"Enforcement" No Longer a Dirty Word
Save San Francisco by Canceling Progressives and Enforcing Existing Laws
Every store on Market Street is closed, as METAL LEO helpfully shows the world in the latest viral doom loop video. He’s not exaggerating. Mayor Breed has demurred from even trying to meet the challenge, opting instead to walk back expectations: “Downtown as we know it is not coming back.” London Breed thinks we don’t deserve to have nice things because she’s terrified of a challenger from the progressive left calling her out on enforcement.
One thing, and only one thing, will save downtown San Francisco: enforcement of existing laws. The very word has long been a dirty, despised thing among progressives. “Enforcement doesn’t work” is recited reflexively at the mere mention of the word, accompanied by arched eyebrows and a benevolently condescending smirk, the wise and properly Berkeley educated thinker who knows better enlightening this brute ignorant savage who really believes that police can actually reduce crime by physically stopping criminals from committing crime, then locking them up in jail so they can’t do it again.
Yet empirical evidence proves otherwise: enforcement does the trick. From Manhattan to Moscow, Singapore to Shanghai, Tokyo to Taipei, safe cities do manage to suppress bad behavior and poor street conditions through robust police enforcement, every day — and in cities with far worse income disparities than anything in the United States. The question is not whether enforcement works; that is a matter of fact which is beyond dispute. Visit any of those cities, and see for yourself. The only question is why we are not doing it in San Francisco.
The oft repeated trope rote among the pseudointelligentsia at this point morphs into something along the lines of, “Oh, the police don’t care, they’re lazy, they never even show up.” I found this to be categorically false. I have (unfortunately) had to call 911 many times while living in the city. The police invariably showed up within 10 minutes, and always did their best to resolve the incident. Their hands were usually tied by City Hall policy that directs them to ignore homeless people at all costs until they actually engage in physical violence — whether they are leaving syringes in the playground, openly shoplifting from Walgreen’s every day at the same time, shitting explosively on the sidewalk, or screaming drunken threats at women who are smaller than them.
The police do what they can, which sometimes means moving someone along. When they do make an arrest, the District Attorney usually refuses to prosecute. In either case, the same person is back doing the same thing in the same spot a few hours later. This is not a solution.
All we really need to fix San Francisco is consistent and fair enforcement of existing law. Have a severe mental illness and can’t take care of yourself? We’ll put you somewhere where you’re taken care of, in a mental hospital (another dirty word for progressives), instead of compassionately leaving you to languish sleeping in a gutter covered in your own vomit. Selling fentanyl or crack openly on the corner? Go to jail. Threatening to stab random people because they walked along “your” sidewalk? Go to jail. Pulling your pants down and taking a dump in a doorway? Go to jail. Heck, San Francisco voters approved via referendum a “sit-lie ordinance” when the Board of Supervisors was too cowardly to take that on, making it illegal to live on the sidewalk — let’s enforce it! The police are willing and able to go to work. They need firm backing from the DA and City Hall to make it stick, by applying real penalties to criminals rather than a revolving door of dropped charges and ignored fines.
How much of a chance does San Francisco have? Not much, but not zero, either. Manhattan in the 70s and 80s was just as bad. Rudy Giuliani went through like a Roto-Rooter and cleaned it out. Despite his later treasonous transgressions, it is indisputable that he turned New York City around — through a program of nothing more radical than “rigorously enforcing the existing law” — when nobody thought that could be done.
This requires immediate and radical policy change. Every day that passes makes it harder to pull San Francisco back from the brink. We must eject the do-nothing corrupt status quo politicians now. Defund Jennifer Friedenbach and the poverty pimps at Coalition on Homelessness who “advocate” for an open air insane asylum / hard drug bazaar becoming a permanent fixture on our sidewalks. Cancel the far-left “progressives” altogether, restore rational common sense to its rightful place at the center of our political discourse, and bring in a Batman — or a Batwoman — who has the will to powerwash away the layers of filth and shit, to restore San Francisco to what it once was and will be again.