Examiner Editorial: Community policing makes Tenderloin safer

There was far from universal agreement that San Francisco’s violent crime could be reduced by assigning more police to walking beats, plus a “zone” strategy of concentrating extra officers in The City’s most violent neighborhoods. Retiring police Chief Heather Fong, with the backing of Mayor Gavin Newsom, bitterly opposed the increased foot patrols demanded by the Board of Supervisors.

Fong’s objection was that officer-assignment decisions should be made by the Police Department’s top brass. And shortly after the zone strategy was installed in The City’s high-crime neighborhoods last year, the Mission suffered a sudden spike in street killings — which cast doubt on the hopes given to increased police presence.

But impressive statistics presented to the Police Commission last week show that community policing is making at least one violent neighborhood considerably safer. Nobody would mistake the gritty Tenderloin for an upscale urban showplace, but the number of homicides there plummeted from nine in 2007 to four last year. Perhaps just as heartening, arrests were made in all the 2008 slayings.

And while citywide violent crime was on the rise in 2008, the Tenderloin also made big improvements in neighborhood safety. Aggravated assaults dropped 14 percent, from 308 to 265. Robberies were down by 9 percent, from 364 to 331.

Tenderloin officers also cracked down on quality-of-life offenses, increasing disorderly conduct arrests last year by a startling 184 percent and their narcotics arrests by 22 percent. Of course, Tenderloin streets still are hardly cured of being a long-entrenched outdoor bazaar for substance addiction, prostitution, petty crime and hard-core homelessness. But the Police Department clearly made laudable progress here in 2008.

Tenderloin Police Station Capt. Gary Jimenez, whose leadership has been widely praised throughout the neighborhood, credited the new focus on community policing for the Tenderloin’s dramatic reduction in violent crimes. He said each of the four murders
last year were solved because Tenderloin residents now feel they know and trust their visible foot-patrol officers and are becoming comfortable sharing information.

“The people coming forward on these homicides waited for their officer on their beat to come out,” Jimenez said. This is a welcome development when other high-crime neighborhoods in San Francisco have been entirely
intimidated into silence, making it nearly impossible for police to solve homicides.

The start of a noticeable crime turnaround in the Tenderloin delivers a rare shot of hope in The City’s fight against crime, where all too often the police have appeared to be stalemated or worse.