Tenderloin Station outlines footbeat strategy and youth outreach amid crime increases

San Francisco — Captain Teresa Ewing told the Police Commission at the Jan. 20 Tenderloin community meeting that the station’s boundaries changed (Gary to Mission, Third to South Van Ness), the district has been reorganized into five car sectors and beats, and foot and bike patrols are central to the response strategy for the dense neighborhood.

Ewing said the station has increased officers (cited numbers ranging from about 108 to 140 in different parts of the presentation) and emphasized specialized and crisis-intervention training for new officers. She pointed to a measurable increase in property crime after the boundary expansion — noting auto burglaries rose from 284 (Feb 2014) to 453 (Feb 2015) — and set a goal to reduce crime by 10% in 2016.

The captain described partnerships with local non-profit organizations and programs including Books and Badges (officers reading to children), youth-mentoring pilots that pair officers with young people involved with the juvenile-justice system, and outreach with Hospitality House, Larkin Street Youth Services, and other Tenderloin providers. Ewing said resource deployment is driven by weekly review of data and community input.

Commissioners and the public pressed for clarity on how arrests are handled and how prosecutions are pursued; a resident whose child attends Alice Fong Yu School said she had been told by station staff that officers collected evidence and arrested suspects but that the district attorney sometimes declined to prosecute low-level drug offenses. The commission indicated it would connect the resident with a DA representative.

The captain closed by underscoring goals for February: crime reduction, traffic-incident reduction, enhanced outreach and training, and creation of safe corridors for children and seniors to travel through the neighborhood.