This is an opinion piece. It does not necessarily reflect the views of The Frisc. We encourage submissions from diverse perspectives across San Francisco.
For five years, I prosecuted crime for the federal government and saw firsthand our city’s famed contradictions. San Francisco has been envied for transforming society through ridesharing, home rental, food delivery, social media, digital payments, and more — yet humiliated by an inability to control age‑old street disorder. Today, however, the city is poised to become a model, a shining city on many hills, in how to deploy high technology to suppress low behavior.
Crime, stunningly, has sunk to 54 percent of its 2023 level—a 28 percent decline in 2024 and another 25 percent drop in 2025. The infuriating car break‑in, or “bip,” dropped more than 40 percent in 2025 on top of a 50 percent decline in 2024. Police staffing, meanwhile, remained largely flat. Crime trends are always influenced by multiple factors, but the timing and scale of these declines point to a clear driver: policing made more effective by technology.
Critics, in that inevitable phrase, raise privacy concerns. Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously in the case of dissemination of non-public information, but this concern is misplaced in the context of San Francisco’s experience. Much of the city’s progress has come from cameras in public places, where legal privacy expectations are sharply limited (if they exist at all) and where use of the cameras and the footage they capture is governed by local and state safeguards.
Cameras also do not just incriminate; they exonerate. They document whether a violent escalation resulted from a suspect’s aggression or an officer’s misconduct. Properly used, camera footage has become one of the most reliable forms of evidence we have, improving accuracy and accountability for everyone involved.
Take drones. Dashiell Hammett’s fictional detective Sam Spade had to squint down foggy streets for clues, but his descendants now deploy aircraft that can reach incidents faster than patrol cars. Drones trail rip‑off crews or dirt bikers who turn Geary Boulevard into a Mad Max remake. They protect officers by letting them assess situations before walking blindly into danger.
Replacing Dirty Harry with Aerial Harry protects suspects, too — revealing, in one California town, that a man had been waving a cigarette lighter, not a gun. SFPD now operates dozens of drones. It should have more. At a few thousand dollars apiece, they are cheap relative to the safety they provide.
Automated license plate readers turn a tool of the crime trade — cars — against the perpetrators. Those involved in shootings or brazen department‑store raids rely on vehicles for getaways and loot‑stashing. The roughly 400 plate readers in San Francisco have contributed meaningfully to suppressing vehicle‑enabled crime. Expanding that network would make it harder for repeat offenders to operate with impunity.
Routine traffic enforcement should be automated as well, using speed, red‑light, and stop‑sign cameras. On Bryant Street alone, the city’s most active speed camera issued more than 4,000 tickets in August 2025 — about one every 11 minutes. A single officer can observe only a fraction of violations; a camera operates consistently. Just as important, automation frees officers from time‑consuming traffic stops and paperwork, allowing them to focus on violent crime, complex investigations, and community interaction.
This is good for taxpayers. San Francisco plans to spend about $7.5 million over six years — roughly $1.25 million per year — on speed cameras. That modest annual cost would pay for itself many times over. Traffic crashes are estimated to cost the city about $500 million each year through injuries, property damage, and fatalities. If speed cameras reduce those costs by even five percent, the city would save roughly $25 million annually, dwarfing the cameras’ yearly price tag.
Technology does not expand lawful police power; it allows police to use existing authority more effectively. Beyond cameras are AI‑assisted platforms that analyze the overwhelming volumes of data investigators have already lawfully collected. One San Francisco company enables real‑time information sharing among local agencies.
If Oakland police stop a suspect under covert SFPD investigation, the system can alert San Francisco officers, who may then seek a warrant or take appropriate investigative steps. Another local firm helps investigators identify patterns hidden deep within massive datasets — thousands of jail calls, tens of thousands of emails — the kind of material that once consumed weeks of manual review.
Privacy matters because government exists to protect the public from intrusion by the state. Privacy also matters because government exists to protect the public from intrusion by criminals — into garages, bank accounts, and the simple freedom to walk happily down the street. Refusing effective, lawful technology carries its own real cost in victimization and disorder.
That is why we should insist that our police, no less than our doctors and nurses, are equipped with the best available tools. The sickest patients benefit most from medical innovation. So too will San Francisco’s most crime‑burdened neighborhoods benefit most from smarter, technology‑enabled policing. That may be the city’s most important innovation yet.
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