Hospital staff, advocates clash in public comments over deputies at SF General and funding for CART

Dozens of callers addressed hospital safety, homelessness response and city funding priorities during public comment at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' June 29 meeting. The remarks revealed a clear divide: emergency-department clinicians and hospital staff reported repeated on-the-job assaults and argued deputies were needed for workplace safety; homelessness and health advocates urged the board to shift funds to community-led responses such as the Compassionate Alternative Response Team (CART).

Nurses and emergency staff described frequent violent incidents at San Francisco General Hospital and urged the board not to remove deputies from the hospital. "We have a long history of violence at the hospital... Nurses have been thrown to the floor, punched, hit, spit on," said Mike Hill, who identified himself as a nurse in the emergency department. "It's reckless to try to remove the deputies from the department with this history. We need more protections, not fewer."

Multiple clinicians gave similar accounts. Robert Alvernas, a nurse for nearly a decade at SF General, said deputies secure scenes when gunshot and stab victims arrive: "If the deputy wasn't here... who knows what could have happened to my coworker." Another nurse said she feared for staff safety and urged a cautious, tested approach before any major changes.

At the same time, community advocates and providers urged the board to fund and implement CART and other non-police crisis responses. Carlos Watkins of the Coalition on Homelessness thanked the board for previously endorsing CART and said the next step was to fund the pilot in this year's budget. Wesley Saver, policy manager at Glide, said CART "offers a meaningful community-led shift away from the criminal legal system" and praised cross-sector development of the model.

Advocates argued that community responders and clinicians can de-escalate many encounters and that funding should move away from policing to care. "We really need all of you to support it in this year's budget and the add back process," said Watkins.

The meeting did not include a board vote on CART or on removing deputies from hospital campuses; the contested security plan discussed by callers is a matter within the Department of Public Health's planning and budget process. Several callers and union members said they had provided extensive feedback to DPH and asked the board to ensure the health department implements a plan that preserves worker safety while building community response capacity.

Why it matters: The comments reflect competing public-safety approaches at the city's largest public hospital: hospital staff prioritize immediate, on-site security; advocates call for long-term investments in community-led crisis response that they argue will reduce harm and criminalization. The debate has budgetary, operational and equity implications.

What happens next: The budget and appropriations committee had previously heard testimony on CART and related DPH plans; advocates at the June 29 meeting urged supervisors to include funding in budget actions under committee review. The board did not vote on the hospital security plan at this meeting.