San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has announced the creation of a police task force directed at patrolling downtown’s major public spaces.
The San Francisco Police Department Hospitality Task Force is another component of the new administration’s effort to address public safety, which Lurie had previewed during his mayoral campaign.
The task force will provide an increased police presence, commit dedicated resources to the effort, and work directly with businesses and hotels, according to a press release from the mayor’s office.
The task force will focus its efforts on areas around the Moscone Convention Center, Yerba Buena Gardens and Union Square. The plan comes just more than a week before the NBA All-Star Weekend comes to the Chase Center and elsewhere in the city from Feb. 14-16 and with Lunar New Year activities planned throughout the month.
It comes as the mayor has sought to make good on promises to make an urgent impact on the city’s sagging downtown area, which has been the slowest to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic compared to other major American cities, according to city data, and has seen high profile crimes like the shooting of a San Francisco 49ers football player in September 2024.
In addition to the hospitality task force, Lurie has sought to tackle open air drug markets on Sixth Street in the South of Market neighborhood by setting up a mobile police command post.
He also introduced an ordinance to address what he has deemed a fentanyl emergency in the city that will allow the city to speed up the process for finalizing contracts for new shelters and fentanyl treatment providers, new behavioral health initiatives and make hires for related positions. The ordinance, which also allowed the city to raise private funds to pay for fentanyl treatment-related uses, passed the Board of Supervisors 10-1 on Tuesday.
“The Hospitality Task Force will break down siloes to increase the police presence across the areas that drive our city’s economy — not just during large conferences but 365 days a year,” Lurie said.
“With a safe, bustling downtown, we will attract businesses, shoppers, tourists, and conventions — creating jobs, generating revenue, and helping us provide better services for everyone in San Francisco,” he said.
The plan involves stationing specialized officers in heavily trafficked shopping and visitor areas, which will provide more police presence and allow the department to “surge” units to where they are needed with quicker response times, according to the mayor’s press release.
The task force will provide a police presence for at least 20 hours per day to those areas.
Police will also contact businesses and hotels to better assess their needs and provide security for convention goers and tourists.
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement that the task force will allow officers to be more focused on cleaning up popular downtown areas while coordinating with other agencies.
Marisa Rodriguez, CEO of the Union Square Alliance, a business-focused nonprofit that helps manage Union Square, said that more dedicated resources to clean up downtown could spur a cycle of rejuvenation for the city and its residents.
“To be a world-class city, we need a safe downtown,” Rodriguez said. “Our hospitality zone is the heart of San Francisco — our iconic city center where the cable cars run, where visitors from around the world stay in over 20,000 hotel rooms. This is the image of San Francisco that people take home with them,” she said.
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