Public Safety: Building Safe Communities

By Quintin Mecke

• Creating District-based Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils
• Instituting real community policing.
• Improving and Reforming public housing/Housing Authority.
• Improving/increasing awareness of anonymous tip lines.
• Combating recidivism.
• Reducing the number of guns on the street.
• Expanding critical response.
• Increasing public education.
• Investing in communities.

Creating District-based Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils: Any comprehensive violence prevention strategy must first involve the community. By replacing the underutilized monthly Police Community Relations (PCR) meetings with neighborhood crime prevention councils, we can build on existing resources within our neighborhoods, improve police community relations, build trust with the SFPD, increase collaboration and develop community-driven police practices.

Instituting real community policing. I support instituting true community policing similar to practices used in other cities. Foot and beat patrols are not the only components of community policing. Currently, there is nothing in the code that defines or outlines the expectations of community policing. The most impacted neighborhoods and communities must begin to have improved policing to begin the slow process of building trust between the residents and law enforcement. Right now, trust between the African-American community and the SFPD is at an all-time low and as a result, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the SFPD to find witnesses for crimes that are committed.

Improving and Reforming public housing/Housing Authority. With the federal government drastically reducing funding for public housing, the City needs to reevaluate installing security cameras at housing development sites without ensuring that the physical conditions of the properties themselves are clean, habitable, and conducive to public safety. The physical infrastructure of developments like Alice Griffith, Alemany and Potrero Hill are an eyesore and directly reflect the growing inequality existing for the residents of public housing who are predominantly African-American.

Improving/increasing awareness of anonymous tip lines. The city currently has 10 anonymous tip lines, one for each police district station. As part of community policing and potentially in conjunction with the new 311 system, the SFPD needs to consolidate its anonymous tip lines and engage in a public education campaign to increase community awareness of the number and build trust with the SFPD. Similar to 911 and 311, there should be one number for all tips.

Combating recidivism. The City must develop more coordinated reentry services since nearly 75% of the violent crime committed in San Francisco is by repeat offenders. We must begin to understand the link between the criminal justice system and the root causes of violence like housing, lack of education, and good jobs. The City should create and fund a long-term re-entry initiative by establishing a "right to successful re-entry" which focuses on young adults, and which provides universal access to housing, education, job training and jobs to every young man and woman coming out of the system.

Reducing the number of guns on the street. In collaboration with the DA, the City and the SFPD must begin an aggressive and consistent public campaign to get guns off the street.

Expanding critical response. The City must expand the Department of Public Health's Critical Response Team, which deals with the effects of homicides and shootings in the community.

Increasing public education. The City must begin a comprehensive, culturally competent public education campaign against violence, involving City departments and the SFUSD. As DPH's Bayview Health report indicated last year, the violence being experienced is not only a law enforcement issue, it is a public health issue and should be treated as one. Entire neighborhoods are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and we must begin to restore the basic value of life by creating a continuum of services.

Investing in communities. Current funding for educational and cultural opportunities are inadequate in most neighborhoods in our city. There is inequity in arts funding for programming and facilities. In most neighborhoods there is nowhere for people to be a community. Recent focus on Prop H for after school programs is the right approach, but we need to re-invigorate neighborhood cultural opportunities and coordinate these with other departments programs.

Overview Feeling safe in one's neighborhood should be a right not a privilege. Since 2004, the city has had over 335 homicides, nearly a 30% increase from the previous four-year period from 2000 to 2003. As recently reported at the Board of Supervisors' Public Safety Committee, 60% of those homicide victims were African-American + a staggering statistic given that African-Americans represent only 7% of the city's population. The homicide rate is the shame of our city and requires a comprehensive response to the human tragedy enveloping it. Public safety is the foundation of a healthy community and of an active civic life. If people are unable to feel safe as they go about their daily activities, every aspect of a community is affected, including the health of our children, youth, and seniors. San Francisco is experiencing a public safety crisis as it suffers through an unprecedented increase in violent crime. This is a crisis that must be dealt with head-on with the full attention and resources of the Mayor's Office.

In addition, according to the California Department of Justice, violent crime has increased 19% since 2004+2005. As noted, these homicides have disproportionately affected the city's African-American population and have been centered in the Western Addition and Bayview communities. But while those areas have been most directly impacted, it is crucial that we understand that this escalating violence is an issue that affects each and every San Franciscan and that it will take a coordinated effort to stem this rising tide and to address the root causes behind it.

Mayor Newsom has been highly visible and personally involved with some of his signature efforts, like Project Homeless Connect, but has remained noticeably less visible when it comes to issues like the rising violence in communities of color. The City's 2006+2007 budget included $48 million dollars for crime-fighting programs, but Mayor Newsom's approach has excessively focused on law enforcement strategies such as increased police, the revisited enforcement of a child curfew and security cameras, without crafting a broader strategy that involves community based solutions and services. The cameras, which have been installed by both the City and the San Francisco Housing Authority, cannot replace the integrated services that are needed in the impacted communities. We must begin to create proactive evidence-based crime prevention policies and not simply rely on reactive ones, such as increasing police. Increased enforcement, while necessary, is only one part of a comprehensive strategy.

We need initiatives that integrate communities with law enforcement and which foster community development. One good example is the Community Response Network (CRN), a community based network that provides crisis intervention, case management, and street level outreach, which is currently expanding to the Bayview, Western Addition, and Visitacion Valley from its original location in the Mission. The CRN is one type of community based prevention and intervention strategy that is needed in frontline neighborhoods.

Creating safer communities will take a coordinated, collaborative approach to find solutions to the ongoing violence that will include the Mayor, the SFPD, the District Attorney, the criminal justice system and the community. But with an increasing trend of violent crime and homicides, the City needs to provide the public leadership and accountability necessary to create a response to the violence and to address the growing social and economic inequality that exists in the African-American community, which foster conditions that lead to violence. Without doing so, it will be impossible to break this historic cycle of violence facing our city.