By Christin Evans, Calvin Welch, and David Woo, HANC Board

This month at HANC we will present a panel on policing in our neighborhood and citywide.  The panel will include Police Commissioner Max Carter-Oberstone, Legislative Aide to the District 5 Office Melissa Hernandez, and Park Station Police Captain Jack Hart.

To offer some context for the meeting it is important to remember that in the 1970's the Haight- Ashbury, now among the most wealthy neighborhoods in the City, with the City's largest number of Airbnb's catering to upscale tourists and visitors, was considered the "hell hole" of San Francisco and far more disparaged in the media than the Tenderloin is today. In story after story in the City's THREE daily newspapers and six or seven TV stations, public nudity and moral depravity, dope smoking and acid consumption in plain view, and the brisk sale of both on every street corner on Haight Street was reported. Sixty Minutes and the New York Times sent reporters to walk Haight Street to report that our neighborhood was the precursor, not simply of the fall of San Francisco, but of the entire western world as we knew it. Didn't happen, the media was wrong (again).

But what did happen and was rarely reported was the community response: the Diggers, the Free Medical Clinic, Westside Community Mental Health, The Haight Ashbury Community Alcohol Treatment Program (yes alcohol!), The Haight-Ashbury Community Development Corporation, the Food Conspiracy and the community based battle to keep Park Police Station open and local.

Yes, in 1972, as the media excoriated our neighborhood for its lawless social excess, community residents here in the Haight-Ashbury led folks across the City to oppose a Mayor Joe Alioto plan to consolidate all district stations into three "area" police stations with helipads and below ground bunkers beginning with the closure of Park and Potrero stations. Gathering support from law and order Republicans and dope selling communards, along with the newly formed Police Officers Association, the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood-led City wide coalition passed a resolution opposing the consolidation plan with 65% of the vote, killing it for all time.

The argument that resounded with voters was the lessons learned here in the Haight-Ashbury: the best policing was "community policing", with local cops walking local beats. It is important to understand that context in today's San Francisco. A true sense of "security" comes from an organized community jointly addressing its own problems as defined by the community itself. A community mobilized along these lines can not only define its own "law and order" but persuade others to support it.

As Mayor London Breed continues to call for increased policing and police funding, we continue to be faced with policies that fail to support and respond to the needs of local communities. The Mayor’s proposed increases to the police budget will continue to go towards putting police in Union Square and Downtown to serve those financial interests. The recent killing of Banko Brown, the result of the attempt to protect the financial interests of the massive Walgreens Corporation on Market Street, shows us what these resources are being put towards.

We must instead be prioritizing the needs of neighborhoods and fighting for policies that do not criminalize San Francisco residents and our neighbors. We need to be advocating for police accountability, community control of what safety means and looks like, and investment in alternatives to policing such as the CART program.