Tracy McCray - SFPOA President

San Franciscans have a choice to make when they turn in their ballots for this election. Do they want to start on the road to recovery, no pun intended, or do they want to see the city keep circling the drain with no end to what is plaguing it. We all see it, the open air drug use, the smoking and injecting of drugs on the sidewalks, the mentally ill in deep pain screaming and talking to themselves, the graffiti on homes and businesses, and the trash throughout every corner of the city.

We have all seen the viral videos and news reports, both local and national, heck even international, about the state of the streets in San Francisco. The streets downtown are in chaos. It’s not just the usual Tenderloin streets that we all know so well, but the surrounding streets of Mission, Howard, Folsom, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th streets, and where the Linkage Center sits at UN Plaza where chaos is on full display.

The pandemic has made a mockery of any sense of what a “normal” routine is. During this time people are trying to find all sorts of ways to handle stress. Some meditate, some workout, some play music, others cook. I find going to the dump to be a great way to relieve stress and to handle the negativity that has been thrown towards our chosen profession. I do not wear my heart on my sleeve, and some would say I’m stoic.

I must say when you are criticized for something some folks want you to do - but then don’t want you to do because of what will result when you do your job — is annoying as hell. Recently an article came out blasting the statistics of our citation writing prowess. As you can imagine and probably even read, we have on average given out just ten traffic citations a day. Said author stated they could spot three different violations in a matter of seconds while standing outside their office. Ok, like do you want a participation ribbon for that? What were the three violations?

Back on November 30, 2020, the SFPD and SFPOA signed a joint agreement titled The Police Reform Collaboration Agreement #1. As this agreement was titled #1 we thought that there would follow more discussion and agreements for reform. The goal of agreement #1 was to redirect 17 categories of police calls for service to non-police response.

Well, I am glad that June is over, and we can set our sights on what’s ahead of us. No need to rehash the changes that June brought — and there were quite a few.