san francisco — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Donald Trump is continuing to threaten to send National Guard troops to San Francisco next, calling the California city crime-ridden and saying its residents are clamoring for federal aid.
But local and state leaders say that couldn’t be further from the truth, noting that crime rates are down overall and the city is beginning to change its downtrodden pandemic image. Residents and workers downtown said this week they were puzzled and concerned by Trump’s threat.
“This is a safe American city,” Mayor Daniel Lurie told The Associated Press last week. “We got this in San Francisco.”
The Republican president cited the crime as justification for possibly sending troops to the city, which has a population of about 830,000 people. He deployed the Guard because of crime concerns Washington, DCwhere he has direct control over the National Guard, and MemphisThe Republican governor supports their presence. Los Angeles was the first city where Trump deployed the Guard, arguing that it was necessary to protect federal buildings and agents as protesters resisted mass immigration detentions. He has since said they are wanted in chicago and PortlandOregon as well.
Portland residents and leaders were surprised by Trump’s interest when he described the city as besieged by violent protests. In fact, the nightly protests were small and limited to the area outside the Federal Immigration Building. While there were some arrests due to the violence, the demonstrations were far less intense than those that rocked downtown in 2020 after the death of George Floyd.
In San Francisco, too, Trump seems to be counting on… Old photo In a city often targeted by conservatives.
“The difference is, I think they want us in San Francisco,” Trump said Sunday on Fox News. “San Francisco was truly one of the great cities in the world. But 15 years ago, something went wrong. I woke up.”
His comments angered and puzzled Kate Freudenberger, who works in retail.
“You walk around the city, it’s peaceful, there’s no insurrection,” she said Tuesday morning, adding that immigration authorities weren’t as active in San Francisco as in other cities, “so there wasn’t really anything we could rally around.”
Marc Benioff, CEO of San Francisco-based software giant Salesforce, caused a stir when he told the New York Times earlier this month that he would welcome the Guard to help quell crime ahead of a major annual business conference. He has since apologized for his comments, saying the conference was the “largest and safest” in its history and that there was no need for guards.
San Francisco still He recovers From the Corona pandemic The city center emptied It brought renewed attention to street homelessness and the open drug trade. But signs indicate the city is on the rise. AI startups are taking over office space, and home rental prices are rising. San Francisco saw a 21% increase over last year in office visits, according to location analytics platform Placer.ai, and public transit ridership reached its highest levels since the pandemic.
The Wall Street Journal announced this week that the city has broken out of its “death loop,” an article the city’s mayor eagerly shared on social media.
The sidewalks became cleaner and the tents largely disappeared from view. In the Tenderloin District, one of the most troubled neighborhoods, teams from the city and nonprofit workers on Monday helped schoolchildren cross the street, walk around picking up trash or providing counseling to the homeless. The picture was different than it was during the epidemic, when hundreds of people camped on the sidewalks.
However, the Tenderloin District is a problem area for public drug use and trafficking, as is the Mid-Market and Mission neighborhoods. But overall crime is down more than 26% this year compared to the same period last year, according to the San Francisco Police Department. Lowry said vehicle break-ins — which have drawn the ire of tourists and residents alike — are at a 22-year low.
Lowry, a centrist Democrat who has tried to avoid confrontations with Trump by ignoring many of the president’s comments, said Monday that he welcomed more federal help to arrest drug traffickers and disrupt drug markets. But he said sending the guards would not achieve that.
“The National Guard has no authority to arrest drug dealers — and sending them to San Francisco will do nothing to take fentanyl off the streets or make our city safer,” Lurie said in a statement.
San Francisco voters gave in 2024 Authority police To use drones, surveillance cameras and other technology to fight crime. They too He fired a progressive politician District Attorney Chesa Boudin in the 2022 recall election and Install Brock JenkinsIt is considered more stringent in dealing with crime than its predecessor. Lowry has pushed to recruit and retain police officers, and entry-level police applications are up 40% compared to last year.
Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has said it would strongly oppose any deployment, as it did when Trump first ordered the California National Guard into Los Angeles against Newsom’s wishes. California Attorney General Rob Bonta pledged to “be in court within hours, if not minutes” if there is a federal deployment.
Lawsuits filed by Democratic officials in Chicago and Portland have so far prevented troops from taking to city streets.
Libby Baxter, a retired nurse, said Trump sent the National Guard into Democratic cities to create “chaos and unrest” and she feared the same would happen in San Francisco.
“I think that might happen if they came to San Francisco because we’re a very tolerant society, but we don’t do well with someone coming in and trying to dictate or control certain parts of our city,” she said.