Mayor London Breed tackles hate crimes in San Francisco

The sudden spike of all hate crimes inspired Breed to create a street violence intervention program to respond to violence

By SIMHA HADDAD

SAN FRANCISCO – Mayor London Breed has invested a large amount of financial resources and support in fighting hate crimes in the City by the Bay.

In 2021, hate crimes against Asians represented 53% of all hate crimes. The sudden spike inspired Breed to create a street violence intervention program to respond to violence, including shootings. Responders act quickly to not only aid the victims and their families but also to help prevent retaliation which might then lead to a never ending cycle of violence.

Breed also partnered with the Community Youth Center to help train and cultivate young Asian people by providing job opportunities and leadership opportunities and helping support one another within the community. She also created a senior escort program to provide seniors with help getting home safely and running errands.

“We are going to support the community,” Breed told The Blade explaining her mission. “We are going to band together against anyone, no matter what their race is, when they attack. We are going to bring Black and Asian communities together to create solidarity and support and to address public safety in the community. Most importantly, we are going to implement restorative justice by getting to the heart of people, trying to understand why these people are committing these crimes, and how to address it and prevent it in the future.”

Already, Breed’s programs and initiatives have produced positive change. According to a study shared with The Blade by the Mayor’s office, In 2022, hate crime cases went down significantly (68%) when compared to 2021. Hate crimes went up 81% in 2021 when compared to the average for the previous three years (2018-2020). Hate crimes against AAPI people contributed to this increase. In 2022, the number of hate crimes against the AAPI community went down tenfold compared to 2021(from 60 to 6 cases)

Unfortunately, hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals are high as a proportion of all cases (including gay males, trans individuals, and lesbians). In 2022, 28% of hate crimes targeted LGBTQ+ individuals.

On average, 22% of recorded hate crimes in the last five years (2018-2022) targeted LGBTQ+ individuals.

The Mayor’s office also shared the following list of efforts to tackle hate crimes in San Francisco:

Examples of main efforts to tackle hate crimes in San Francisco

• Creation of the SFPD Community Liaison Unit to focus on hate crimes and incidents. The unit, comprised of five dedicated officers from the SFPD’s Community Engagement Division, has been supporting San Francisco’s diverse communities, improving reporting of crime, and supporting victims of hate crimes and prejudice-based incidents.

• San Francisco contributed over $3 million in the last two budget cycles to supporting the creation of the Coalition for Community Safety and Justice (CCSJ). This Coalition, formed in response to long-standing incidents of violence, crime, ra- cial tensions, and the surge in COVID-19 related anti-Asian racism, was founded by five Asian organizations which work to identify and develop community-centered programmatic solutions to mitigate violence and hate across all communities of color.

• The City allocated over $400,000 in the FY 22-23 budget to expand trauma recovery services for Cantonese speaking victims of crime.

• Expansion of the Street Violence Intervention Program (SVIP) to dense neighborhood commercial corridors with a high volume of Asian pedestrian traffic.

• Over $1 million investments for transgender violence prevention and community services for Black, Latinx, and transgender communities of color and re-entry services for transgender community members, and case management for formerly incarcerated transgender residents.

• LYRIC Center for LGBTQ Youth and the Office of Transgender Initiatives started convening local LGBTQ+ organizations to work on initiatives to tackle LGBTQ hate, including digital harassment and threats of physical violence.

Growing Up With Violence

Breed is the 45th Mayor of San Francisco and the first African-American woman elected to the position, previously having served as president of the Board of Supervisors from 2015-2018. She is well known for her immediate and effective response to COVID-19 as well as her devotion to helping underprivileged youth, ending homelessness, advancing public safety, and advocating for the Asian, Black, and LGBTQ+ communities’

In Breed’s childhood San Francisco community, violence and fear were a way of life.

“People I grew up with had a lot of conflict with other people I grew up with like close family and friends,” Breed told The Blade, “so in that type of situation, there was a lot of fear. For example, with the African-American men in my family, my brothers, my cousins, my uncles, there was fear because of where you lived or whose family member might have killed or had beef with another family member. I grew up concerned about my community, concerned about someone dying. I went to sadly more funerals than I can count.”

