Since mid-March, San Francisco police have maintained a heavy presence at the 16th Street BART Plaza, an area that, along with several side streets, is now known for fencing, drug dealing and drug use to a degree that’s uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous for the thousands of people who use the transit station.
Will the increased attention work? The San Francisco Police Department and the city have yet to lay out the strategy, but so far, we know that the department has parked a temporary mobile unit on the southwest plaza, police and sheriff’s deputies are more frequently in the area giving citations, and the Department of Public Works is often on site to monitor unpermitted vending and to keep the plazas and side streets clean.
As our daily updates illustrate, the results have been mixed. Research into similar crime hotspots in other cities offers clues — and warnings.
“Hotspot policing” — flooding a high-crime area with police and other resources in an attempt to turn it into a low-crime area — has a long history. It has been part of San Francisco policing strategy for more than 30 years. Michael Smith, a former San Antonio, Texas, police officer and now a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio, is one of several researchers studying its implementation and effects.
Two sites where Smith’s research has been applied so far — specifically, a three-step hotspot strategy developed by Smith, and similar to what the San Francisco Police Department is doing at the 16th Street Plaza — include an industrial section of Tacoma, Washington, and a crime-ridden public housing project in San Antonio.
The lessons learned from looking at these two cases? Added policing helps, but it’s not magic. Sustained attention is important, as is the collaboration between the police and the communities.
The initial stage of Smith’s plan called for a police officer to sit in a parked car at the hotspot with its emergency lights activated for 15-minute intervals.
The officers then patrolled for another 15 minutes around what Smith refers to as the “treatment area.” That is a section of the hotspot that is about the size of two football fields. The officers repeated this ritual multiple times a day, seven days a week. This is called a “high visibility approach.”
This appears similar to officers sitting in SUVs at the 16th Street plazas and sometimes patrolling.
Smith emphasized that the purpose of patrolling is to be visible, and to engage in positive interactions with the residents or business owners in the area.
The second stage of Smith’s plan employs a “problem-oriented, place-based strategy.” This step seeks the collaboration of multiple city agencies to address conditions that exacerbate or foster criminal activity at hotspots. An example of this could be adding new streetlights, signage, or surveillance equipment, or the slight modification of infrastructure.
Policing at the 16th Street BART plaza is already taking a multidisciplinary approach, according to Mission Station captain Liza Johansen.
The Department of Emergency Management, the Police Department, the sheriff’s department, the Department of Public Works (which enforces street vending regulations and conducts street sweeping), the Department of Public Health, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, the Human Services Agency (which receives referrals from the street teams and onsite mobile triage units), and the fire department step in when needed.
Tacoma, Washington
One of the spots where Smith’s strategy was used is Tacoma’s East 25th Street corridor, which had become one of that city’s worst crime areas. Drug deals, shootings, homelessness and sex work were so common that some business owners installed electric fencing to protect their properties.
In the first three months of treatment, April 2024 to June 2024, monthly violent offenses in the area decreased from 2.3 per month on average to 1.3, compared to each of the previous 12 months before the start of the plan. The police department conducted 15 drug enforcement arrests and engaged with 305 homeless individuals, but none was placed in a shelter.
In the next three months, July 2024 to December 2024, the monthly average offenses continued to decline. This time, the drop was much smaller, from 2.9 per month in 2023 to 2.6 per month in 2024 during the same period. The number of drug-related arrests increased to 40, and the number of contacts made with people experiencing homelessness decreased to 220. One of these individuals was placed in shelter.
Law enforcement officials in Tacoma identified three problem businesses: Two gas stations and a motel. One of the gas stations sold pipes and alcohol and was a hub of drug-use and prostitution.
The motel was encouraged to conduct an assessment on Crime Prevention Environmental Design, a strategy that seeks to reduce crime through property maintenance, private security, surveillance and signage.
At the time of the last report, contacts had been made for signage at one of the gas stations and meetings on liquor license regulations had taken place, but no positive results had yet been reported. All three businesses declined interviews.
Alexx Bacon, president of Aaberg’s Tools and Equipment Rental, which has done business from the same location on Tacoma’s East 25th for more than 30 years, said the difference since before the police presence began “is night and day,” and that it has “tremendously changed the amount of drug deals, drug use and open-air camping.”
“It’s not perfect,” Bacon added. “We are in an industrial part of the city, and most industrial districts of any city deal with a little bit of what we deal with.”
Other businesses in the area said crime still persists.
“They’re climbing over the back buildings to break into the warehouse. They’re breaking windows,” Jamie Rasmussen from Aqua Rec’s Fireside Hearth and Home told KOMO news in late February, shortly after the Tacoma city council discussed the results of the plan.
Rasmussen declined to comment when reached by phone on April 4. Two other business owners spoke briefly with Mission Local. An employee at Aqua Rec agreed that the difficult conditions remained. Another employee from LD Kitchen & Bath, said conditions looked better, but declined to elaborate.
Smith, the former cop turned criminologist, was tempered in his conclusions about the success on 25th Street. Given its history, Smith said, 25th Street needs a much longer approach.
“If you know about that area, it has a lot of challenges associated with it, and will undoubtedly require a longer-term commitment from the city in order to begin to move the needle in the direction we’d like to see on violent crime,” he said.
