SF Mayor Vows Aggressive Crackdown On Crime Less Than Year After Defunding Police Budget

San Francisco, CA – San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced a crackdown on “all the bulls-t that has destroyed our city” on Tuesday, just a year after her efforts to defund the police cut the city’s law enforcement budget by $120 million.

Breed took the podium at noon on Dec. 14 backed by law enforcement officials from multiple area agencies to announce an emergency police intervention in the crime-ridden Tenderloin neighborhood, KPIX reported.

She announced the initiative would target the pipeline of illegal drugs that she said had been fueling the area’s gun violence problem and resulted in so many deadly fentanyl overdoses.

Breed came across as fed up, angry, and aggressive during the press conference, KPIX reported.

“We are not going to just walk by and let someone use in broad daylight on the streets and not give them the choice of going to the location we have identified [for them] or going to jail,” the mayor said.

“What I am proposing today and what I will be proposing in the future will make a lot of people uncomfortable and I don’t care,” she continued, sounding frustrated. “And we are past the point where what we see is even remotely acceptable.”

Breed also vowed to secure emergency police funding for needed resources, change the surveillance ordinance so that officers could interrupt crime in real time, and put a stop to the illegal street sales of stolen good, KPIX reported.

“It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” the mayor said. “And it comes to an end when we take the steps to more aggressive with law enforcement. More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the bulls-t that has destroyed our city.”

She said that street behavior and criminal activity as well as brazen robberies and countless car break-ins in recent months have become “far too normal and cannot continue to be tolerated,” KPIX reported.

Breed warned that the compassion she has shown in the past should not be mistaken for weakness.

The mayor’s aggressive speech was made a little more than year after she led the defunding of the San Francisco Police Department to the tune of $80 million.

The mayor’s “Dream Keeper Initiative” put $120 million into “holistic comprehensive services” that would replace traditional law enforcement, KQED reported.

The funding for the initiative came from about $80 million in cuts to the San Francisco Police Department’s budget over a two-year period.

The defunding amounted to about six percent of department’s $700 million annual budget, KQED reported.

The initiative also cut $40 million from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department’s budget.

Breed’s support for defunding the police came on the heels of nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd in the custody of the Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020.

A month after Floyd died, the mayor ordered San Francisco police to stop responding to noncriminal complaints, revise its accountability practices, and stop using military-grade equipment for managing civil unrest, KQED reported.

But despite all the big promises made amidst violent riots in major cities all over the country, by June of this year, critics have accused Breed of not having kept her promises, SF Weekly reported.

Advocates of defunding the police said that Breed had not kept her pledge to shift funds away from law enforcement.

“This is something we have to fight over and over again,” Defund SFPD organizer Jamie Chen told SF Weekly. “The mayor comes out with these seemingly bold and aggressive plans using the language of social justice, but underneath are really status quo, if not worse, policies.”

Critics expect an angry response from anti-police activists in response to the mayor’s announcement, KPIX reported.