San Francisco police union: Mayor's crime crackdown is 'acknowledgment' that defund police was 'mistake' -

Mayor London Breed said she will seek funds for more police overtime and increase the department’s budget

Senior correspondent Claudia Cowan reports the latest on the crime wave from Sausalito, California.

A series of initiatives announced by San Francisco‘s mayor to address the spike in crime and open-air drug dealing and substance abuse was met with praise by the city’s police union and cautious optimism from others after years of broken promises from elected officials.

In the midst of a wave of brazen retail thefts by organized groups of thieves coupled with property and gun crimes in some of the city’s most underserved neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, Mayor London Breed on Tuesday called for the deployment of more police officers to strengthen public safety.

“Rampant retail theft and violent smash and grab robberies plaguing San Francisco have increased the demand from local and national retail businesses for protection from this epidemic. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough San Francisco police officers to keep all of these stores and shoppers safe,” Tony Montoya, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, said in a statement.

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Police vehicles are stationed at Union Square following recent robberies in San Francisco. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)

“Mayor Breed’s announcement yesterday to deploy more police officers to address the unacceptable level of crime in portions of our city, namely the Tenderloin, is an acknowledgment that the push to defund the SFPD was a mistake,” he added.

During a City Hall address on Tuesday, Breed, a Democrat, said the city needed to get aggressive about holding criminals accountable. Included in her crime-fighting initiatives is a crackdown on illegal vending, which authorities say incentivizes the smash-and-grab robberies, as well as amending an ordinance to allow the police to monitor surveillance cameras in real-time in an effort to combat the wave of retail thefts.

“It’s time the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” she said. “And 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 tolerate of all the bull— that has destroyed our city.”

She specifically cited the Tenderloin, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods that has been plagued by rampant drug dealing and other social issues for years. Her plan calls for emergency intervention to improve safety in the area. She said she will ask county supervisors in January for money to pay for more police overtime and to increase the department’s budget.

Randy Shaw, the executive director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which provides legal and housing services to low-income people, told Fox News he will take a wait-and-see approach but welcomes a larger police presence in the neighborhood.