San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced plans Tuesday to expand the police budget to deal with rising crime, calling permissive policies “bullsh*t” and apparently reversing her policy this past February to defund $120 million from the police.
As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Breed’s proposal for more policing is aimed at the Tenderloin, a notoriously dangerous and drug-ridden district near Market Street, the main road through the downtown area.
The Chronicle noted:
Mayor London Breed wants to significantly boost the police presence in the Tenderloin over the next few months as part of a public safety blitz, which includes a crackdown on those who are selling drugs — and those who are using them — in the long-troubled neighborhood.
On Tuesday, Breed called for increased funding for police overtime to help pay for the move, which includes tackling the resale of stolen goods. She told residents last week that she believes policing is an “important tool” to address some of the neighborhood’s woes, which include widespread drug dealing, a surge in fatal overdoses and a spike in gun violence.
“It’s time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city … come(s) to an end,” Breed said at a news conference in City Hall on Tuesday, flanked by department heads and Supervisors Catherine Stefani and Ahsha Safaí. “It comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the bulls — that destroyed our city.”
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[T]he push for more officers will likely draw the most attention, landing amid a national reckoning over the role of police in vulnerable communities. It also marks a shift in messaging from the Breed administration, which for the past year has focused on creating programs that remove law enforcement from interactions with those struggling with homelessness, mental health issues and drug use.
In February, as Breitbart News reported, Breed proposed redistributing $120 million from law enforcement to organizations purporting to help the black community. But by 2021, with crime rising, the city actually increased spending on the police.
Crime has continued to rise, with major retail chains leaving the city because of the frequency of shoplifting, and high-end stores still reeling from a series of mass looting events, both in the city and the suburbs, in the week before Thanksgiving.
Earlier this year, a city supervisor’s car was broken into, outside City Hall, during a discussion about crime. Last week, a family visiting from Chicago had their car windows smashed during a robbery — with toddlers sitting inside the vehicle.
Rising violent crime has become a major vulnerability for Democrats, as the Biden administration continues to blame the pandemic; left-wing “progressives” like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claim that there is no problem at all; and Hollywood celebrities argue that urban residents simply need to become used to dealing with crime and stop complaining.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.