On a recent sunny day in San Francisco, I found myself in a situation most of us who live in California have confronted. Walking down a busy street, I came across an unhoused man lying facedown on the asphalt. Over and over, he screamed for help, one arm plaintively raised to the sky, the other limp at his side. A wheelchair that appeared to be his sat discarded on the sidewalk a few yards away.

A stream of cars and pedestrians passed by without stopping. To be fair, he was no waif. Lifting him into the chair, if that’s what he even wanted, would have been extremely difficult under the best of conditions — and these were not. The man was almost certainly either under the influence or suffering from mental illness.

He needed more help than any one stranger could give him. So I got out my phone and thought about whom to call.

If a recent story in the Atlantic is to be believed, residents of San Francisco, befitting our progressive values, have no shortage of compassionate options to navigate situations like this. We have the “Street Crisis Response Team, EMS-6, Street Overdose Response Team, San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team, Street Medicine and Shelter Health, DPH Mobile Crisis Team, Street Wellness Response Team, and Compassionate Alternative Response Team.”

But are any of these options actually available on demand?

In one of the most heart-wrenching anecdotes in the Atlantic piece, the author describes an added man lying naked outside a Safeway. A woman calls for help. But, tellingly, despite our city’s so-called wealth of services, it is police who respond. And do nothing.

It could have been worse.

When I was living in downtown Los Angeles several years ago, a homeless man, in a state of emotional distress, climbed to the top of a tall billboard near my apartment. Police officers who arrived on the scene tasered him; he fell several stories to his death before a crowd of onlookers.

Just last month, San Francisco police officers showed up to a dispute between two allegedly unhoused men — and shot them both dead.

For all our supposed compassion in California, it is the police who remain the primary point of contact with those suffering in our streets. And they are ill-equipped to handle the task.

All of this was on my mind as I tried to figure out what to do.

If I called 911, would the police come? What if they found drugs on him? Would an arrest record make it even harder for him to get a home one day? Or would the confrontation end with violence if he gave the officers trouble?

In the middle of these deliberations, a voice suddenly jumped up behind me.

“Keep walking,” it said.

I turned and saw a different homeless man staring back at me.

“Keep walking,” he repeated, “or I’m going to f— you up.”

His expression indicated he was serious. And I had no idea what to do.

Was the man standing up for his friend on the ground? Or were the two in conflict? Should I risk a fight to try to figure out how to help?

I could think of no answers — and the man before me was in no mood to talk. So I walked away.

“Do something.”

We hear the phrase repeatedly endlessly here in San Francisco and elsewhere in California in regard to the abject conditions on our streets. But what does it mean?

Any examination has to start with what California voters intended when they passed the endlessly controversial Proposition 47 in 2014. If we take voters at their word, they wanted to do as the bill says — to stop treating crimes of poverty and drug possession as felonies.

Unfortunately, while voting is undoubtedly one of the most assertive forms of mass communication, its message is rarely definitive. There is always a wiggle room for misinterpretation — or willful misreading.

When I recently spoke with conservative state attorney general candidate Eric Early, he argued that Californians didn’t know what they were signing up for with Prop. 47, thanks to the proposition’s misleading ballot title: “The Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.”

He’s not alone. And he’s certainly right that for a bill designed to ease or eliminate sentencing for low-level crimes, that title is Orwellian.

But in 2020, voters shot down the much clearer “Criminal Sentencing, Parole and DNA Collection Initiative” — which would have rolled back Prop. 47’s reforms — by a 62%-38% margin.

The majority of Californians have repeatedly stated that they do not want crimes born of poverty, mental illness and addiction resolved with jail cells.

But is that the end of it?

“If you’re going to die on the street, San Francisco is not a bad place to do it.”

The cynical implication of that line, pulled from the Atlantic piece, is that San Franciscans have willfully fashioned their city a civil libertarian paradise for the troubled. Misfits from across the country can draw from our city’s alleged font of resources or misbehave as self-destructively they see fit. In our naive compassion, we are happy to let them do as they please.

At least until this week’s recall.

Putting aside the blatant myths that San Francisco is a migration destination for the criminally indigent or a wellspring of social services capable of offering help to all who seek it, is anyone in this city really fine with rampant theft — even out of necessity? Or with people using the sidewalks as toilets? Or with addicts dying on the street with a needle in their arm?

It’s safe to say we are not.

Unstated, but implicit in our voting record, is a broad desire for alternatives to the old status quo of siccing police on poor people, the addicted, the homeless and throwing them behind bars. Voters, in the most direct way we are able, have repeatedly asked for policymakers for new proactive, compassionate solutions.

Instead — and this is true across California — the governmental response in the eight years since Prop. 47 passed has largely been to let chaos reign and argue about its causes. Police rarely respond to low-level crimes or street crises, but neither does anyone else. Meaningful alternatives have been ignored or slow-walked to the point of despair.

This is not what anyone signed up for.

Voters in most major metropolitan areas in California have passed measures allotting billions for supportive homeless housing and treatment services. They have also passed police accountability measures that strongly imply a desire to lessen non-emergency police interactions with the public — which have a history of ineffective, racially fraught and/or violent outcomes.

It’s safe to say that, at a bare minimum, Californians want to be able to call someone — not police — who can contact those on the street, intervene if they are in crisis or causing trouble, institute a mental health hold if necessary and/ or connect them with food, housing, treatment and social services as needed.

This service obviously isn’t the end all be all of crime and homelessness prevention (which, are two separate problems). But it is a prerequisite for meaningfully and compassionately improving our streets and restoring a basic sense of agency over our city’s condition.

