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While crime overall has been trending down for years, reports of larceny theft — shoplifting from a person or business — are up nearly 17% to more than 28,000 from the same time last year. Requests to clean dirty streets and sidewalks are the majority of calls to 311, the city’s services line.
San Francisco’s well-publicized problems have served as fodder for conservative media outlets. Former President Donald Trump jumped in again recently, releasing a statement saying the National Guard should be sent to San Francisco to deter smash-and-grab robberies.
Elected officials say they’re grappling with deep societal pains common to any large U.S. city.
FILE – San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin is silhouetted looking out at the skyline from his office in San Francisco on Jan. 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
People pass by a woman in a wheelchair panhandling near Union Square in San Francisco, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
Police vehicles are stationed at Union Square following recent robberies in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
A high percentage of an estimated 8,000 homeless people in San Francisco are struggling with chronic addiction or severe mental illness, usually both. Last year, 712 people died of drug overdoses, compared with 257 people who died of infectious-disease.
LeAnn Corpus, an administrative assistant, said a homeless man set up a makeshift tent outside her house using a bike and a bed sheet, and relieved himself on the sidewalk. She called the police, who came after two hours and cleared him out, but at her aunt’s home, a homeless person camped out against the backyard for six months despite attempts to get authorities to remove him.
Administrative assistant LeAnn Corpus stands near City Hall in San Francisco, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
“This city just doesn’t feel the same anymore,” said Corpus, a third-generation native.
In Hayes Valley, business owners tired of seeing garbage strewn about and the city not doing anything to address the issue banded together to lease enclosed trash cans from a private company, said Jennifer Laska, president of the neighborhood association.
After the lease expired, the association managed to get the city to agree to buy and install new public garbage cans designed to keep trash in and pilferers out. That was four months ago.
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“We’re still struggling just to get the trash cans actually purchased,” Laska said.
