I want to train a robot to replace me picking up trash …
Friends,
A comment I submitted just now to a Joe Borros piece in Mission Local …Menu
Local news for a global city
Open Search
POSTED INCOVERING THE POLICE
S.F. to boost police presence at Mission BART plazas, Mayor Lurie says
by JOE RIVANO BARROSFebruary 28, 2026, 1:25 pm
SFPD officers walk into Casa Esperanza in the Mission on March 31, 2025. Photo by Gustavo Hernandez.
This is part of our ongoing coverage of 16th and Mission. Click here for a dashboard of crime statistics updated daily, and read an archive of past coverage here.
Mayor Daniel Lurie announced on Friday afternoon that the two BART plazas in the Mission District, at 16th and 24th streets, would get more police officers, a dedicated sergeant, and extra street ambassadors.
“We’re going to go all in,” Lurie said in a video filmed at 16th and Mission. Over the past year, the intersection and nearby alleys have been the focus of a “relentless” campaign by Lurie to clean up the area of drug dealing, illegal vending, and general grime. “This neighborhood, these children, these families deserve clean and safe streets,” he said.
The mayor promised increased police foot patrols on the eight-block Mission Street corridor between the 16th and 24th street BART plazas where illegal vending has continued to pop up. In recent months, open-air drug use has also increased on those blocks.
Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter below.Sign up
The mayor said a sergeant at the Mission Station a block away would “oversee these BART plazas,” and that the city would add street teams to “keep this corridor welcoming.” He said street cleaning would start occurring before school starts.
Police officers are already a near-constant sight at the plazas. They park SUVs with siren-lights on during the night, and stand on either the northeast or southwest plazas at 16th and Mission to ward off illegal street fencing, which grew prolific after the pandemic. Until September, an RV-sized van was parked on the BART plaza each and every day.
Lurie, the former police chief, and the current police chief have all acknowledged that the Mission District is seeing “displacement” of drug activity and crime from other areas of the city where police operations have ramped up. Last year, Lurie told Mission Local the city would not “arrest our way out of this problem” but that police would have to chase drug dealers around “for a little bit” until conditions improve.Teens look on as officers back the mobile command unit into the 16th Street BART plaza on March 12, 2025. Photo by Abigail Van Neely.The northeast plaza at 16th Street, Jan. 23, 2026, at 6:55 p.m. Photo by Lydia Chávez
The 16th and Mission operation has had mixed results: Street peddlers often simply go across the street from where officers are standing. At night, crowds gather selling everything from perfume to raw steaks to drugs.
For months, the city had succeeded in moving most of the illicit activity to the northeast plaza, and it mostly took place after 5 p.m. But increasingly, vending has also started to emerge again on the southwest plaza.
And, throughout the nearly year-long operation, vendors simply moved to the 24th Street plaza. So would officers. But once they left, the crowds would return.Northeast 24th Street Plaza, Feb. 7, 2026, 8:55 p.m. Photo by Lydia Chávez
Residents and merchants saw little improvement after the first few months of the operation that began on March 12 last year. But as it progressed they said the streets were cleaner, loitering was down, and the city’s street teams were highly responsive. The results can be uneven, however, and crowds often return when police or ambassadors aren’t present.
Police arrests are up. On Thursday, police officers made 16 arrests near 16th and Mission and 59 in the last week, according to Mission Local‘s dashboard tracking daily statistics from the intersection. Since Lurie announced his crackdown on the area, arrests and citations for dugs there have skyrocketed, reflecting a concerted police focus.
An alphabet soup of city agencies already patrol the area with dedicated street teams. They are bolstered by two nonprofit contractors.
The community ambassadors wear clearly marked uniforms and do a variety of tasks, like intervening in street fights, reversing overdoses, and walking children to and from Marshall Elementary near 16th and Mission. Students there see drug dealing, feces, public intoxication, and more nearly every day — one mother told Mission Local she “play that we jump poop on the street” on the way to class.
They carry
walkie-talkies
Workers wear one or more
layers of the uniforms, including
a black t-shirt, a black zip-up
hoodle, and a white vest
Lurie acknowledged the lack of progress in his social media video.
“We have good days, and we have days that are not what we want to see here,” he said. He promised the city would continue to work “tirelessly” on the intersection.
Feng Han, an aide for District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, said in a statement that Fielder “has been asking for more community policing and foot beats since she began her term last year as that was the number one request of constituents.”
“She hopes that this new sergeant assigned can deliver that.”
Follow Us
TAGGED:16th St. Plaza cleanup16th Street16th Street BARTDaniel LurieSFPD
JOE RIVANO BARROSSENIOR EDITOR
joe.rivanobarros@missionlocal.com
Joe was born in Sweden, where half of his family received asylum after fleeing Pinochet, and then spent his early childhood in Chile; he moved to Oakland when he was eight. He attended Stanford University for political science and worked at Mission Local as a reporter after graduating. He then spent time at YIMBY Action and as a partner for the strategic communications firm The Worker Agency. He rejoined Mission Local as an editor in 2023. You can reach him on Signal @jrivanob.99.More by Joe Rivano Barros
Join the Conversation
No comments
h. brownsays:February 28, 2026, 6:23 pm at 6:23 pmYour comment is awaiting moderation.I want to be wired at my joints and followed by a robot down 14th street to clean around the Armory. Uh huh. Most City workers have poor work ethic which wouldn’t be a problem with a robot. I talked to Copilot and the technology exists. My reservation is that so many people would lose their jobs so I suggest SF lead the World by not ‘firing’ people but ‘retiring’ them on the exact salary they are making when the robot replaces them. We’d be the first in the World but not with UBI. I think Stockton had it for a short while. go Niners !!
Leave a Reply