At 9:28 a.m., a DPW employee wrapped up pressure-washing on Caledonia Street near the 16th St. BART Station. A few discarded items remained as the worker left the block, but it looked pretty clean.
By 9:44 a.m., the east side of Julian Avenue also had clean sidewalks and little foot traffic. Outside St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, typically a busy corner, no one was present.
Wiese Street remained quiet at 9:50 a.m., with only one person in view.
Earlier this morning, two San Francisco Police Department SUVs sat idling in the southwest 16th St. BART Plaza. One had its lights flashing, though no officers were nearby. By 10:07 a.m., one of the vehicles had left, and the remaining car still had no officers in sight. It is unclear if any officers were inside the large mobile unit. Nearby, food vendors served tamales and hot drinks.
The escalators remained out of service on the southwest plaza, with BART crews expected to continue repairs through April 4, according to a service advisory.
The northeast plaza held a small group: Two SFPD officers and two workers from the Department of Public Works.
One passerby asked the officers, “Where are all of you? There’s hoodlums running around.” One officer replied, “Well, there’s none here.”
The lack of officers patrolling and engaging seems to be a point of contention among some neighbors. Police, one resident wrote, stand around when some groups nearby appear to be using drugs.
“It’s frustrating to see the police looking so docile,” the resident wrote. “At any job I have ever had, I’ve been expected to find something to do. I do not see any noticeable work ethic from the police. I see a steely presence that does not engage with anyone.”
We are working to get a fuller explanation of the SFPD’s strategy.
On Capp Street, two people sat at the north end. Delivery drivers and workers from nearby businesses unloaded goods, but the rest of the street stayed quiet.
A reader sent in the below shot, taken of Wiese Street at 7:45 p.m. The activity takes place in front of the back windows at La Fénix at 1950 Mission St. where some 40 formerly homeless families live.
Lydia Chávez contributed to this report.
Why do the police do nothing to stop people taking meth and fentanyl in plain sight? Just stop them in the act, book them, and throw the drugs away. That’s what cops would do pretty much anywhere else, but for some reason not in San Francisco.
16th street plaza. A magnet for degenerates. Just take a look around.
In heavily peopled areas in other cities like CDMX and Rome, there are plenty of cops in highly peopled areas that are a presence that calms things down. They are not dressed in SWAT garb as if pacifying an unruly colony, they do not posit themselves as supervising subhumans, they exist as a signal that malicious activity will not be tolerated. And it is not.
I asked the Mayor when he met with residents last month if we’d see SFPD doing foot patrols as the voters demanded. He said not until SFPD was at 100% staffing. Apparently my question moved the needle and SFPD are stumbling to do foot patrols with fits and starts. But we need for SFPD to master this most basic aspect of policing, to be a visible deterrent while not impeding the normal flow of people through spaces.
I know we can’t have Nice Things around here, but how about an SFPD who know how to leverage their soft power to keep residential neighborhoods from becoming ongoing crime scenes?
It is a crime that taxpayers fork over $3/4b for SFPD and cannot get basic honest services that deliver results in exchange.
Marcos,
The Mayor said no Foot Patrols til we’re at 100% staffing ?
He really doesn’t seem to understand that this means NEVER !!
The SFPOA keeps the department understaffed in order to guarantee Overtime so’s officers can pay their mortgages in the East Bay.
They’ve nearly destroyed the Patrol Specials who are down to under a half dozen Foot Patrol specialist from a day when there were hundreds of them and they are, in fact, older than SFPD.
Mr. Mayor, you should talk to a couple of the remaining Patrol Specials and their clients.
Then, use a couple of hundred of those salaries set aside for cop slots that SFPOA will never allowed to be filled to hire Patrol Specials.
Go Niners !!
While I’m glad the area is getting cleaned up, I live close to the 24th BART station and can find people doing drugs during a 20-minute walk, no problem. Why can’t the cops wander around a bit more?
Welcome Gustavo,
Our cops are very poorly trained and led.
As a result they have lost any real human contact with us.
“Steely” as one citizen told you is what they are.
A lot of reasons for that but the cure is certainly Foot Patrols.
The empty cop car with the flashing lights is a great metaphor.
There’s an emergency it says, but the Police are absent.
Let’s see single officer patrols carrying those long billy clubs walking from this intersection in 4 directions and circle a block and come back and relieve the officer in the Permanent Police Kiosk who then does same walk in different direction.
These guys and gals are some really good people for the most part but warm and friendly to us they are not.
Foot Patrols will solve that.
It isn’t Chief Scott blocking them.
It is the SFPOA because this is a dangerous neighborhood and they refuse to put their people in harm’s way.
An elected Police Chief elected on a promise to return the Kiosks/Kobans/Cop Boxes would do it.
Mayor Lurie refuses to give that vote back to the people as it was our first hundred years.
Go Niners !!
h.
> “At any job I have ever had, I’ve been expected to find something to do. I do not see any noticeable work ethic from the police. I see a steely presence that does not engage with anyone.”
Just copying and pasting this since I think it deserves repeating.