Unlike most other cities in California, San Francisco has made inroads into building this infrastructure. Mayor London Breed’s recent budget noted that the city’s Street Crisis Response Team soon intends to field all behavioral 911 calls where no weapon is involved. It currently handles 46%-57% of such calls.

This progress, if it comes to fruition, would be welcome. But the fact that we’re still ramping up capacity while endlessly arguing about our district attorney and police staffing is gutting.

We’re eight years in waiting and voters still don’t have the most basic infrastructure we have repeatedly demanded. In its absence, hopelessness pervades — and a desire by some to return to the old status quo has risen.

Right now, the only sense of agency most San Franciscans feel over their city’s condition is recall. And that’s our biggest failure.

Matthew Fleischer is The Chronicle’s editorial page editor. Email: matt.fleischer@sfchronicle.com

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – Mayor London Breed and SFPD boss Bill Scott released crime statistics for San Francisco so far on Monday morning this year, admitting an increase in some violent crimes and break-ins while certain types of crime have actually declined.

Both Mayor Breed and Chief Scott spoke at the first CompStat crime report of the year, saying the department can make improvements on serious assaults and break-ins, but highlighted the arrests made in connection with violent crime in the city .

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Breed gave a brief introduction before Scott went into the details of the crime stats for San Francisco in 2021. She announced the number of arrests the department has made related to high profile crimes, including the fatal shooting of Jace Young and a series of attacks on elderly Asian residents. She also argued that viral videos of crime in San Francisco are fueling the perception that crime is on the rise.

“Unfortunately, we have received a lot of negative attention when it comes to crime,” said Breed. “What is not drawing attention is the fact that you come to San Francisco and commit a crime, you are being arrested by this police department. Our investigators and the work they are doing to bring people to justice has been exceptional. “

The mayor and chief discussed what police call a “worrying increase” in break-ins of more than 3,700 – the highest number since 2015 and a 50% increase since 2019. Breed noted that many of the crimes have increased significantly had such as break-ins and car break-ins were committed by a small group of people, some of whom had already been arrested.

“In fact, when we talk about break-ins and car break-ins, at least a thousand car break-ins are committed by 10 groups of people every month. So when these people get arrested, we’ll see these car break-ins decrease significantly, ”Breed said. “Ultimately, we need to make sure that accountability is part of it. And one of the big discussions going on about defusing the police doesn’t take into account the incredible work San Francisco has done investing in programs that help prevent crime in the first place. ”

Breed also noted that their budget for the city was aimed at increasing the number of police officers on the streets to tackle the areas where crime had increased, as well as crime prevention and services to crime victims.

“An unprecedented investment of $ 65 million in my budget to help street violence prevention and victim services,” said Breed. “A lot is being invested in preventing these crimes.”

The mayor compared her office’s approach to crime to what San Francisco has been doing regarding the pandemic, stressing the need to have the money to get officials on the streets to both investigate as well as crime deterrence.

“To get back to COVID, we used the data and the science when it came to talking about how to invest. what we should do as a city, ”said Breed. “And that’s what we did in this year’s budget.”

“There is a lot of misinformation about what is going on in San Francisco. We know numbers don’t matter if you are a victim of a crime. any crime in whatever capacity, ”Breed continued. “But at the end of the day, we need to use this data to make a decision about our policies and investments. We will be making some significant changes in the coming months. We’re not ready to reveal all of our plans to address some of these issues related to these retail thefts and hold companies like Amazon and other places accountable for failing to exercise due diligence to investigate these stolen goods. Or the topics related to the prosecution of offenses or other things. We definitely need to make sure that there are tools in place to hold people accountable. We need policemen on the way forward. We have a number of officials who are retiring. This work just doesn’t happen. “

Scott said that some of the viral videos seen on social media of courageous crimes in action affect people in some ways, and he doesn’t want the perceptions of lawlessness you see here to affect the city as a whole reflects.

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“There are no statistics for audacity. What we see in some of these videos of brazen, heinous crimes, there are no statistics on what that has to do with our attitudes and how we perceive what is happening in our city, “he said. “And that’s why cops are so important; they offset this fear of crime. “

Scott pointed out that the last year, as he described it, was “a deviation” in terms of the pandemic, forcing people to stay in their homes during the lockdown and curbing crime in some categories.

Gun violence incidents had nearly doubled in the past two years, with 26 murders this year in San Francisco, though Scott said the increase came from a 58-year low just two years ago. Still, the boss pointed out that San Francisco police investigators are currently solving murder cases at a rate of around 90%.

There were also up to almost 1,100 serious bodily injuries. Scott recognized the importance of cutting the numbers in these categories.

“We have to get this under control,” said Scott.

Scott said part of the problem with the increasing number of gun violence incidents is the problem with ghost weapons and unregistered weapons in the city. He also noted that the total number of sexual assaults had decreased, although the number of cases increased between May and June. According to the new statistics, robberies also fell from year to year.

Despite the fact that theft from retail stores was highlighted as a growing problem on the news, Scott found that theft and theft have decreased significantly for the fifth straight year.

“That goes against the narrative where you watch a video and think, ‘Oh my god, San Francisco is just out of control.’ The statistics contradict the narrative, ”said Scott.

Scott highlighted the increased use of civil servants and more overtime for civil servants to reduce crime in problem areas of San Francisco, but noted that the department is still about 400 officers below recommended staffing levels.

While Scott would not criticize San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, he did emphasize the importance of detaining repeat offenders in order to reduce the number of crimes committed.

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“We need some of these people who are being arrested. If a person was arrested five times, when did we arrest them? ”Asked Scott. “You mustn’t commit more crimes while waiting for your day in court.”

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