From a glass-paneled meeting room inside Lumina, a luxury condominium complex at Folsom and Main, in the East Cut, District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey made a familiar promise to some 45 constituents: He would keep pushing to fully staff San Francisco’s police department, and specifically, SFPD’s southern station, which is responsible for policing District 6.
“I’m not going to give up on this,” Dorsey said, “assuming I get a second term.”
Dorsey’s reference to his political future seemed to draw little reaction from the largely middle-aged, well-dressed group. He is running virtually unopposed, and is all but certain to win re-election this November.
The gathering was billed as a community meeting for residents of the Southern Station’s district, but Dorsey acknowledged the political season directly, telling the room at the outset that police staffing was an issue he had “come here to campaign for.”
Before the discussion began, Dorsey, who once worked in communications for the SFPD, posed for photos with Southern Station Capt. Carla Hurley, who led the meeting. Dorsey called Hurley a “phenomenal ally.” Hurley, meanwhile, spent much of the evening working to convince residents that the controversial reworking of Southern Station’s boundaries, which take effect Oct. 1, will better serve District 6 residents.
The new district will expand Southern Station north to Market Street and divide the district into eight patrol sectors instead of seven. The smaller patrol sectors are good, Hurley said, because they split some of Southern’s busiest territory into smaller sectors that could help officers assigned to those sectors respond more quickly to calls.
But Southern Station’s expansion also means that annual calls for service will rise from about 128,000 to 158,000 — a 23 percent increase. The department’s May staffing analysis said Southern Station would need 121 patrol officers under the new boundaries. It currently has 113.
That’s up from 94 in March, Hurley told the room. And, she added, maybe a transfer of seven officers expected later this month would be enough. Not everyone was convinced.
“The word ‘maybe’ is not very inspiring,” said Shaun Aukland, a SoMa resident who has closely tracked Southern’s response times.
“I don’t know for sure,” Hurley said. “I can’t go into that. So that’s why I said maybe.”
Aukland recalled that police commissioners had approved redistricting on the understanding that Southern would receive a staffing increase.
Dorsey did not press Hurley for a firmer commitment, directing his own criticism of police department staffing shortages to past City Hall decisions, saying that officials had failed to prepare for a wave of police retirements, and had focused on defunding the department when they should have been recruiting officers.
Concerns over more territory, more calls and long wait times for Southern Station calls hit squarely on an issue Dorsey has emphasized in his campaign. Nearly a year ago, in a November 2025 letter to the Police Commission, he asked for an “action plan” to scale up Southern’s staffing before redistricting took effect, warning that additional territory without additional resources could exacerbate the station’s workload.
The discussion grew testy when Aukland pointed out that Park Station showed response times that were 20 to 30 percent faster than the citywide median. Perhaps, Aukland said, officers there should be transferred to busier districts, like Southern.
Hurley said the police union’s labor agreement prevented the department from simply ordering officers to change stations.
“I don’t want a guy from Park to come here,” Hurley added. “The guy at Park wants to work at Park because it’s slow, okay? No offense. He or she is working there for a reason.”
The setting underscored the contrasts within Dorsey’s district. Lumina is a 656-unit high-rise with a heated lap pool, spa, fitness center and 24-hour concierge service; a three-bedroom unit was listed this week for $7 million. Nearby, SoMa’s Sixth Street corridor lies within one of San Francisco’s poorest areas, where nearly a quarter of residents live below the poverty line, according to Census data.
SoMa also recorded crime rates more than twice as high as those in any other San Francisco neighborhood in 2025, according to police incident data.
Under a modernist chandelier at Lumina, locals raised a range of concerns, from visible drug use near the Embarcadero Navigation Center at 555 Beale, to a need for nighttime security patrols by the East Cut Community Benefit District and better pedestrian safety.
One of the evening’s longest exchanges began when a resident complained that the area was experiencing an epidemic of people riding electric bicycles and scooters on sidewalks, particularly on Main Street and the Embarcadero. Others quickly jumped in to ask why, even when they saw police officers in the neighborhood, they did not appear to be stopping riders or issuing citations.
One resident argued that officers should not need to be dispatched to a scooter complaint to pull someone over for riding illegally on a sidewalk. Others questioned why pedestrian safety appeared to be taking a back seat to more urgent police calls.
“So do you want them going out to where someone’s life is in danger or not? Or going after a guy on a scooter?” Hurley asked.
Aukland called Hurley’s question a “false dichotomy.”
“But I only have so many officers, Shaun,” Hurley replied. “I’d love to promise you that every call [would be answered] within five minutes. But I’d be lying to you if I said that.”
The relative calm around Lumina, said Lt. Adrian Payne, could give residents a misleading sense of officers’ availability. He contrasted the East Cut with the Sixth Street corridor, where Southern Station can get high-priority calls “back to back to back.” A recent attempted kidnapping on Sixth Street, he added, required all patrol officers on shift to respond.
Meanwhile, he said, while officers might not look busy, they could be searching for suspects, or following up on an investigation.
After Hurley and Payne left, Dorsey lingered to talk one-on-one with constituents.
“I share their frustrations,” Dorsey said of the residents. “I always feel like I have to apologize for the city.” He said he has watched the city “set up departments for failure.”
The longer-term solution to the complaints he hears from residents, Dorsey argued, requires recruiting more early- and mid-career officers and finding ways to retain experienced officers nearing retirement.
Things had gotten better in the area, said Christopher Hussain, who said he’d been an East Cut resident since 2013. Since Mayor Daniel Lurie took office, Hussain said, he’d seen less visible street disorder. He said police use of cameras and other surveillance technology in the area made him feel safer, not surveilled.
Dorsey agreed. “We don’t have enough officers to go through the video footage anyway,” he said with a laugh.
Dorsey recounted an incident in June when, while briefly serving as acting mayor, he visited two police officers in the hospital after they had been struck by a vehicle while pursuing a theft suspect in Nob Hill. (The officers survived. The suspect did not.) Dorsey recalled the visit fondly. The officers had said the visit “meant so much to them.”
“It’s important for cops to feel supported politically,” Dorsey said.
