Good morning, everyone.

This meeting will come to order.

I'd like to welcome everyone to the regular meeting of the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for Thursday, May 28th, 2026.

I'm Supervisor Matt Dorsey, chair of this committee, and I'm joined by my fellow committee members, Vice Chair Danny Sauter and Supervisor Alan Wong.

We are grateful for our clerk today, Ms.

Monique Creighton, whom we thank for staffing us and keeping us on track.

As well, we're appreciative to the entire team at SFGov TV for facilitating and broadcasting today's meeting, and that's especially true for our producer today, Mr.

Jaime Eshaveri.

Madam Clerk, do you have any announcements?

Yes.

Please make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices.

Documents to be included as part of the file should be submitted to the clerk.

Public comment will be taken on each item on this agenda.

When your item of interest comes up and public comment is called, please line up to speak on your right.

Alternatively, you may submit public comment in writing in either of the following ways.

First, you may email them to myself, the public safety and neighborhood services committee clerk at M-O-N-I-Q-U-E.

C-R-A-Y-T-O-N at SFGOV.org.

Or you may send your written comments via US Postal Service office in City Hall.

Number one, Dr.

Carlton B.

Good.

Please room 244, San Francisco, California 94102.

If you submit public comment in writing, it will be forwarded to the supervisor and supervisors and also included as part of the official file on which you are commenting.

Finally, items acted upon today are expected to appear on the Board of Supervisors agenda of June 9th, 2026, unless otherwise stated.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Would you please call item number one?

Yes, item number one is a hearing to discuss plans for increasing Southern Police District staffing.

Thank you, Madam Clerk, colleagues.

This hearing today is focused on staffing and resources for the Southern Police District.

Southern Station has been asked to do more with less for a long time.

This district faces some of the city's most significant public safety responsibilities.

It has major commercial and office corridors, high-density, residential neighborhoods, nightlife tourism, transit hubs, large events, open air drug markets, homelessness and dangerous traffic conditions that include some of our city's largest share of highway exits and access points.

It's no secret that our police department faces staffing challenges, but Southern staffing has historically been disproportionately low even compared to other districts.

We are not helping any public safety imperative by under resourcing that.

Although this hearing is not focused on SFP D understaffing challenges citywide, I do think the context of that is worth mentioning here.

And I know that this isn't what the hearing is about today, but we're going to be talking about deployment issues that are playing out with police staffing.

But I really think it's important that we understand that the original sin of police staffing is what this people, those of us who are elected leaders in this building, should have been doing 10 years ago, which is doing more to solve a police staffing problem that we knew was coming.

And you've probably all heard me say this before.

We can probably be forgiven for knowing that some of the, you know, that we didn't know that COVID was coming.

We didn't know that there would be a drug like fentanyl that was more potently addictive and would play out in public safety challenges.

We couldn't have imagined.

But we knew cops retire.

Um and we knew that there was a disproportionately large generational cohort of police officers, not just in San Francisco, but throughout the law enforcement profession, that we're approaching retirement age.

It's a very competitive environment.

So as we're sort of as we're bringing up people to sort of, you know, demand accountability, I want to make sure that you know that we're also, we as city leaders also need to accept responsibility for the role that we need to play to make sure that we're fixing the giving the police department um the resources it needs.

I just want to say that because I've spent a lot of time in this building and I've watched how city leaders sometimes will set departments up for failure and then make a big production of blaming them for failing.

So I just want to own that we as city leaders have have a role to play in this, that is in many ways, like I said, the original sin.

Um, this larger problem plays out obviously in a multitude of unfortunate outcomes, including whole categories of low-level crime that very quickly overwhelm our ability to respond, historically unprecedented levels of police overtime, and abysmal police response times citywide.

And that being said, the Southern Station has historically faced some of the worst response times for priority A, B, and C calls.

You will hear later from some of my constituents who have suffered some of the real world impacts of these response times.

It is unacceptable that Southern District residents wait much longer for basic city service than other parts of the city.

It's inequitable, and I want to hear from the department.

I know that they have plans to fix that.

Its challenge challenges will only be exacerbated later later this year, potentially, when the district expands to take on even more territory up to Market Street as part of the police redistricting changes to the boundaries.

During the police redistricting process, I was clear with the community and the department that increased call volumes must come with commensurate increases in additional officers.

District 6 stakeholders deserve transparency on SFPD's plan to not only increase staffing to meet the new workload, but to also address systemic understaffing that has plagued the district before its boundaries were expanded.

When the city makes promises to my constituents, I have a responsibility to hold them accountable and to ask why some of those commitments aren't being made or met.

Today's hearing is a centralized opportunity for the department to hear from the district six community and for the community to hear from the department on their staffing plan.

And before we start, I want to thank the many engaged members of the community who have taken time over the last year to engage with the redistricting process and the staffing analysis.

They've shown up to commission meetings to advocate for the resources we know our neighborhoods need.