San Antonio, Texas
In San Antonio, Smith’s strategy is in its second year at the Rosemont at Highland Park, a mixed-income 252-unit apartment complex consisting of 11 buildings in the southeast part of the city. Residents there have complained about criminal activity for years.
After months of high-visibility policing that started in the summer of 2023, the police department moved to a second phase, spending thousands of dollars on LED lights and cameras that read license plates.
For Domingo Ibarra, the director of security at Opportunity Home San Antonio, which owns and operates Rosemont, the results have been positive.
The complex, Ibarra said, registered 134 crime incidents in 2023. In 2024, the number went down to 92.
Callie Davis-Carr, who lives two blocks northwest from the Rosemont complex, said conditions have improved significantly in the last year.
“I used to live in dread and fear and was very watchful, because I would always hear gunshots in the night,” said Davis-Carr, adding that things had gotten so bad that she found five shell casings in the path to her backyard. “I really thank God I have not heard gunshots in a year’s time. It seems like we’ve turned the corner. ”
The office of Phyllis Viagran, the council member of the San Antonio district where the apartment complex is located, confirmed a reduction in criminal activity, but said crime is still an issue at Rosemont. The complex’s proximity to the highway makes it easy for people to speed and get away, and illegal businesses operating until late at night and serving alcohol also contribute to criminal activity.
Rachel Rohrer lives a couple blocks southwest from the Rosemont but, in her experience, she said, since the hotspot policing began, criminal activity has moved closer to her home.
“I haven’t really noticed a big decrease in crime,” said Rohrer. “We’ve seen an increase in burglaries and known drug dealers in our area. I can’t say anything positive about the program.”
“We were hoping that the chief would come out and address the community … but we really haven’t heard from them, so all we have to go by is our daily lives here and the things that we hear and see.”
While the 16th Street BART Plazas have only had a heavy police presence since March, residents who live near the plazas expressed similar concerns: that the police presence on the plazas has merely moved the drug activity — the buying, the selling, the overdoses and other public health crises — into nearby side streets.
While he studies hotspot policing and believes in the importance of law enforcement, Smith advised San Francisco against relying solely on policing if the city wants long-term results.
“Policing is like a fever reducer. It’s going to help you feel better and it’s going to lower your temperature, but it’s not going to cure your disease,” said Smith. “You need other strategies to be brought to bear in addition to hotspot policing, in order to really change the underlying conditions that make those places persistently violent.”
The final step in Smith’s hotspot strategy has yet to begin in Tacoma or San Antonio. Called “focused deterrence strategy,” it emphasizes changing the infrastructure of the hotspot itself and offering school or job training to the people who tend to commit most of the crime.
The city of Dallas, for example, implemented greening efforts at a vacant lot and sought to start an abatement program at abandoned and dilapidated buildings. At the 16th Street plazas, a planned affordable housing project could break ground as soon as next January. Its developers are working to submit an application to fund the first phase of the project.
A perfect example that can create long term solutions, Smith said, is the creation of a skate park at Civic Center in the fall of 2023, a few months after the SFPD set up a similar 24/7 command center operation at the area.
“The skate park example is a really good one,” said Smith. “The goal of what we do in our cities is to bring together this multidisciplinary team that can help identify, or diagnose what the problems are, and then come up with the creative solutions needed to address them.”
The skatepark is an example of clearing a limited area during certain hours, unless it is locked down or given 24/7 security. The BART plazas, despite being semi-famous 80s skate spots, would never work as sanctioned skate parks. UN plaza works because there is go-around access.
Has the police crackdown worked so far? Why would anyone expect to have more success beyond what it has currently achieved? The options are: more police or other security, accept the current improvements and keep police stationed there long term, or pull police and have conditions return to pre-crackdown.
More police/security will come with a backlash affecting poor people living in the targeted area — regardless of whether they are housed or addicted to drugs. Nobody needs their rights more than the disenfranchised. Maybe poor but housed residents view this as a willing trade-off, I don’t know.
While I applaud the increased police presence around the BART stations, I hope that when cops “patrol,” it’s on foot. Anyone who walks around the Mission can easily find someone doing drugs or selling what is likely shoplifted merchandise. It’s Saturday as I write this and I guarantee that if cops walk north of the 16th street BART station, on the west side of Mission, they will literally stumble across stolen goods being sold on the sidewalk.
Campers,
DPW Supervisor, Paul Hayward has the right idea in suggesting culturally appropriate vendor and entertainment facilities.
A stage and Police Koban with a 24/7/365 would cost far less than what SFPD is spending now with all the Overtime to cops who spend 95% of their time there chatting with one another.
Design of this Patrol Design is 3 cops round the clock with one in the Cop Box and never leaving even for nuclear war.
The other two officers alternate Solo Foot Beats in alternating 2 block Spider web designed networks.
A bolder and more forward thinking approach is to copy Switzerland and Portugal and Oregon and, Stockton for gawd’s sake and install a UBI and Decriminalization model.
For now, let’s get a Temporary Stage up with bands and poets and Citizens who just want to air their grievances on SFGV which should also cover the thing 24/7/365.
Go Warriors !!
h.