San Francisco’s top law enforcement officials met with dozens of residents from the city’s west side at a community center in Golden Gate Park to discuss concerns over a string of recent crimes that have disrupted the area’s reputation for safety.
Although crime is down overall by 30% this year compared to 2024 across the city, some residents from west side neighborhoods are feeling rattled by what appeared to be random attacks that left two people dead, according to police.
Last month, a father walking with his son across the street after school was stabbed to death in the Balboa Terrace neighborhood in an altercation. A suspect was tracked down near Yosemite National Park and arrested two days after the attack, according to Interim Police Chief Paul Yep.
In July, a man was fatally stabbed after he tried to protect a group of women and children from being harassed at a Muni stop in the Ingleside neighborhood.
Yep and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins were among a group of panelists who tried to reassure west side residents that the city is doing everything in its power to promote public safety.
“Crimes are down, but it just takes one, two horrific incidents and that’s not OK,” Yep said.
Police Cmdr. Tracy McCray pointed to the growth of social media and smartphones as contributing to the perceptions that crime is up.
“Unfortunately, crime happens,” she said. “But today, instead of us hearing about it on the news, it’s everywhere because we all have these little devices, and so more people are talking about it.”
Police staffing fuels perceived lack of safety
Yep and McCray also discussed how low staffing levels in the San Francisco Police Department could lead to some feeling more unsafe.
“We do have a shortage of 500 to 700 officers,” Yep said. “We have to leverage everything we can to keep the city safe.”
They discussed how despite the staffing shortage, new technologies like drones have allowed for more efficient crime prevention and apprehension of suspects.
Drones were utilized to track down a group of female juveniles who were suspected of committing a series of “unprovoked” assaults at different locations around the city during the summer, including at the Stonestown Galleria mall.
After being spotted by a drone downtown in late July, SFPD followed the group to the shopping center.
Other crimes such as retail theft, which is prevalent at Stonestown Galleria, were brought up by several audience members as frustrations at the panel discussion.
Bob Totah is a security officer and member of the Community Ambassadors Program, a branch of SFPD that allows retired officers to monitor commercial areas and act as a visual deterrent against crime. Totah works at Stonestown Galleria as an ambassador. He mentioned how many stores at the mall have their own security, but that company policies forbid security officers from being able to put hands on suspected shoplifters to stop them.
“They’re taught to keep hands off, and I’m sure that’s because of liability,” Totah said. “That’s why we see people shoplifting and getting away.”
Additionally, McCray mentioned how reforms in the city’s juvenile justice system have restricted the ability to hold juveniles accountable.
“We don’t arrest a lot of juveniles,” McCray said. “The rules surrounding arresting juveniles are a lot … We have a 16-page department general order on dealing with juveniles.”
Focus on youth rehabilitation
But Katy Miller, the chief probation officer for the San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department, praised the reforms that have focused on rehabilitation instead of incarceration, leading to low numbers of juveniles in the justice system.
“The number of juvenile arrests have gone down 82% in 25 years. Today, we have 300 kids on our caseload,” Miller said. “We are really trying to think about how opportunity and accountability work together for both the safety of the community and the long-term success of the young person.”
Jenkins said her office is doing its job in prosecuting felony crimes, but that other aspects of the state’s criminal justice system allow charged suspects to be out on the street with the potential to re-offend.
“The number of juvenile arrests have gone down 82% in 25 years. … We are really trying to think about how opportunity and accountability work together for both the safety of the community and the long-term success of the young person.” Katy Miller, San Francisco Juvenile Probation Department
“Of our felony crimes in San Francisco, of the cases that we have filed, only 25% of those defendants are in custody,” said Jenkins. “That’s a pretty low number, and so that is something that we’re up against because we’re seeing a lot of people go out and continue to commit crimes and get rearrested.”
Even though crime is down, according to the numbers, it is the feelings of residents that supersedes data.
“It’s really how people feel,” Yep said. “It’s incidents like this that are not going to be tolerated, and that tells me that we have way more work to do.”
