The San Francisco Police Department wheeled its bus-sized Mobile Command Unit No. 2 onto the 16th and Mission BART plaza in mid-March, and officers assigned there have been busier than ever: Over one-fourth of the city’s arrests and citations issued for drugs that month came from a 1.5 block radius of that intersection, according to a Mission Local analysis.
San Francisco police officers in March made 520 drug arrests or citations — the highest tally since 2018. A total of 140 came from the vicinity of the 16th Street BART Plaza, where Mayor Daniel Lurie has directed officers to scrutinize drug dealing, drug use, and street vending.
This patch of land, just 0.2 percent of the city’s geographical landmass, accounted for nearly 27 percent of San Francisco’s March drug incident reports that resulted in an arrest or citation.
This area encompasses alleys — like Weise and Caledonia streets — that have become notorious for overt drug use.
Still, despite the clear increase in drug citations and arrests, some long-time residents say the criminal activity outside their windows has never been so rampant. They call the alleys nearby “hell every single hour of every single day,” a “zombie graveyard,” and a “drug carnival.”
The Mission police captain and San Francisco’s police chief have also acknowledged that police operations in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin have brought new actors to the Mission.
But officers are increasing their activity: Between January 2018 and January 2025, before SFPD announced its crackdown on the plaza, drug arrests and citations from the area accounted for just five percent of the citywide total.
In March 2025, however, drug arrests and citations from the plaza soared to 27 percent of the citywide total. Arrests and citations related to “disorderly conduct” and warrants also went up.
‘Being proactive’ about citing and arresting drug users
To determine when an arrest was made or a citation was issued, Mission Local analyzed incident reports filed by police. The San Francisco Police Department uses this data to “measure resources” and “strategically deploy officers,” said the department’s spokesperson, Evan Sernoffsky.
While the city says these reports “may serve as the basis for official crime statistics,” they are not an official count of crime. Nor are they an indication that crime has risen.
They do show where police are focusing their attention.
“That uptick you see in that area is a direct reflection of that being a major priority for the SFPD,” Sernoffsky said. Officers are now “generating reports” from the area because they are “being proactive” about finding and arresting drug users.
A similar spike can be seen in other areas of the city where police have “dedicated a lot of resources to addressing drug-related activity,” he added.
Arrests and citations from Sixth Street, where SFPD recently set up a “triage center” to offer services and make arrests, also shot up this year. Drug offense reports in that area accounted for 44 percent of the citywide total in January 2025 — compared to 8 percent in January 2024.
Policing response isn’t enough, experts say
The question is whether the attention has made a big impact beyond the plaza. In Mission Local’s daily posts and in photos sent in from neighbors, it is clear that the side streets remain problematic, filled with illicit activity and the detritus of drug use.
Experts caution that more police reports are not necessarily a mark of permanent improvement.
“These are great numbers, but it’s not sustainable,” said former SFPD sergeant Carl Tennenbaum, a 32-year officer who worked on an undercover narcotics team. “Drug enforcement is low-hanging fruit, and it’s easy to build statistics on that.”
SFPD touted three highly publicized drug raids at 16th and Mission on social media, but the department did not say how many of the people arrested had been charged by the district attorney’s office or directed to treatment. A March 25 raid at Market and Van Ness yielded 40 arrests, but zero charges.
It is easy for police to issue citations for “disorderly conduct” and arrest people with warrants within the same area, according to Dallas Augustine, an assistant professor in the department of justice studies at San Jose State. If an officer approaches someone in a “hot spot” and they don’t have drugs on them, running their name can quickly reveal outstanding warrants.
Chief Bill Scott told the police commission last week that the department has ramped up its enforcement of such low-level crimes as residents are “fed up” with the activity. He sees progress and told the commission, “Until that area gets stable, we’re going to continue to work on the alleys. Even though there is displacement … the groups are getting smaller, and the locations are fewer.”
While Tennenbaum and others were critical — pointing to other public safety issues that get ignored or the need for housing and healthcare — nearby residents and businesses have a mixed view of the operation.
Some want more vigilance, even while acknowledging that the side streets have become more problematic.
John Andrade and Michael Johnson, who live on Julian Avenue, said the police presence has done little for what is essentially a public health issue. Instead of an SFPD mobile unit, they suggested, it would make more sense to have outreach workers engaging with those on the street, offering services and meeting people where they are.
The police can’t “bother to get out of their cruisers,” said Johnson. “They aren’t engaging with folks.”
