After years of mounting deaths, SF police unfurl ‘wave’ of traffic enforcement

The San Francisco Police Department, scrutinized by city supervisors and pedestrian safety advocates for the lack of traffic enforcement in recent years, unveiled its new enforcement plan that includes having a more targeted approach given police current staffing levels.

District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who has been critical of the Police Department’s lack of traffic enforcement, called for the department to present its enforcement plan at the board’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee last month.

Mandelman said at the meeting that he found the decline in traffic enforcement since 2014 “extraordinary” and “alarming,” adding:

“I do think that the failure to achieve the kind of progress toward Vision Zero that we would have liked to have achieved over the last 10 years, notwithstanding, having made some very valuable and important investments in infrastructure, is that we have not matched those investments in infrastructure, with even a holding steady of enforcement.”

Cmdr. Nicole Jones with the Police Department traffic bureau said SFPD will deploy a “wave” of police officers to known crash hot spots using city data. Those known spots include:

• Market Street and Octavia Boulevard
• Geneva Avenue and Mission Street
• Gough Street at Haight Street and Market Street
• Dvisadero Street and Geary Boulevard
• 13th Street and Duboce Avenue
• Fulton Street and Park Presidio Boulevard
• 13th Street and South Van Ness Avenue
• Eddy Street and Larkin Street
• Eddy Street and Polk Street

The wave enforcement, Jones said, will include having officers focus on dangerous driving behaviors that lead to crashes, such as speeding and distracted driving. SFPD plans to do wave enforcement twice weekly for two hours every three weeks at the above locations.

SFPD plans to send its speed enforcement team with the Traffic Company to do at least one directed enforcement at a specific location focused on speed, which advocates and city officials have said is the leading cause of fatal traffic crashes. Additionally, SFPD will do saturation patrols where Jones said the department will “flood an area with officers” to conduct high-visibility enforcement.

The number of traffic citations issued by officers for the first three months of 2024 is 2,879, according to data from the Police Department. Of those, 1,581 of the citations were on the “focus on the five” traffic violations that often led to severe and fatal crashes. Jones said the Police Department is trending in the right direction as officers last year issued a total of 5,080 citations.

Mandelman, who has held previous hearings on traffic enforcement, said he felt “cautiously good” about this most recent hearing and that the Police Department has an enforcement plan.

The supervisor will continue the hearing later this fall for the Police Department to update the board on its enforcement efforts.

Mayor London Breed in March directed the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the Police Department at the city’s most dangerous intersections.

Jerold Chinn

Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.