Residents Urge Tenderloin-Focused Police Lines, Raise Safety and Use-of-Force Concerns

Summary

At the San Francisco Police Commission’s first redistricting community meeting in the Tenderloin, police and controller staff presented a draft map and methodology; hundreds of residents urged boundaries that keep Tenderloin-focused resources nearby and raised safety concerns including a viral video of an officer’s interaction with a wheelchair user.

The San Francisco Police Commission held its first community meeting on the department’s proposed district-station boundary changes for the Tenderloin, where SFPD and the controller’s office presented a draft map and a data-driven analysis and then heard more than an hour of public comment.

City officials framed the session as the opening of a 90-day public comment period. Chief Greg Serrano told the audience the draft is a “starting point” and that boundary changes would not reduce the citywide number of officers: “No police district is going to lose police officers, and no police district is going to get additional police officers at the expense of another station,” Serrano said. The department said any reassignment would alter which captain officers report to, not how officers are deployed day to day.

Captain Jason Cherness described the Tenderloin’s makeup—about 25,000 residents and roughly 3,500 children—and walked through the draft border shifts, which would move parts of the east boundary toward Powell Street and extend the southern boundary along Market toward…

Residents Urge Tenderloin-Focused Police Lines, Raise Safety and Use-of-Force Concerns

Summary

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