Here’s S.F.’s plan to make streets safer downtown this holiday season

Breed announced the new investment
at
Hallidie Plaza, by the Powell Street BART and Muni Station, on Monday with Police Chief Bill Scott, supervisors, a representative of LinkedIn, and other city and transit leaders. The mayor promised the crowd that San Francisco, resilient after other disasters, would recover after a global pandemic.

“We’re going to fight for this city every single day to make San Francisco a safer city for everyone,” she said. “We have an opportunity to transform our city, to make sure it is clean and it is safe and it is vibrant and thriving for everyone who wants to be a part of it. Safety has to be at the forefront of the work we do to get there.”

Ambassadors offer a middle ground between police and social workers. While they’re faster, cheaper and less controversial to hire than armed officers, they lack the ability to confront criminal activity, but also the training and resources to
r
esolve long-term issues for people who are homeless, drug addicted or mentally ill. Breed said ambassadors do connect people in need to city services, conducting welfare checks, and, if need be, calling for mental health support or police, if someone is, for example, running in and out of traffic.

The city said it’s expanding the ambassador programs because of requests from the community, business owners and supervisors. When asked for data that shows the programs’ efficacy, the city said survey results from stakeholders reported a positive impact.

Chief Scott read an email a tourist sent him a couple months ago thanking him for the “outstanding” SFPD ambassador program. Under the program started two years ago, retired police officers walk the streets downtown and in Chinatown, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Haight and the Castro.

Other
programs track their own metrics: Urban Alchemy reports its workers saved more than 700 lives, largely from overdoses, and de-escalated thousands of potentially dangerous situations, whether preventing a fight or calming a mental health crisis, in five cities. BART General Manager Bob Powers said that since launching the transit agency’s restroom attendant program in March, the program tracked more than 100,000 restroom visits and zero calls for a police officer.

Breed made the announcement as the city tries to find creative public safety solutions ahead of the holiday season.

On the weekend before Thanksgiving last year,
hordes of
thieves ransacked Union Square stores, an incident that grabbed headlines and

further harmed the national perception of the city. In response, Breed flooded Union Square with police officers on Black Friday — despite a staffing shortage that persists this year as well.

SFPD, like other departments across the country, is struggling with a recruitment problem. The department is trying to fill more than 300 vacant positions, including for 200 officers. Breed
boosted the department’s budget
and raised officer salaries as an incentive this fiscal year to lure new cops.

The department just graduated 13 recruit officers from its academy this past Friday and is training another 28 in its current class. The department tracked an anecdotal increase in applications and officers moving from other departments, police spokesperson Sgt. Adam Lobsinger said.

In the interim, the city can more quickly hire ambassadors to address complaints. The city will add up to 25 BART service attendants to walk the stations during operating hours and help riders — with no cost to BART — and up to 25 more SFPD community service ambassadors and non-sworn police service aides who can direct traffic, for example.

The city will also hire up to 50 more workers each for two programs started last year: Welcome Ambassadors to help tourists, and Urban Alchemy workers to address street conditions.

Urban Alchemy, which experienced explosive growth over the past couple years, mainly hires people of color coming out of prison. Their ambassadors stationed on blocks in the Tenderloin and Mid-Market areas clean up trash, tell people not to block sidewalks with tents and stop using drugs around kids, and reverse overdoses.

The mayor and supervisors gushed over the nonprofit Monday, and one Urban Alchemy worker yelled from the crowd, “We love you, London Breed!” Ronen
plans to replicate the model with a local organization in the Mission, with a goal of making the streets beautiful, vibrant and healthy again “without criminalizing poverty.”

But while many housed residents and business owners praise the nonprofit, advocates and many homeless people criticize the organization for pushing people off blocks with nowhere else to go. The organization has faced its own troubles, including two employees shot
on the job
in San Francisco earlier this year and lawsuits alleging improper policing of public spaces and labor law violations.

Tourists and city residents at Hallidie Plaza voiced mixed reactions to Breed’s news. Michelle Mehrer, visiting the city for the first time with her family, didn’t notice ambassadors, but said she felt “100% safe” in the bustling downtown, adding that homeless encampments aren’t as large and people asking for money aren’t as aggressive as in Vancouver, British Columbia, where she lives.

But a San Francisco native who gave only her first name, Cambo, said the investment was “more for the tourists.” She believed money should go to workers cleaning the streets instead.
She agreed with the
mayor’s push to hire more cops
but was also skeptical that it would make a big difference.

“I don’t feel safe anywhere,” she said about her hometown.

Mallory Moench (she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter:@mallorymoench