San Franciscans and most don’t want to get clean.
These drug tourists are not SF taxpayers’ problem, their predicament will not be solved with more housing and we cannot reasonably be expected to invest in treatment for the region’s problems for people who do not want to get clean and will probably be dead within 5 years time anyway.
This is your typical advocate bait and switch, construe drug tourists as homeless people and run the homeless people defense play.
This is why advocate directed progressive political power is at a it’s lowest ebb in decades, and has severed connection to popular opinion so completely that there is probably no coming back.
What does Connie Chan have to say about stopping the economy from cranking out shit lives at a record pace? Fully fund Head Start? Stand up to Donald Trump?
What does the Coalition on Homelessness have to do with the City’s response to public fentanyl use by people who are aren’t homeless, San Francisco residents and do not want to quit?
Because homelessness is also criminalized in the city.
And CoH also relies on 911 response services for these populations they serve?
Also, it’s one of the few things both the CoH and cops agree on.
See page 17-18 for reference: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a33e881b631bc60d4f8b31/t/668d922525a2bc711295fe86/1720554079016/San+Francisco%27s+Public+Safety+System
Public fentanyl use is criminalized by the state and feds, not the city. There is no ambiguity or wiggle room on that.
Because homelessness is also criminalized in the city.
And CoH also relies on 911 response services for these populations they serve?
Also, it’s one of the few things both the CoH and cops agree on.
See page 17-18 for reference: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58a33e881b631bc60d4f8b31/t/668d922525a2bc711295fe86/1720554079016/San+Francisco%27s+Public+Safety+System
Staffing makes no difference, As been demonstrated over and over and over again over the past five or six years, the SFPD/POA bureaucracy is lazy and incompetent. Maybe the neighbors can negotiate with the POA.
Thank you for the 20 additional patrol officers.
It’s a very good start but give us 20 more drones too!
Cams on every corner would help a lot too.
Progressives: “Police are evil. We should divert police funding to social welfare organizations because we don’t need so many cops.”
Also progressives: “I called the police and it took them forever to get there!”
How about we just call them useless. The police I mean