San Francisco Needs to Rethink Its Reliance on Policing to Address Public Safety Concerns

By Ann Marie Galvan agalvan1@mail.ccsf.edu

In February, Mayor London Breed introduced a $27.6 million budget supplement to address police staffing shortages and fund police overtime to ensure that “police officers are able to continue to respond to the basic needs and priority concerns facing the City.”

This would boost the already approved $714 million police budget for fiscal year 2023, which is $50 million more than last year’s budget.

Police overtime has been driven to serve “priority initiatives” in San Francisco, says the mayor’s announcement, such as sending more cops to high-tourism areas of the city, “violence reduction” and the unclearly defined “Tenderloin operations.” However, the report does make clear that “open air drug dealing” is a priority of supplemental funding for “public safety.”

This announcement came in the wake of a private meeting that Breed, police command staff, the sheriff, and a representative from the district attorney’s office had with “around 20 business owners” from the Tenderloin — a meeting that the mayor’s office denied press access to, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, who spoke with two attendees after the meeting. During this meeting, Police Chief Bill Scott is reported to have said that more officers have been trained in narcotics and are focusing on disrupting drug markets and arresting people selling drugs.

But drug use and dependency should be treated as a health issue to be addressed through rights-based measures, including public health education, care and support, and safe injection sites. Studies show that when substance abuse treatment centers in an area increase, violent and financially-motivated crimes decrease. Additionally, expanded mental health treatment, including easier access to psychiatric drugs, also has been shown to reduce violent crime. The non-profit Civil Rights Corp has compiled many studies like this in their report “Getting Smart on Safety,” which presents non-carceral forms of harm and violence prevention.

These underlying issues cannot be resolved by simply increasing police presence in an area or perpetuating “war on drugs”-style policing measures. Research has shown that initiatives aimed at improving the social and emotional well-being of students and young adults can lead to significant reductions in arrests, including a decrease of up to 35 percent in total arrests and up to 50 percent in violent crime arrests. Access to employment and higher minimum