“It would be a lot more helpful if the Department of Public Health or crisis intervention and [Homeless Outreach Team] were able to provide immediate support” to people on the street, added Andrade.
For now, Lurie’s efforts appear to be a response to his campaign promise of making the city safer. It is unclear, however, how long he is willing to spend a considerable amount of resources on the 300-meter radius around 16th and Mission streets.
Methodology
In our reporting, Mission Local analyzed data on police incident reports from the San Francisco Police Department, published on S.F. Open Data. We only took “Initial” reports filed by officers into account, and reports that resulted in an arrest or citation. That means we excluded reports that refer to ongoing incidents, any reports that were filed by individuals, or any open or active reports pending resolution.
To capture incidents from the 16th Street BART Plaza, we captured all incidents filed within an approximately 300-meter radius of the 16th Street and Mission Street intersection. Likewise, we drew a 300-meter radius around the 6th and Jesse Street intersection to analyze incident reports around the Triage Center.
Thanks for reporting.
Of course it makes sense .
If there is a law enforcement presence where crime is happening , one would hope there would be more arrests .
One can guarantee if there were law enforcement on foot patrolling the streets , in particular areas where there is known drug activity , like the area reported , the numbers will go up.
If only they would be assigned to cover the Lower Polk /Latkin area and the Tenderloin,
This city would be cleaned up fast and once again safe , inviting and enjoyable for all to live and visit .
Why is that so hard to comprehend?
People dont want to be around a drug scene or allow people to sell or use drugs unless they are evil and sick in their own heads .
This tells me that the police are totally ineffectual for this issue. If the number was raised this much by simply having police present, I’m left to infer that the police are effectively absent everywhere else. We have a large police force with a massive budget in this city. There really is no excuse for this lackluster performance.
Where are all of the folks who normally focus on government fraud, waste, and abuse? It’s right here, y’all. Overhaul the department from top to bottom. It’s become fat and inefficient.
More zombies on the way to join the party at 16th Street BART plaza!
The point is to make congregating for fentanyl use and sales in the North Mission uncomfortable enough such that it is more of a bother to do it here than elsewhere more than to incarcerate people. Whether that’s best achieved with armed cops or with SCRT, is not our problem. This conduct is impermissable on our streets, near an elementary school, at a major transit hub
We are going to have to soon confront the issue of what public policy will be towards street fentanyl users when they remain housing and treatment resistant.
The progressive nonprofiteers had decades to execute on their (and my preferred) vision for this. I warned them that their poverty martyr positions defending increasing public squalor were increasingly politically untenable and that would pull a scorching backlash. But they refused to listen and cancelled and blocked me as being anti-homeless. The voters responded by blocking the nonprofits
I told them at the time that we could either do this the easy way or the hard way and it was up to them to figure out the easy way so as to avoid the hard way. The nonprofits kept cashing checks, marking time and attacking anyone who had a problem with that as hating they populations they get paid to serve.
Now, it is going down the hard way, as the nonprofiteers requested.
What is evident here is that SFPD is using ‘disorderly conduct’ as a pretext. The disorderly conduct arrest spike shown in the graph likely represents a fraction of the instances disorderly conduct has been used to justify a detainment based on reasonable articulable suspicion.
Law and Order.
Without it, chaos is guaranteed.
The proof is what 16th Street BART plaza has turned into.
law and order focus is always on petty crime. the law and order should regulate the real estate market. its one of the main reason people are on the streets. because they cant get housing. wealthy people do drugs inside, so you dont see it.
> . the law and order should regulate the real estate market. its one of the main reason people are on the streets.
??? San Francisco has one of the most regulated real estate markets on the planet. Have you ever had to change a street facing window on a historic property?
thats the building permits market. real estate as in sales. changing a window is a problem for the home owner who cant figure out their finances. the market is who much the houses are selling for.
Any arrested addicts found to be here illegally need to be promptly detoxed and deported. The drug problem here is bad enough without having to deal with other county’s addicts as well.
those people complainig about living in the alleys moved into the situation. the gentrifyiers helped kick people on the streets. now they want to complain about the noises. move back to the suburbs. let people get housing first. then they would do the drugs inside. instead of in public.
Thank you to the gentrifiers for moving to the city, paying taxes, and drawing attention to public nuisances that worse off residents don’t have the time or savvy to complain about. Everyone deserves a comfortable public realm.