A strange new reality has taken hold of San Francisco’s Mission District.
Public drug use and intoxication have surged in recent months, infuriating neighbors and generating splashy news coverage. The neighborhood, especially surrounding the 16th Street BART transit hub, is awash in scenes of people lighting up pipes, passing around suspicious baggies, and stumbling down sidewalks. Residents perceive lawlessness and danger all around.
But the data tells a different story.
According to figures in the major violent and nonviolent crime categories tracked by the San Francisco Police Department, the Mission appears to be the site of a remarkable cleanup, not the center of the city’s latest controversy about street conditions. Larcenies, aggravated assaults, motor vehicle thefts, and most other primary crime types were down significantly from Jan. 1 through April when compared with the same period last year.
The Standard’s analysis of raw police incident data did, however, unearth a sharp uptick in drug offenses and incidents of disorderly conduct, but that activity is not reflected in most of the SFPD’s public crime records, since neither violation is part of the monthly crime report.
Community perception that crime is up while the numbers are down may feel familiar to San Franciscans, whose city gained international notoriety for street chaos during the pandemic, at a time when many crime categories were, in fact, far below their historic peaks. That period illustrated the disconnect that can happen between citywide crime trends and the individual experiences of residents, as many locals reported concerns about feeling less safe.
Both the pandemic period and the current situation illustrate another key weakness in crime data: Many crimes are committed but never reported. That’s a regular phenomenon in the Mission, according to some denizens of its thriving scene.
On May 3, a reporter saw an SFPD officer pull up in a cruiser next to a group of people loitering on Julian Avenue at the corner of 16th Street. “All right, everyone, clear it off the block,” the officer said over a megaphone, then stood outside his vehicle as the group packed up and left. The officer drove away as the group settled onto the sidewalk a block away, and one member began using drugs.
That scene reflected tactics employed by the SFPD in pursuing its drug crime crackdown — in the Mission and across the city. Officers have been arresting people for loitering in droves and have managed to shrink the infamous Sixth Street SoMa drug market, at least temporarily.
But those efforts may have contributed to the rise in public drug use in the Mission as people sought greener pastures away from the corners the SFPD turned into no-go zones. In a March statement, Supervisor Jackie Fielder, whose district includes the Mission, criticized the geographically uneven approach to addressing public drug use, saying it has caused “widespread displacement of drug markets.”
The SFPD did not respond to a request for comment.
How did most crime categories remain relatively low in the Mission even as public drug use has spiked?
Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the question closely mirrors the decades-long argument over the efficacy of the “broken windows” theory of policing.
Widely popular among law enforcement in the 1990s, the theory posited that poor street conditions and failure to police small infractions led to a rise in more serious crimes. Police departments across the country embraced the philosophy and cracked down on minor misdemeanors, but researchers have since struggled to establish clear evidence of the theory’s validity. Meanwhile, the costs have been significant, with many experts arguing that the philosophy led to the overpolicing of people of color.
“It wasn’t fixing the windows that stopped the violent crime. It was getting their hands on the violent criminals,” said Moskos. “Serious crime is caused by serious criminals who are going to do it whether the windows are broken or not.”
But policymakers shouldn’t discount the impact of minor misdemeanors on a community, according to Moskos.
“Those quality-of-life issues matter just for quality of life,” he said. “You don’t want people crapping on your stoop.”
Criminology professor Dan O’Brien of Northeastern University predicts that if people using drugs continue to congregate in the Mission, opportunities for intoxicated conflict will pile up, potentially driving an increase in violent crimes.
“Someone who is on drugs is more likely to commit a violent crime than that same person when they’re not on drugs,” said O’Brien.
Some who use drugs harbor their own theories as to why crime rates remained low in the Mission even as the crowds gathered.
Across from the 16th Street BART station May 5, about 40 people using drugs gathered in the shade, many eating popsicles as Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” played from a speaker.
Yes, we’re using drugs, many said. That doesn’t mean we’re hardened criminals.
Some did acknowledge that the group’s infractions extended beyond public intoxication.
Gavin Rumble, who has been homeless in the city for roughly three years, said many people who are addicted make money stealing from corporate grocery stores. They don’t have a need to steal directly from residents, who are likely to report a robbery or car break-in. If the shoplifters don’t get caught — he said they rarely do — the crime never shows up in police figures.
Still, with the recent push of drug activity in the Mission, he understands why residents might feel less safe.
“They see a whole bunch of drug dealing on every corner, so they probably think it goes hand-in-hand with crime,” Rumble said. “But honestly, it’s not necessarily hand-in-hand. Yeah, it can happen. But it’s more about them making money.”
The sedative effects of fentanyl may be part of what’s stifling the Mission’s violent crime rate.
Codey White, who is from Michigan and has lived on the city’s streets for four years, said he thinks the powerful opioid has incapacitated many people who use drugs, making them less likely to commit violent crimes.
“With fentanyl use, you’re not going to have a bunch of people strung out robbing people,” White said. “Most of them can’t even stand up.”
White, for his part, said many crimes homeless people commit against one another go unreported, thus staying out of the statistics. He had the scabs on his face to prove it.
“I was looking at my phone last night, and someone sucker-punched me in my jaw,” White said. “A lot of people that do dope are super intelligent. But then there’s people around here just acting a fool and making everyone else look like idiots.”