Breed was raised in poverty primarily by her grandmother in a house of five, often taking random jobs like delivering elderly people’s groceries for one dollar per store run to scrape together some extra cash.

As Breed got older, she began to take an active role in bettering her community and advocating for those in similar underprivileged states. For a long time, financing the type of change she was trying to implement proved to be her biggest challenge.

“As a community advocate and someone who worked with young people to help address these types of challenges, it was a constant battle to get resources to invest in the kind of programs that would help turn people’s lives around.”

The Mayor has come a long way from her early struggles to finance programs as she recently signed a $14 billion dollar budget that prioritizes economic recovery, public safety, workers and families, homelessness, and behavioral health needs.

Breed also told The Blade that her experience growing up surrounded by fear is what inspired her to become a politician.

“When I first ran for the Board of Supervisors, I did it unfortunately because there was a lot of violence in my community,” said Breed. “So, there was a lot of need to not only help prevent violence but to respond to it. I really felt like there was a voice needed at City Hall that actually understood what it was like to live in that situation every single day, and in some cases to live in fear because of the issues around gun violence. A big reason why I ran was wanting to do better for my community.”

Hate Speech And Prejudice

As a woman of color and the first Black woman to be elected to her position, Breed has faced a backlash of racism, threats, and discrimination throughout her career.

“When I got into the political arena, that is when sadly a lot of the real nastiness started to take shape --the name calling, the threats, the various kind of attacks on me based on being either a woman or because of my race,” Breed said.

Some of these attacks even escalated to protests in front of her residence.

“I do remember someone with a pitchfork,” recalled Breed, “like a real pitchfork outside, and some of the language used like ‘tar feather.’”

The expression to Tar and feather a person is an expression that alludes to a former brutal punishment in which a person was smeared with tar and covered with feathers. It is a form of public humiliation that has been used for centuries to take revenge or to punish someone. It was used during the American Revolution and throughout American history to harm people with certain political or religious beliefs.

Scarily, these types of ignorant attacks have even come from well-educated and respected individuals in the community Breed said.

“I just remember this one individual who worked for one of the lawyer’s groups, I forget which one it is, he went on this rampage and basically called me a coon. He was a white man who worked with lawyers to address civil rights-related issues, and yet this was the kind of language that he used at me.

It is unfortunate that it gets to that point, but sadly when you are an elected official, that is something you have to be prepared for, even though it’s still hurtful when it happens,” she noted.

The word Coon is an extremely disparaging and offensive contemptuous term used to refer to a Black person. The use of this term as an ethnic slur derives from the practice of using coonhounds (dogs trained to hunt raccoons) to recapture escaped black slaves prior to the end of the Civil War and later adopted by extremist white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, intolerant individuals or other groups.

Selflessly, in these moments, Breed said she feared more for the well-being of her community than for her own personal safety.

“I kind of feared more what would happen if people from my community decided to respond to these kinds of attacks, which they also took offense to, or what would happen if the police responded. I was always more so concerned about someone getting hurt or some sort of altercation or anything that could happen as a result of a lot of this hate speech.”

When asked why this type of bigotry is still so common, Breed said she believes there are a number of reasons, listing mental illness and lack of proper education both in schools and in homes.

“I was fortunate to grow up in a household with a grandmother who made me feel that I needed to treat everybody right,” said Breed. “That stemmed from her growing up in Jim Crow south with segregation just one generation removed from slavery and how she felt the way she was treated was wrong. That was really embedded in me.”

“I think that if you have the kind of people in your life who make you understand from day one that that type of thinking is wrong, it makes a difference.”

“Also, we need to think about what we are teaching in our schools. Are we teaching kids as they come up how to treat one another? Are we teaching ethical behavior? I just think that to a certain extent, we have gotten away from all that.”

Breed also shared her desire for other social change, mainly in the way schools are addressing gendered bathrooms, as she feels this debate is emblematic of the same lack of empathy that leads to hate speech and hate crimes.

“I would like to see a change, for example, in this whole debate around bathrooms and the, ‘I don’t want my kids in the bathroom with this other person’ perspective. Why is this made into such a big deal? Why can’t we figure out a better way to allow people to grow up in a society where there is no stigma attached to who uses the restroom based on what they feel their gender is? How do we change that? How do we maybe change the bathroom options that we have? How do we naturally create as kids grow up more of a congregant society around that? And I think we have to think about how there are different kids with different experiences, and we need to learn how to be respectful of one another and not feel like we deserve something more than someone else. Everyone deserves to have the right to use the restroom based on the restroom of their choosing, and how we address that is by making sure that we make it a part of what we do in our public schools and our school systems in general.”

When asked for her opinion on why online hate speech can turn to violent hate crime, much like with the recent Club Q shooting, Breed said she believed some people might take cyber hate speech as a call to action.

“I do think we have a responsibility to be very careful about what we put out there because it definitely can imply that you were asking people to go after someone because of their stance on their race, gender, or their political stance.”

“I just think that social media has really damaged our society,” said Breed. “I remember when the kids at the Cultural Center started using Myspace. At first, the kids were on Myspace, and they were just showing pictures of each other and talking about each other, and saying nice things like telling each other they looked nice. I thought this was kind of a cool thing, and then all of a sudden, it became a tool that the kids started using to figure out people’s whereabouts. Then people started attacking one another to the point where all of a sudden, there were shootings between communities because of battles on social media. It went from being what was meant to be this positive way of communicating and staying in touch with one another to being used as a tool to push for fights and violence.”

“I do think we have a responsibility to monitor social media to the best of our ability. If we are a company responsible for the platform, we need to ensure that when we see something getting out of hand, we are dealing with it. Because when you are on the computer typing, you are not looking at a person face-to-face. You are talking to a computer, and you may have all these things on your mind that you want to get out, but then that information goes to the public to a whole other arena and kind of takes on a life of its own. For some people, that’s empowering, and they feel like people are finally paying attention to them when they weren’t before. And then they continue to push the envelope. So I really think it can be very dangerous, and I do think we have a responsibility to provide a lot more regulation, especially around hate speech.”

Of all the social media platforms, Breed takes the most issue with San Francisco-based Twitter, which has become increasingly controversial and toxic since billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the company.

“Twitter is pretty horrible. It’s toxic, and it’s sad because, again, a tool that should be used for good has turned into just a place where it is really all about attacking somebody and coming up with the most creative or clever way to go after somebody. I really think Twitter is the most dangerous of them all. I just would like to see it become more responsible,” she said.

“I do think that when the rise of hate crimes elevates to violence, there have to be consequences. People need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Breed added.

Positive Change

When asked about her most proud accomplishment thus far in elected office, the mayor named her Opportunities for All (OFA), program which provides paid internships for high school students in the city.

“No matter what school you go to, no matter where you live, we will not turn any kid away. Even if we don’t have a place to fit them, we will still make sure they have some sort of paid opportunity for the summer so that no one gets left out. I never want money to be a barrier to someone’s desire to be successful in their life.”

“When I was 14, I was able to get a work permit and be part of the Mayor’s Youth Employment and Training program,” said Breed. “The problem with that was there were only so many spaces.”

While Breed was able to secure a spot in the program, seeing what happened to some of her peers as a result of the program’s limited space deeply affected her.

“I remember a whole lot of people not getting a space in the program, and all I could think about were some of the kids who I went to school with who went from being not so bad to being actually really terrible. They were involved in a lot of drug dealing in violent crime. I just felt like there was a really critical moment where I realized that if we were not going to send these people on the right path, they were going to go in a very different direction. I just want to make sure we never miss out on an opportunity to turn someone’s life around.”

Thanks to her policy of never turning any child away from OFA, Breed is able to boast of the program’s positive impact on San Francisco’s youth. Some participants in the program have learned valuable skills like leadership and coding. Some now work for nonprofits, tech companies, and city government, to name a few. Many go off to college and return to help manage and run the program for other youths.

“I feel like this program is really going to, and has already transformed lives, and will continue to do so,” said Breed.

Finally, she shared some words of encouragement for future leaders:

“I would say to any young person looking to become a leader, one day, number one, just believe in yourself. You know what’s in your heart. Stay true to who you are. Do good work in the community, and feel good about what you are doing. When opportunities present themselves, don’t be afraid to take advantage of them. Sometimes it can feel scary and overwhelming, but at the end of the day, if you feel it in your heart and you want to go for it, I say go for it.”